Appeared to my half-closing eye
The pageantry of monarchy,
And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar
Came hurriedly upon me, telling
Of human battle, where my voice,
My own voice, silly child! - was swelling
(O! how my spirit would rejoice,
And leap within me at the cry)
The battle-cry of Victory!
The rain came down upon my head
Unshelter'd - and the heavy wind
Was giantlike - so thou, my mind! -
It was but man, I thought, who shed
Laurels upon me: and the rush -
The torrent of the chilly air
Gurgled within my ear the crush
Of empires - with the captive's prayer -
The hum of suiters - and the tone
Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne.
My passions, from that hapless hour,
Usurp'd a tyranny which men
Have deem'd, since I have reach'd to power;
My innate nature - be it so:
But, father, there liv'd one who, then,
Then - in my boyhood - when their fire
Burn'd with a still intenser glow,
(For passion must, with youth, expire)
E'en _then_ who knew this iron heart
In woman's weakness had a part.
I have no words - alas! - to tell
The loveliness of loving well!
Nor would I now attempt to trace
The more than beauty of a face
Whose lineaments, upon my mind,
Are -- shadows on th' unstable wind:
Thus I remember having dwelt
Some page of early lore upon,
With loitering eye, till I have felt
The letters - with their meaning - melt
To fantasies - with none.
O, she was worthy of all love!
Love - as in infancy was mine -
'Twas such as angel minds above
Might envy; her young heart the shrine
On which my ev'ry hope and thought
Were incense - then a goodly gift,
For they were childish - and upright -
Pure -- as her young example taught:
Why did I leave it, and, adrift,
Trust to the fire within, for light?
We grew in age - and love - together,
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather -
And, when the friendly sunshine smil'd,
And she would mark the opening skies,
_I_ saw no Heaven - but in her eyes.
Young Love's first lesson is -- the heart:
For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
When, from our little cares apart,
And laughing at her girlish wiles,
I'd throw me on her throbbing breast,
And pour my spirit out in tears -
There was no need to speak the rest -
No need to quiet any fears
Of her - who ask'd no reason why,
But turn'd on me her quiet eye!
Yet _more_ than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove,
When, on the mountain peak, alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone -
I had no being - but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth - the air - the sea -
Its joy - its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure -- the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night -
And dimmer nothings which were real -
(Shadows - and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image, and - a name - a name!
Two separate - yet most intimate things.
I was ambitious - have you known
The passion, father? You have not:
A cottager, I mark'd a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmur'd at such lowly lot -
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapour of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro'
The minute - the hour - the day - oppress
My mind with double loveliness.
We walk'd together on the crown
Of a high mountain which look'd down
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills -
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.
I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically - in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment's converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly -
A mingled feeling with my own -
The flush on her bright cheek, to me
Seem'd to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.
I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then,
And donn'd a visionary crown --
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me -
But that, among the rabble - men,
Lion ambition is chain'd down -
And crouches to a keeper's hand -
Not so in deserts where the grand
The wild - the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.
Look 'round thee now on Samarcand! -
Is not she queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling - her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne -
And who her sovereign? Timour - he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily
A diadem'd outlaw -
O! human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc wither'd plain,
And failing in thy power to bless
But leav'st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth -
Farewell! for I have won the Earth!
When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly -
And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye.
'Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist,
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, _would_ fly
But _cannot_ from a danger nigh.
What tho' the moon - the white moon
Shed all the splendour of her noon,
Her smile is chilly - and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one --
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown -
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty - which is all.
I reach'd my home - my home no more -
; For all had flown who made it so -
I pass'd from out its mossy door,
And, tho' my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known -
O! I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
A humbler heart - a deeper wo -
Father, I firmly do believe -
I _know_ - for Death, who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro' Eternity --
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in ev'ry human path -
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trelliced rays from Heaven
No mote may shun - no tiniest fly
The light'ning of his eagle eye -
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love's very hair?
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
TO HELEN
HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I me thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-land !
1831.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
THE VALLEY OF UNREST
_Once_ it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
_Now_ each visiter shall confess
The sad valley's restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless -
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye -
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave: - from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep: - from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.
1831.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
ISRAFEL*
IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute;"
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven
And they say (the starry choir
And all the listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings -
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
* And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lut, and who has the
sweetest voice of all God's creatures. - KORAN.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty -
Where Love's a grown up God -
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassion'd song:
To thee the laurels belong
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The extacies above
With thy burning measures suit -
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
1836.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
TO - -
1
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds
Are lips - and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words -
2
Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd
Then desolately fall,
O! God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall -
3
Thy heart - _thy_ heart! - I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of truth that gold can never buy -
Of the trifles that it may.
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
TO ---
I HEED not that my earthly lot
Hath-little of Earth in it--
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:--
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.
1829.
======
TO THE RIVER ----
FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty - the unhidden heart -
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;
But when within thy wave she looks -
Which glistens then, and trembles -
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in my heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies -
His heart which trembles at the beam
Of her soul-searching eyes.
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
SONG
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I SAW thee on thy bridal day -
When a burning blush came o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay
,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame -
As such it well may pass -
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush _would_ come o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
1827.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
1
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone -
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:
2
Be silent in that solitude
Which is not loneliness - for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee - and their will
Shall then overshadow thee: be still.
3
For the night - tho' clear - shall frown -
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given -
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever :
4
Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish -
Now are visions ne'er to vanish -
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more - like dew-drop from the grass:
5
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 173