Be thine.—
‘Like a cloud big with a May shower
My soul weeps healing rain
30 On thee, thou withered flower.—
It breathes mute music on thy sleep—
Its odour calms thy brain—
Its light within thy gloomy breast
Spreads, like a second youth again—
35By mine thy being is to its deep
Possest.—
‘The spell is done—how feel you now?’
‘Better, quite well,’ replied
The sleeper—‘What would do
40You good when suffering and awake,
What cure your head and side?’
‘What would cure that would kill me, Jane,
And as I must on earth abide
Awhile yet, tempt me not to break
45 My chain.’
With a Guitar. To Jane
Ariel to Miranda;—Take
This slave of music for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony,
5In which thou can’st, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
’Till joy denies itself again
And too intense is turned to pain;
For by permission and command
10Of thine own prince Ferdinand
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
15Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own;
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
20Lit you o’er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon
In her interlunar swoon
25Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on Earth
Like an unseen Star of birth
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
30Of life from your nativity;
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your will.
35Now, in humbler, happier lot
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave.—
40From you, he only dares to crave
For his service and his sorrow
A smile today, a song tomorrow.
The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought
45Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past
50And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers
And some of songs in July bowers
And all of love,—and so this tree—
O that such our death may be—
55Died in sleep and felt no pain
To live in happier form again,
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar,
And taught it justly to reply
60To all who question skilfully
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
65For it had learnt all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains,
The clearest echoes of the hills,
70The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain and breathing dew
And airs of evening;—and it knew
75That seldom heard mysterious sound,
Which, driven on its diurnal round
As it floats through boundless day
Our world enkindles on its way—
All this it knows, but will not tell
80To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it:
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions, and no more
Is heard than has been felt before
85By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.—
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
90For our beloved Jane alone.—
‘Far, far away, O ye / Halcyons of Memory’
Far, far away, O ye
Halcyons of Memory,
Seek some far calmer nest
Than this abandoned breast—
5No news of your false spring
To my heart’s winter bring;
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.—
Vultures who build your bowers
10High in the Future’s towers,
Wake, for the spirit’s blast
Over my peace has past;
Wrecked hopes on hopes are spread,
Dying joys choked by dead
15Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.
‘Tell me star, whose wings of light’
Tell me star, whose wings of light
Speed thee on thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
5Tell me Moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of Heaven’s homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?
Weary wind who wanderest
10Like the world’s rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest
On some hill or billow?
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
5The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
10 Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
15And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
20 Took as his own and then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
25Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
30 Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
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Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
35Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the Ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
40 And then a Vision on my brain was rolled …
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream:
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
45Of people there was hurrying to and fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, yet so
50 Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer’s bier.—
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared and some
55Seeking the object of another’s fear,
And others as with steps towards the tomb
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death …
60 And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
But more with motions which each other crost
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
65Upon that path where flowers never grew;
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst,
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
70 Of grassy paths, and wood lawns interspersed
With overarching elms and caverns cold
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old …
And as I gazed methought that in the way
75The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the South wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with [ ] light
The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon
80 When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of her dead mother, whose dim form
85Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within as one whom years deform
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape
90 Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
And o’er what seemed the head a cloud like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aetherial gloom
Tempering the light; upon the chariot’s beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
95The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air’s soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
100 Had their eyes banded … little profit brings
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that their banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done—
105So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on …
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder-blast
110 The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror’s advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house and prison and theatre
115When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the true similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er
The chariot rolled a captive multitude
120 Was driven; all those who had grown old in power
Or misery,—all who have their age subdued,
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;
125All those whose fame or infamy must grow
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of their green earth with them forever low;
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
130 As they had touched the world with living flame
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
Were there; for they of Athens and Jerusalem
135Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
Or fled before … Swift, fierce and obscene
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
140 Outspeed the chariot and without repose
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music … Wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
145Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair,
And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
150 As their feet twinkle; now recede, and now
Bending within each other’s atmosphere
Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to new bright destruction come and go,
155Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain—the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps … the shock still may tingle—
One falls and then another in the path
160 Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean’s wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore.—Behind,
165Old men and women foully disarrayed
Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
Grasp in the dance and strain with limbs decayed
To reach the car of light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
170 But not the less with impotence of will
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work and to the dust w
hence they arose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie
175And frost in these performs what fire in those.
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said, ‘And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? and why’—
I would have added—‘is all here amiss?’
180 But a voice answered … ‘Life’ … I turned and knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
185And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
Were or had been eyes.—‘If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,’
190 Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
‘I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn.
‘If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
195Follow it thou even to the night, but I
Am weary’ … Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
‘First who art thou?’ … ‘Before thy memory
200 ‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, and died,
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
‘Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau—nor this disguise
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