by Thomas Moore
The Wreath’s of brightest myrtle wove,
With sunlit drops of bliss among it,
And many a rose-leaf, culled by Love,
To heal his lip when bees have stung it.
Come, tell me which the tie shall be,
To bind thy gentle heart to me.
Yes, yes, I read that ready eye,
Which answers when the tongue is loath,
Thou likest the form of either tie,
And spreadest thy playful hands for both.
Ah! — if there were not something wrong,
The world would see them blended oft;
The Chain would make the Wreath so strong!
The Wreath would make the Chain so soft!
Then might the gold, the flowerets be
Sweet fetters for my love and me.
But, Fanny, so unblest they twine,
That (heaven alone can tell the reason)
When mingled thus they cease to shine,
Or shine but for a transient season.
Whether the Chain may press too much,
Or that the Wreath is slightly braided,
Let but the gold the flowerets touch,
And all their bloom, their glow is faded!
Oh! better to be always free.
Than thus to bind my love to me.
* * * * *
The timid girl now hung her head,
And, as she turned an upward glance,
I saw a doubt its twilight spread
Across her brow’s divine expanse
Just then, the garland’s brightest rose
Gave one of its love-breathing sighs —
Oh! who can ask how Fanny chose,
That ever looked in Fanny’s eyes!
“The Wreath, my life, the Wreath shall be
“The tie to bind my soul to thee.”
TO ——
And hast thou marked the pensive shade,
That many a time obscures my brow,
Midst all the joys, beloved maid.
Which thou canst give, and only thou?
Oh! ’tis not that I then forget
The bright looks that before me shine;
For never throbbed a bosom yet
Could feel their witchery, like mine.
When bashful on my bosom hid,
And blushing to have felt so blest,
Thou dost but lift thy languid lid
Again to close it on my breast; —
Yes, — these are minutes all thine own,
Thine own to give, and mine to feel;
Yet even in them, my heart has known
The sigh to rise, the tear to steal.
For I have thought of former hours,
When he who first thy soul possest,
Like me awaked its witching powers,
Like me was loved, like me was blest.
Upon his name thy murmuring tongue
Perhaps hath all as sweetly dwelt;
Upon his words thine ear hath hung,
With transport all as purely felt.
For him — yet why the past recall,
To damp and wither present bliss?
Thou’rt now my own, heart, spirit, all,
And heaven could grant no more than this!
Forgive me, dearest, oh! forgive;
I would be first, be sole to thee,
Thou shouldst have but begun to live,
The hour that gave thy heart to me.
Thy book of life till then effaced,
Love should have kept that leaf alone
On which he first so brightly traced
That thou wert, soul and all, my own.
TO — — ‘S PICTURE.
Go then, if she, whose shade thou art,
No more will let thee soothe my pain;
Yet, tell her, it has cost this heart
Some pangs, to give thee back again.
Tell her, the smile was not so dear,
With which she made the semblance mine,
As bitter is the burning tear,
With which I now the gift resign.
Yet go — and could she still restore,
As some exchange for taking thee.
The tranquil look which first I wore,
When her eyes found me calm and free;
Could she give back the careless flow,
The spirit that my heart then knew —
Yet, no, ’tis vain — go, picture, go —
Smile at me once, and then — adieu!
FRAGMENT OF A MYTHOLOGICAL HYMN TO LOVE.1
Blest infant of eternity!
Before the day-star learned to move,
In pomp of fire, along his grand career,
Glancing the beamy shafts of light
From his rich quiver to the farthest sphere,
Thou wert alone, oh Love!
Nestling beneath the wings of ancient Night,
Whose horrors seemed to smile in shadowing thee.
No form of beauty soothed thine eye,
As through the dim expanse it wandered wide;
No kindred spirit caught thy sigh,
As o’er the watery waste it lingering died.
Unfelt the pulse, unknown the power,
That latent in his heart was sleeping, —
Oh Sympathy! that lonely hour
Saw Love himself thy absence weeping.
But look, what glory through the darkness beams!
Celestial airs along the water glide: —
What Spirit art thou, moving o’er the tide
So beautiful? oh, not of earth,
But, in that glowing hour, the birth
Of the young Godhead’s own creative dreams.
’Tis she!
Psyche, the firstborn spirit of the air.
To thee, oh Love, she turns,
On thee her eyebeam burns:
Blest hour, before all worlds ordained to be!
They meet —
The blooming god — the spirit fair
Meet in communion sweet.
Now, Sympathy, the hour is thine;
All Nature feels the thrill divine,
The veil of Chaos is withdrawn,
And their first kiss is great Creation’s dawn!
1 Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timaeus held Form to be the father, and Matter the mother of the World.
TO HIS SERENE HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF MONTPENSIER ON HIS PORTRAIT OF THE LADY ADELAIDE FORBES.
Donington Park, 1802
To catch the thought, by painting’s spell,
Howe’er remote, howe’er refined,
And o’er the kindling canvas tell
The silent story of the mind;
O’er nature’s form to glance the eye,
And fix, by mimic light and shade,
Her morning tinges ere they fly,
Her evening blushes, ere they fade;
Yes, these are Painting’s proudest powers,
The gift, by which her art divine
Above all others proudly towers, —
And these, oh Prince! are richly thine.
And yet, when Friendship sees thee trace,
In almost living truth exprest,
This bright memorial of a face
On which her eye delights to rest;
While o’er the lovely look serene,
The smile of peace, the bloom of youth,
The cheek, that blushes to be seen.
The eye that tells the bosom’s truth;
While o’er each line, so brightly true,
Our eyes with lingering pleasure rove,
Blessing the touch whose various hue
Thus brings to mind the form we love;
We feel the magic of thy art,
And own it with a zest, a zeal,
A pleasure, nearer to the
heart
Than critic taste can ever feel.
THE FALL OF HEBE.
A DITHYRAMBIC ODE.
’Twas on a day
When the immortals at their banquet lay;
The bowl
Sparkled with starry dew,
The weeping of those myriad urns of light,
Within whose orbs, the Almighty Power,
At nature’s dawning hour,
Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul.
Around,
Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
From eastern isles
(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,
And with rich fragrance all their bosoms filled).
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o’er the board distilled.
All, all was luxury!
All must be luxury, where Lyaeus smiles.
His locks divine
Were crowned
With a bright meteor-braid,
Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,
Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,
And o’er his brow in lambent tendrils played:
While mid the foliage hung,
Like lucid grapes,
A thousand clustering buds of light,
Culled from the garden of the galaxy.
Upon his bosom Cytherea’s head
Lay lovely, as when first the Syrens sung
Her beauty’s dawn,
And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,
Revealed her sleeping in its azure bed.
The captive deity
Hung lingering on her eyes and lip,
With looks of ecstasy.
Now, on his arm,
In blushes she reposed,
And, while he gazed on each bright charm,
To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole.
And now she raised her rosy mouth to sip
The nectared wave
Lyaeus gave,
And from her eyelids, half-way closed,
Sent forth a melting gleam,
Which fell like sun-dew in the bowl:
While her bright hair, in mazy flow
Of gold descending
Adown her cheek’s luxurious glow,
Hung o’er the goblet’s side,
And was reflected in its crystal tide,
Like a bright crocus flower,
Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour
With roses of Cyrene blending,1
Hang o’er the mirror of some silvery stream.
The Olympian cup
Shone in the hands
Of dimpled Hebe, as she winged her feet
Up
The empyreal mount,
To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount;2
And still
As the resplendent rill
Gushed forth into the cup with mantling heat,
Her watchful care
Was still to cool its liquid fire
With snow-white sprinklings of that feathery air
The children of the Pole respire,
In those enchanted lands.3
Where life is all a spring, and
north winds never blow.
But oh!
Bright Hebe, what a tear,
And what a blush were thine,
When, as the breath of every Grace
Wafted thy feet along the studded sphere,
With a bright cup for Jove himself to drink,
Some star, that shone beneath thy tread,
Raising its amorous head
To kiss those matchless feet,
Checked thy career too fleet,
And all heaven’s host of eyes
Entranced, but fearful all,
Saw thee, sweet Hebe, prostrate fall
Upon the bright floor of the azure skies;
Where, mid its stars, thy beauty lay,
As blossom, shaken from the spray
Of a spring thorn,
Lies mid the liquid sparkles of the morn.
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The worshippers of Beauty’s queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid
Upon a diamond shrine.
The wanton wind,
Which had pursued the flying fair,
And sported mid the tresses unconfined
Of her bright hair,
Now, as she fell, — oh wanton breeze!
Ruffled the robe, whose graceful flow
Hung o’er those limbs of unsunned snow,
Purely as the Eleusinian veil
Hangs o’er the Mysteries!
The brow of Juno flushed —
Love blest the breeze!
The Muses blushed;
And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,
While every eye looked laughing through the strings.
But the bright cup? the nectared draught
Which Jove himself was to have quaffed?
Alas, alas, upturned it lay
By the fallen Hebe’s side;
While, in slow lingering drops, the ethereal tide,
As conscious of its own rich essence, ebbed away.
Who was the Spirit that remembered Man,
In that blest hour,
And, with a wing of love,
Brushed off the goblet’s scattered tears,
As, trembling near the edge of heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?
Essence of immortality!
The shower
Fell glowing through the spheres;
While all around new tints of bliss,
New odors and new light,
Enriched its radiant flow.
Now, with a liquid kiss,
It stole along the thrilling wire
Of Heaven’s luminous Lyre,
Stealing the soul of music in its flight:
And now, amid the breezes bland,
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fanned
By all their sighs, meandering stole.
They who, from Atlas’ height,
Beheld this rosy flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought ’twas some planet, whose empyreal frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved
Into a flood so bright!
The youthful Day,
Within his twilight bower,
Lay sweetly sleeping
On the flushed bosom of a lotos-flower;4
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropt the celestial shower,
Steeping
The rosy clouds, that curled
About his infant head,
Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed.
But, when the waking boy
Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!
The tide divine,
All glorious with the vermil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distilled, in dews, upon the world,
And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!
Blest be the sod, and blest the flower
On which descended first that shower,
All fresh from Jove’s nectareous springs; —
Oh far less sweet the flower, the sod,
O’er which the Spirit of the Rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar God!5
1 We learn from Theopbrastus, that the roses of Cyrene were particularly fragrant.
2 Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar essence.
3 The country of the Hyperboreans. These people were supposed to be placed so far north that the north wind could not affect them; they lived longer than any other mortals; passed their whole time in music and dancing, etc.
4 The Egyptians represented
the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating this flower to Osiris, or the sun.
5 The ancients esteemed those flowers and trees the sweetest upon which the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in sacrifices, was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated.
RINGS AND SEALS.
“Go!” said the angry, weeping maid,
“The charm is broken! — once betrayed,
“Never can this wronged heart rely
“On word or look, on oath or sigh.
“Take back the gifts, so fondly given,
“With promised faith and vows to heaven;
“That little ring which, night and morn,
“With wedded truth my hand hath worn;
“That seal which oft, in moments blest,
“Thou hast upon my lip imprest,
“And sworn its sacred spring should be
“A fountain sealed1 for only thee:
“Take, take them back, the gift and vow,
“All sullied, lost and hateful now!”
I took the ring — the seal I took,
While, oh, her every tear and look
Were such as angels look and shed,
When man is by the world misled.
Gently I whispered, “Fanny, dear!
“Not half thy lover’s gifts are here:
“Say, where are all the kisses given,
“From morn to noon, from noon to even, —
“Those signets of true love, worth more
“Than Solomon’s own seal of yore, —
“Where are those gifts, so sweet, so many?
“Come, dearest, — give back all, if any.”
While thus I whispered, trembling too,
Lest all the nymph had sworn was true,
I saw a smile relenting rise
Mid the moist azure of her eyes,
Like daylight o’er a sea of blue,
While yet in mid-air hangs the dew
She let her cheek repose on mine,
She let my arms around her twine;
One kiss was half allowed, and then —
The ring and seal were hers again.
1 “There are gardens, supposed to be those of King Solomon, in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. The friars show a fountain, which, they say, is the sealed fountain, to which the holy spouse in the Canticles is compared; and they pretend a tradition, that Solomon shut up these springs and put his signet upon the door, to keep them for his own drinking.” — Maundrell’s Travels.
TO MISS SUSAN BECKFORD.1
ON HER SINGING.
I more than once have heard at night
A song like those thy lip hath given,
And it was sung by shapes of light,