To thraldom bow not tamed;
My every wish on earth was thine,
My every hope the same.
And I have moved within thy sphere,
And lived within thy light;
And oh! thou wert to me so dear,
I breathed but in thy sight!
A subject world I lost for thee,
For thou wert all my world to me!
Then when the shriekings of the dying
Were heard along the wave,
Soul of my soul! I saw thee flying;
I follow’d thee, to save.
The thunder of the brazen prows
O’er Actium’s ocean rung;
Fame’s garland faded from my brows,
Her wreath away I flung.
I sought, I saw, I heard but thee:
For what to love was victory?
Thine on the earth, and on the throne,
And in the grave, am I;
And, dying, still I am thine own,
Thy bleeding Antony.
How shall my spirit joy to hear
That thou art ever true!
Nay — weep not — dry that burning tear,
That bathes thine eyes’ dark hue.
Shades of my fathers! lo! I come;
I hear your voices from the tomb!
I WANDER IN DARKNESS AND SORROW.
I WANDER in darkness and sorrow,
Unfriended, and cold, and alone,
As dismally gurgles beside me
The bleak river’s desolate moan.
The rise of the volleying thunder
The mountain’s lone echoes repeat:
The roar of the wind is around me,
The leaves of the year at my feet.
I wander in darkness and sorrow,
Uncheer’d by the moon’s placid ray;
Not a friend that I lov’d but is dead,
Not a hope but has faded away!
Oh! when shall I rest in the tomb,
Wrapt about with the chill winding-sheet?
For the roar of the wind is around me,
The leaves of the year at my feet.
I heed not the blasts that sweep o’er me,
I blame not the tempests of night;
They are not the foes who have banish’d
The visions of youthful delight:
I hail the wild sound of their raving,
Their merciless presence I greet,
Though the roar of the wind be around me,
The leaves of the year at my feet.
In this waste of existence, for solace,
On whom shall my lone spirit call?
Shall I fly to the friends of my bosom?
My God! I have buried them all!
They are dead, they are gone, they are cold,
My embraces no longer they meet;
Let the roar of the wind be around me,
The leaves of the year at my feet!
Those eyes that glanced love unto mine,
With motionless slumbers are prest;
Those hearts which once throbb’d but for me,
Are chill as the earth where they rest.
Then around on my wan wither’d form
Let the pitiless hurricanes beat;
Let the roar of the wind be around me,
The leaves of the year at my feet!
Like the voice of the owl in the hall,
Where the song and the banquet have ceased,
Where the green leaves have mantled the hearth
Whence arose the proud flame of the feast;
So I cry to the storm, whose dark wing
Scatters on me the wild-driving sleet —
“Let the roar of the wind be around me,
The fall of the leaves at my feet!”
TO ONE WHOSE HOPE REPOSED ON THEE.
“She’s gone...
She’s sunk, with her my joys entombing! “ — Byron.
To one whose hope reposed on thee,
Whose very life was in thine own,
How deep a wound thy death must be,
And the wild thought that thou art gone!
Oh! must the earth-born reptiles prey
Upon that cheek of late so blooming?
Alas! this heart must wear away
Long ere that cheek they’ve done consuming!
For hire the sexton toll’d thy bell —
But why should he receive a meed
Who work’d at least no mortal’s weal,
And made one lonely bosom bleed?
For hire with ready mould he stood —
But why should gain his care repay
Who told, as harshly as he could,
That all I loved was past away?
For, sure, it was too rude a blow
For Misery’s ever-wakeful ear,
To cast the earth with sudden throw
Upon the grave of one so dear:
For aye these bitter tears must swell,
Tho’ the sad scene is past and gone;
And still I hear the tolling bell,
For Memory makes each sense her own.
But stay, my soul! thy plaint forbear,
And be thy murmuring song forgiven!
Tread but the path of Virtue here,
And thou shalt meet with her in heaven!
THE OLD SWORD.
OLD Sword! tho’ dim and rusted
Be now thy sheeny blade,
Thy glitt’ring edge encrusted
With cankers Time hath made;
Yet once around thee swell’d the cry
Of triumph’s fierce delight,
The shoutings of the victory,
The thunders of the fight!
Tho’ age hath past upon thee
With still corroding breath,
Yet once stream’d redly on thee
The purpling tide of death:
What time amid the war of foes
The dastard’s cheek grew pale,
As through the feudal field arose
The ringing of the mail.
Old Sword! what arm hath wielded
Thy richly gleaming brand,
‘Mid lordly forms who shielded
The maidens of their land?
And who hath clov’n his foes in wrath
With thy puissant fire,
And scatter’d in his perilous path
The victims of his ire?
Old Sword! whose fingers clasp’d thee
Around thy carvéd hilt?
And with that hand which grasp’d thee
What heroes’ blood was spilt;
When fearlessly, with open hearts,
And lance to lance opposed,
Beneath the shade of barbed darts
The dark-eyed warriors closed?
Old Sword! I would not burnish
Thy venerable rust, —
Nor sweep away the tarnish
Of darkness and of dust!
Lie there, in slow and still decay,
Unfamed in olden rhyme,
The relic of a former day,
A wreck of ancient time!
THE GONDOLA.
“‘Tis sweet to hear
At midnight, o’er the blue and moonlit deep,
The song and oar of Adria’s gondolier.”
Don Juan.
O’ER ocean’s curling surges borne along,
Arion sung — the dolphin caught the strain,
As soft the mellow’d accents of his tongue
Stole o’er the surface of the watery plain.
And do those silver sounds, so deep, so clear,
Possess less magic than Arion’s lay?
Swell they less boldly on the ravish’d ear,
Or with less cadence do they die away?
Yon gondola, that skims the moonlight sea,
Yields me those notes more wild than Houri’s lyre,
That, as they rise, exalt to ecstasy,
And draw the tear as, length’ning, they expire.
An arch of pures
t azure beams above,
A sea, as blue, as beauteous, spreads below;
In this voluptuous clime of song and love
What room for sorrow? who shall cherish woe?
False thought! tho’ pleasure wing the careless hours,
Their stores tho’ Cyprus and Arabia send,
Tho’ for the ear their fascinating power
Divine Timotheus and Cecilia blend; —
All without Virtue’s relish fail to please,
Venetian charms the cares of Vice alloy,
Joy’s swiftest, brightest current they can freeze,
And all the genuine sweets of life destroy!
WE MEET NO MORE.
WE meet no more — the die is cast,
The chain is broke that tied us,
Our every hope on earth is past,
And there’s no helm to guide us:
We meet no more — the roaring blast
And angry seas divide us!
And I stand on a distant shore,
The breakers round me swelling;
And lonely thoughts of days gone o’er
Have made this breast their dwelling:
We meet no more — We meet no more:
Farewell for ever, Ellen!
BY AN EXILE OF BASSORAH.
WRITTEN WHILE SAILING DOWN THE EUPHRATES.
THOU land of the lily! thy gay flowers are blooming
In joy on thine hills, but they bloom not for me;
For a dark gulf of woe, all my fond hopes entombing,
Has roll’d its black waves ‘twixt this lone heart and thee.
The far-distant hills, and the groves of my childhood,
Now stream in the light of the sun’s setting ray:
And the tail-waving palms of my own native wildwood
In the blue haze of distance are melting away.
I see thee, Bassorah! in splendour retiring,
Where thy waves and thy walls in their majesty meet;
I see the bright glory thy pinnacles firing,
And the broad vassal river that rolls at thy feet.
see thee but faintly — thy tall towers are beaming
On the dusky horizon so far and so blue;
And minaret and mosque in the distance are gleaming,
While the coast of the stranger expands on my view.
I see thee no more: for the deep waves have parted
The land of my birth from her desolate son;
And I am gone from thee, though half brokenhearted,
To wander thro’ climes where thy name is unknown.
Farewell to my harp, which I hung in my anguish
On the lonely palmetto that nods to the gale;
For its sweet-breathing tones in forgetfulness languish,
And around it the ivy shall weave a green veil.
Farewell to the days which so smoothly have glided
With the maiden whose look was like Cama’s young glance,
And the sheen of whose eyes was the load-star which guided
My course on this earth thro’ the storms of mischance!
MARIA TO HER LUTE, THE GIFT OF HER DYING LOVER.
“O laborum
Dulce lenimen!” — Horace.
I LOVE thee, Lute! my soul is link’d to thee
As by some tie—’tis not a groundless love;
I cannot rouse thy plaintive melody,
And fail its magic influence to prove.
I think I found thee more than ever dear
(If thought can work within this fever’d brain)
Since Edward’s lifeless form was buried here,
And I deplored his hapless fate in vain.
‘Twas then to thee my strange affection grew,
For thou wert his — I’ve heard him wake thy strain:
Oh! if in heaven each other we shall view,
I’ll bid him sweep thy mournful chords again.
would not change thee for the noblest lyre
That ever lent its music to the breeze:
How could Maria taste its note of fire?
How wake a harmony that could not please?
Then, till mine eye shall glaze, and cheek shall fade,
I’ll keep thee, prize thee as my dearest friend;
And oft I’ll hasten to the green-wood shade,
My hours in sweet, tho’ fruitless grief to spend.
For in the tear there is a nameless joy;
The full warm gush relieves the aching soul:
So still, to ease my hopeless agony,
My lute shall warble and my tears shall roll.
THE VALE OF BONES.
“Albis informem — ossibus agrum.” — HORACE.
ALONG yon vapour-mantled sky
The dark-red moon is riding high;
At times her beams in beauty break
Upon the broad and silv’ry lake;
At times more bright they clearly fall
On some white castle’s ruin’d wall;
At times her partial splendour shines
Upon the grove of deep-black pines,
Through which the dreary night-breeze moans,
Above this Vale of scatter’d bones.
The low, dull gale can scarcely stir
The branches of that black’ning fir,
Which betwixt me and heav’n flings wide
Its shadowy boughs on either side,
And o’er yon granite rock uprears
Its giant form of many years.
And the shrill owlet’s desolate wail
Comes to mine ear along the gale,
As, list’ning to its lengthen’d tones,
I dimly pace the Vale of Bones.
Dark Valley I still the same art thou,
Unchanged thy mountain’s cloudy brow;
Still from yon cliffs, that part asunder,
Falls down the torrent’s echoing thunder;
Still from this mound of reeds and rushes
With bubbling sound the fountain gushes;
Thence, winding thro’ the whisp’ring ranks
Of sedges on the willowy banks,
Still brawling, chafes the rugged stones
That strew this dismal Vale of Bones.
Unchanged art thou! no storm hath rent
Thy rude and rocky battlement;
Thy rioting mountains sternly piled,
The screen of nature, wide and wild:
But who were they whose bones bestrew
The heather, cold with midnight dew,
Upon whose slowly-rotting clay
The raven long hath ceased to prey,
But, mould’ring in the moonlight air,
Their wan, white sculls show bleak and bare?
And, aye, the dreary night-breeze moans
Above them in this Vale of Bones!
I knew them all — a gallant band,
The glory of their native land,
And on each lordly brow elate
Sat valour and contempt of fate,
Fierceness of youth, and scorn of foe,
And pride to render blow for blow.
In the strong war’s tumultuous crash
How darkly did their keen eyes flash!
How fearlessly each arm was raised!
How dazzlingly each broad-sword blazed!
Though now the dreary night-breeze moans
Above them in this Vale of Bones.
What lapse of time shall sweep away
The memory of that gallant day,
When on to battle proudly going,
Your plumage to the wild winds blowing,
Your tartans far behind ye flowing,
Your pennons raised, your clarions sounding,
Fiercely your steeds beneath ye bounding,
Ye mix’d the strife of warring foes
In fiery shock and deadly close?
What stampings in the madd’ning strife,
What thrusts, what stabs, with brand and knife,
What desp’rate strokes
for death or life,
Were there! What cries, what thrilling groans,
Re-echoed thro’ the Vale of Bones!
Thou peaceful Vale, whose mountains lonely
Sound to the torrent’s chiding only,
Or wild goat’s cry from rocky ledge,
Or bull-frog from the rustling sedge,
Or eagle from her airy cairn,
Or screaming of the startled hern —
How did thy million echoes waken
Amid thy caverns deeply shaken!
How with the red dew o’er thee rain’d
Thine emerald turf was darkly stain’d!
How did each innocent flower, that sprung
Thy greenly-tangled glades among,
Blush with the big and purple drops
That dribbled from the leafy copse!
I paced the valley, when the yell
Of triumph’s voice had ceased to swell;
When battle’s brazen throat no more
Raised its annihilating roar.
There lay ye on each other piled,
Your brows with noble dust defiled;
There, by the loudly-gushing water,
Lay man and horse in mingled slaughter.
Then wept I not, thrice gallant band;
For though no more each dauntless hand
The thunder of the combat hurl’d,
Yet still with pride your lips were curl’d;
And e’en in death’s o’erwhelming shade
Your fingers linger’d round the blade!
I deem’d, when gazing proudly there
Upon the fix’d and haughty air
That mark’d each warrior’s bloodless face,
Ye would not change the narrow space
Which each cold form of breathless clay
Then cover’d, as on earth ye lay,
For realms, for sceptres, or for thrones —
I dream’d not on this Vale of Bones!
But years have thrown their veil between,
And alter’d is that lonely scene;
And dreadful emblems of thy might,
Stern dissolution! meet my sight:
The eyeless socket, dark and dull,
The hideous grinning of the skull,
Are sights which Memory disowns,
Thou melancholy Vale of Bones!
TO FANCY.
BRIGHT angel of heavenliest birth!
Who dwellest among us unseen,
O’er the gloomiest spot on the earth
There’s a charm where thy footsteps have been.
We feel thy soft sunshine in youth,
While our joys like young blossoms are new;
For oh! thou art sweeter than Truth,
And fairer and lovelier too!
The exile, who mourneth alone,
Is glad in the glow of thy smile,
Tho’ far from the land of his own,
In the ocean’s most desolate isle:
And the captive, who pines in his chain,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 3