Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

  Be mine to look forth on thy boundless array;

  Alone to look forth on thy vast-rolling glory,

  And hear the deep lessons thy thunders convey.

  But hope softly whispers, on moon-beams descending

  Despond not, oh mortal! thy sorrows are vain:

  X.

  The heart, which misfortune and absence are rending,

  Love, friendship, and home shall enrapture again.

  Though the night-billows rave to the tempest’s commotion.

  In the mild breath of morning their fury shall cease;

  And the vessel, long tossed on the storm-troubled ocean,

  Shall furl her torn sails in the harbour of peace.

  INSCRIPTION FOR A MOUNTAIN-DELL.

  [Published in 1812.]

  I.

  WHOE’ER thou art, by love of nature led

  These cloud-capped rocks and pathless heights to climb!

  Approach this dell with reverential dread,

  Where, bosomed deep in solitudes sublime,

  Repose the secrets of primeval time.

  But if thy mind degenerate cares degrade,

  Or sordid hopes convulse, or conscious crime,

  Fly to the sunless glen’s more genial shade,

  Nor with unhallowed steps this haunted ground invade.

  II.

  Here sleeps a bard of long-forgotten years:

  Nameless he sleeps, to all the world unknown:

  His humble praise no proud memorial bears:

  Remote from man, he lived and died alone.

  Placed by no earthly hand, one mossy stone

  Yet marks the sod where his cold ashes lie.

  Across that sod one lonely oak has thrown

  Its tempest-shattered branches, old and dry;

  And one perennial stream runs lightly-murmuring by.

  III.

  He loved this dell, a solitary child,

  And placed that oak, an acorn, in the sod:

  And here, full oft, in hermit-visions wild,

  In scenes by every other step untrod,

  With nature he conversed, and nature’s god.

  He fled from superstition’s murderous fane,

  And shunned the slaves of Circe’s baleful rod,

  The mean, malignant, mercenary train,

  That feed at Moloch’s shrine the unholy fires of gain.

  IV.

  The stream, that murmured by his favourite stone,

  The breeze, that rustled through his youthful tree,

  To fancy sung, in sweetly-mingled tone,

  Of future joys, which fate forbade to be.

  False as the calm of summer’s treacherous sea

  Is beauty’s smile, in magic radiance drest.

  Far from that fatal shore, fond wanderer, flee!

  Rocks lurk beneath the ocean’s limpid breast,

  And, deep in caves of night, storms darkly-brooding rest.

  V.

  Love poured the storm that wrecked his youthful prime:

  Beneath his favourite tree his bones were laid:

  Through rolling ages towered its strength sublime,

  Ordained, unseen, to flourish and to fade.

  Its mossy boughs, now sapless and decayed,

  Fall in the blast, and moulder in the shower:

  Yet be the stately wreck with awe surveyed,

  Sad monument of time’s unsparing power,

  That shakes the marble dome, and adamantine tower.

  VI.

  Such was the oak, from whose prophetic shell

  Breathed the primeval oracles of Greece:

  And here, perhaps, his gentle shade may dwell,

  Diffusing tenderness and heavenly peace,

  Of power to bid the rage of passion cease,

  When some fond youth, capricious beauty’s slave,

  Seeking from care in solitude release,

  Shall sit upon the minstrel’s lonely grave,

  And hear through withered loughs the mountain-breezes rave.

  NECESSITY.

  [Written after 1811.]

  STROPHE.

  MY steps have pressed the flowers,

  That to the Muses bowers

  The eternal dews of Helicon have given:

  And trod the mountain height,

  Where Science, young and bright,

  Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven;

  Yet have I found no power to vie

  With thine, severe Necessity!

  No counteracting spell sublime,

  By Orpheus, breathed in elder time,

  The tablets of initiate Thrace contain:

  No drug imbued with strength divine,

  To sons of Æsculapian line,

  By pitying Phoebus taught, to soothe the stings of pain..

  ANTISTROPHE.

  Thee, goddess, thee alone

  None seek with suppliant moan:

  No votive wreaths thine iron altars dress:

  Immutably severe,

  The song thou dost not hear,

  That speaks the plaint of mortal wretchedness.

  Oh, may I ne’er more keenly feel

  Thy power, that breaks the strength of steel,

  With whose dread course concordant still

  Jove executes his sovereign will:

  Vain were his might, unseconded by thee.

  Regret or shame thou canst not know;

  Nor pity for terrestrial woe

  Can check thy onward course, or change thy stern decree.

  EPODE.

  And thou, in patience bear thy doom,

  Beneath her heaviest bonds opprest:

  Tears cannot hurst the marble tomb,

  Where e’en the sons of gods must rest.

  In life, in death, most loved, most blest,

  Was she for whom our fruitless tears are shed;

  And round her cold sepulchral bed,

  Unlike the tombs of the promiscuous dead,

  Wreaths of eternal fame shall spread,

  By matchless virtue merited.

  There oft the traveller from his path shall turn,

  To grace with holy rites her funeral urn,

  And muse beneath the lonely cypress shade,

  That waves, in silent gloom, where her remains are laid.

  YOUTH AND AGE.

  [Written after 1811.]

  TO me the hours of youth are dear,

  In transient light that flow:

  But age is heavy, cold, and drear,

  As winter’s rocks of snow.

  Already on my brows I feel

  His grasp of ice and fangs of steel,

  Dimming the visual radiance pale,

  That soon eternal night shall veil.

  Oh! not for all the gold that flings,

  Through domes of oriental kings,

  Its mingled splendour, falsely bright,

  Would I resign youth’s lovelier light.

  For whether wealth its path illume,

  Or toil and poverty depress,

  The days of youth are days of bloom,

  And health, and hope, and loveliness.

  Oh! were the ruthless demon, Age,

  Involved by Jove’s tempestuous rage,

  And fast and far to ruin driven,

  Beyond the flaming bounds of heaven,

  Or whelmed where arctic winter broods

  O’er Ocean’s frozen solitudes,

  So never more to haunt again

  The cities and the homes of men.

  Yet, were the gods the friends of worth,

  Of justice, and of truth,

  The virtuous and the wise on earth

  Should find a second youth.

  Then would true glory shine unfurled,

  A light to guide and guard the world,

  If, not in vain with time at strife,

  The good twice ran the race of life,

  While vice, to one brief course confined,

  Should wake no more to curse mankind.

&n
bsp; Experience then might rightly trace

  The lines that part the good and base,

  As sailors read the stars of night,

  Where shoreless billows murmuring roll,

  And guide by their unerring light

  The vessel to its distant goal.

  But, since no signs from Jove declare

  That earthly virtue claims his care;

  Since folly, vice, and falsehood prove

  As many marks of heavenly love;

  The life of man in darkness flies;

  The thirst of truth and wisdom dies;

  And love and beauty bow the knee

  To gold’s supreme divinity.

  PHŒDRA AND NURSE.

  From EURIPIDES: Hippolytus.

  NURSE.

  OH, ills of life! relentless train

  Of sickness, tears, and wasting pain!

  Where shall I turn? what succour claim.

  To warm with health thy failing frame?

  Thy couch, by which so long we mourn,

  Forth from the palace doors is home:

  Turn on these scenes thy languid sight,

  That breathe of life, and smile in light,

  But now thy every wish was given

  To draw the ethereal heirs of heaven:

  Soon will thy fancy’s wandering train

  Recall the chambers gloom again,

  Charmless all present objects seem:

  The absent fill thy feverish dream:

  Thy half-formed thoughts new thoughts destroy,.

  Nor leave one transient pause of joy.

  Yet better feel the sharpest pains,

  That rend the nerves, and scorch the veins,

  Than the long watch of misery prove

  By the sick couch of those we love.

  In the worst pangs of sickness known,

  Corporeal sufferance reigns alone;

  The double pangs our vigils share

  Of manual toil and mental care.

  The days of man in misery flow:

  No rest from toil and tears we know;

  The happier slumbers of the tomb

  Are wrapped in clouds, and veiled in gloom,

  And hence our abject spirits shrink

  From pressing that oblivious brink,

  Still fondly lingering to survey

  The radiance of terrestrial day,

  Through fear that fate’s unpitying breath

  May burst the deep repose of death,

  And ignorance of those paths of dread

  Which no returning step may tread.

  We trace the mystic legends old

  That many a dreaming bard has told,

  And hear, half-doubting, half-deceived,

  The songs our simpler sires believed.

  PHŒDRA.

  Give me your hands. My strength has fled.

  Uplift my frame. Support my head.

  Unclasp the bands that bind my hair,

  A weight I have not power to bear,

  And let my loosened tresses flow

  Freely on all the winds that blow.

  NURSE.

  My child, let hope thy bosom warm:

  Convulse not thus thy sickly form:

  Thy mind let tranquil virtue steel

  To bear the ills that all must feel,

  Since human wisdom shuns in vain

  The sad necessity of pain.

  PHŒDRA.

  Oh, place me on some flowery glade,

  Beneath the poplar’s murmuring shade,

  Where many a dewy fountain flings

  The treasures of its crystal springs.

  There let me draw, in transient rest,

  A draught to cool my burning breast.

  NURSE.

  Alas! what words are these, my child?

  Oh breathe not strains so sadly wild,

  That seem with frenzy’s tint imbued,

  Before the listening multitude.

  PHŒDRA.

  Oh! bear me to those heights divine,

  Where wild winds bend the mountain pine,

  Where, to the dog’s melodious cry,

  The rocks and caverned glens reply.

  By heaven, I long to grasp the spear,

  Hang on the track of flying deer,

  Shout to the dogs, as fast we sweep

  Tumultuous down the sylvan steep,

  And hurl along the tainted air

  The javelin from my streaming hair.

  NURSE.

  Alas! what may these visions be?

  What are the dogs and woods to thee?

  Why is it thus thy fancy roves

  To lonely springs and cypress groves,

  When here the hanging rock distils

  Its everlasting crystal rills?

  PHŒDRA.

  Goddess of Limna’s sandy bounds,

  Where many a courser’s hoof resounds;

  Would I were on thy field of fame,

  Conspicuous in the equestrian game.

  NURSE.

  Still from thy lips such strains depart

  As thrill with pain my aged heart.

  How on the mountain heights afar

  You long to urge the sylvan war;

  How, on the billow-bordering sand,

  To guide the rein with desperate hand.

  What gifted mind’s mysterious skill

  Shall say whence springs thy secret ill!

  For sure some god’s malignant sway

  Turns thee from reason’s paths away.

  PHŒDRA.

  Where has my darkened fancy strayed?

  What has my rash delirium said?

  How lost, alas! how fallen am I,

  Beneath some adverse deity!

  Nurse, veil my head. The dream is past;

  My mournful eyes on earth I cast:

  The thoughts I breathed my memory rend,

  And tears of grief and shame descend.

  Sad is the change, when reason’s light

  Bursts on the waste of mental night.

  Severe the pangs of frenzy’s hour:

  But, when we feel its scorpion power,

  Oh, might the illusion never fly!

  For ‘twere some blessing so to die,

  Ere yet returning sense could show

  The dire reality of woe.

  NURSE.

  I veil thee: when shall death so spread

  His veil around my weary head?

  Truths, oft by sages sought in vain,

  Long life and sad experience gain.

  Let not the children of mankind

  Affection’s bonds too closely bind,

  But let the heart unshackled prove

  The links of dissoluble love.

  Loose be those links, and lightly held;

  With ease compressed, with ease repelled;

  More tender ties the health destroy,

  And bring long grief for transient joy.

  Ill may one feeble spirit bear,

  When double feelings claim its care,

  The pangs that in the heart concur,

  Such pangs as now I feel for her.

  For love, like riches, in excess,

  Has more the power to curse than bless:

  And wisdom turns from passion’s strife,

  To seek the golden mean of life.

  CHORAL ODE TO LOVE.

  [Written after 1812.]

  I.

  OH love! oh love! whose shafts of fire

  Invade the soul with sweet surprise,

  Through the soft dews of young desire

  Trembling in beauty’s azure eyes!

  Condemn not me the pangs to share

  Thy too impassioned votaries hear,

  That on the mind their stamp impress,

  Indelible and measureless: —

  For not the sun’s descending dart,

  Nor yet the lightning brand of Jove,

  Fall like the shaft that strikes the heart,

  Thrown by the mightier hand of love.

 
II.

  Oh! vainly, where, by Letrian plains,

  Tow’rd Dian’s dome Alphëus bends,

  And from Apollo’s Pythian fanes,

  The steam of hecatombs ascends;

  While not to love our altars blaze;

  To love, whose tyrant power arrays

  Against mankind each form of woe

  That hopeless anguish bleeds to know:

  To love who keeps the golden key,

  That, when more favoured lips implore,

  Unlocks the sacred mystery

  Of youthful beauty’s bridal door.

  III.

  Alas! round love’s despotic power,

  Their brands what forms of terror wave!

  The OEchalian maid in evil hour,

  Venus to greet Alcides gave.

  As yet in passion’s love unread,

  Unconscious of connubial ties,

  She saw around her bridal bed

  Her native city’s flames arise.

  All hapless maid! mid kindred gore

  Whose nuptial torch the Furies bore!

  To him consigned, an ill-starred bride,

  By whom her sire and brethren died.

  IV.

  Oh towers of Thebes! oh sacred flow

  Of mystic Dirce’s fountain tides!

  Say in what shapes of fear and woe

  Love through his victim’s bosom glides?

  She, who to heaven’s imperial sire

  The care-dispelling Bacchus bore,

  ‘Mid thunder and celestial fire

  Embraced, and slept, to wake no more.

  Too powerful love, inspiring still

  The dangerous risk, the frantic will,

  Bears like the bee’s mellifluous wing,

  A transient sweet, a lasting sting.

  CONNUBIAL EQUALITY.

  From ÆSCHYLUS: Prometheus

  [Written in 1812.]

  OH! wise was he, the first who taught

  This lesson of observant thought,

  That equal fates alone may bless

  The bowers of nuptial happiness;

  That never where ancestral pride

  Inflames, or affluence rolls its tide,

  Should love’s ill-omened bonds entwine

  The offspring of an humbler line.

  AL MIO PRIMIERO AMORE.

  [Written in 1813.]

  I.

  TO many a shrine my steps have strayed,

  Ne’er from their earliest fetters free:

  And I have sighed to many a maid,

  Though I have never loved but thee,

  II.

  Youth’s visioned scenes, too bright to last,

  Have vanished to return no more:

  Yet memory loves to trace the past,

  Which only memory can restore.