Selected Poems and Prose
Page 27
The sea, my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes.
Panthea
35Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm
40Before the sacred Titan’s fall, and thy
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
45Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
Our young Ione’s soft and milky arms
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom …
50But not as now, since I am made the wind
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet—my waking hours
55Too full of care and pain.
Asia
Lift up thine eyes
And let me read thy dream.
Panthea
As I have said
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
60From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep …
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale, wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
65Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
‘Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With loveliness—more fair than aught but her
70Whose shadow thou art—lift thine eyes on me!’
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o’er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
75Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapt me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm ether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
80His presence flow and mingle through my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorbed—until it passed,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
85And tremulous as they, in the deep night
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of far melody: thy name
90Among the many sounds alone I heard
Of what might be articulate; though still
I listened through the night when sound was none.
Ione wakened then, and said to me:
‘Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?
95I always knew what I desired before,
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
I know not—something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister!
100Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine;—for when just now
We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
105Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
Quivered between our intertwining arms.’
I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Asia
Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not … Oh, lift
110Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!
Panthea
I lift them, though they droop beneath the load
Of that they would express: what canst thou see
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
Asia
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
115Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,—
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
Panthea
Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?
Asia
There is a change; beyond their inmost depth
120I see a shade, a shape: ’tis He, arrayed
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
125Within that bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build o’er the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet ’tis a thing of air
130For through its grey robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quenched not.
Dream
Follow! Follow!
Panthea
It is mine other dream.
Asia
It disappears.
Panthea
It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
135Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree,
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost …
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
140Of Hyacinth tell Apollo’s written grief—
O, follow, follow!
Asia
As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes … methought among these lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn,
145And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently—
150And there was more which I remember not;
But on the shadows of the moving clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
Follow, O follow! as they vanished by;
And on each herb, from which Heaven’s dew had fallen,
155The like was stamped as with a withering fire.
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: O, follow, follow, follow me!
160And then I said: ‘Panthea, look on me.’
But in the depth of those beloved eyes
Still I saw, follow, follow!
Echo
Follow, follow!
Panthea
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices,
As they were spirit-tongued.
&
nbsp; Asia
It is some being
165Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
Echoes (unseen)
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away—
170 Child of Ocean!
Asia
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their aërial tongues yet sound.
Panthea
I hear.
Echoes
O follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
175Through the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth;
(More distant)
O follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
180Where the wild bee never flew,
Through the noon-tide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
185While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Child of Ocean!
Asia
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint
And distant.
Panthea
List! the strain floats nearer now.
Echoes
190In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
Asia
195How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
Echoes
O follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noon-tide dew,
200By the forests, lakes, and fountains,
Through the many-folded mountains,
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
205Parted, to commingle now,
Child of Ocean!
Asia
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away.
Scene ii
A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening.
Semichorus I of Spirits
The path through which that lovely twain
Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue;
5Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
10 Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
15That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon,
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay—
20It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne’er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around;
And underneath is the mossy ground.
Semichorus II
There the voluptuous nightingales
25 Are awake through all the broad noonday;
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs,
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate’s music-panting bosom;
30Another from the swinging blossom,
Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
Till some new strain of feeling bear
35 The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener’s brain
40So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
Semichorus I
There those enchanted eddies play
Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
By Demogorgon’s mighty law,
With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
45All spirits on that secret way,
As inland boats are driven to Ocean
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw;
And first there comes a gentle sound
To those in talk or slumber bound,
50And wakes the destined: soft emotion
Attracts, impels them; those who saw
Say from the breathing Earth behind
There steams a plume-uplifting wind
Which drives them on their path, while they
55 Believe their own swift wings and feet
The sweet desires within obey:
And so they float upon their way,
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
The storm of sound is driven along,
60 Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet
Behind, its gathering billows meet
And to the fatal mountain bear
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
First Faun
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
65Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
Second Faun
’Tis hard to tell:
70I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
75Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noon-tide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
80They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again.
First Faun
If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
85Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of the sphered dew?
Second Faun
Ay, many more which we may well divine.
But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
90And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of fate, and chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the chained Titan’s woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the Earth
95One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm
To silence the unenvying nightingales.
Scene iii
A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. ASIA and PANTHEA.
Panthea
> Hither the sound has borne us—to the realm
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano’s meteor-breathing chasm,
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
5Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
10The voice which is contagion to the world.
Asia
Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be
The shadow of some Spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
15Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee—
Even now my heart adoreth—Wonderful!
Look, sister—ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
20As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale … Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand—midway, around
25Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
Dim twilight lawns, and stream-illumed caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling
30The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray,
From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.
The vale is girdled with their walls—a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
35Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence—Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake: in Heaven-defying minds
40As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,