All these sounds the river telleth,
Softened to an undertone
Which ever and anon he swelleth
By a burden of his own,
In the ocean’s ear:
Ay, and ocean seems to hear
With an inward gentle scorn,
Smiling to his caverns worn.
II.
Hearken, hearken!
The child is shouting at his play
Just in the tramping funeral’s way;
The widow moans as she turns aside
To shun the face of the blushing bride
While, shaking the tower of the ancient church,
The marriage bells do swing;
And in the shadow of the porch
An idiot sits with his lean hands full
Of hedgerow flowers and a poet’s skull,
Laughing loud and gibbering
Because it is so brown a thing,
While he sticketh the gaudy poppies red
In and out the senseless head
Where all sweet fancies grew instead:
And you may hear at the self-same time.
Another poet who reads his rhyme,
Low as a brook in summer air,
Save when he droppeth his voice adown
To dream of the amaranthine crown
His mortal brows shall wear:
And a baby cries with a feeble sound
‘Neath the weary weight of the life new-found,
And an old man groans, — with his testament
Only half-signed, — for the life that’s spent;
And lovers twain do softly say,
As they sit on a grave, “For aye, for aye!”
And foemen twain, while Earth their mother
Looks greenly upward, curse each other:
A school-boy drones his task, with looks
Cast over the page to the elm-tree rooks;
A lonely student cries aloud
Eureka! clasping at his shroud;
A beldame’s age-cracked voice doth sing
To a little infant slumbering;
A maid forgotten weeps alone,
Muffling her sobs on the trysting-stone;
A sick man wakes at his own mouth’s wail,
A gossip coughs in her thrice-told tale,
A muttering gamester shakes the dice,
A reaper foretells goodluck from the skies,
A monarch vows as he lifts his hand to them;
A patriot, leaving his native land to them,
Cries to the world against perjured state;
A priest disserts
Upon linen skirts,
A sinner screams for one hope more,
A dancer’s feet do palpitate
A piper’s music out on the floor;
And nigh to the awful Dead, the living
Low speech and stealthy steps are giving,
Because he cannot hear;
And he who on that narrow bier
Has room enough, is closely wound
In a silence piercing more than sound.
III.
Hearken, hearken!
God speaketh to thy soul,
Using the sùpreme voice which doth confound
All life with consciousness of Deity,
All senses into one, —
As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John
(For whom did backward roll
The cloud-gate of the future) turned to see
The Voice which spake. It speaketh now,
Through the regular breath of the calm creation,
Through the moan of the creature’s desolation
Striking, and in its stroke resembling
The memory of a solemn vow
Which pierceth the din of a festival
To one in the midst, — and he letteth fall
The cup with a sudden trembling.
IV.
Hearken, hearken!
God speaketh in thy soul,
Saying, “O thou that movest
With feeble steps across this earth of Mine,
To break beside the fount thy golden bowl
And spill its purple wine, —
Look up to heaven and see how, like a scroll,
My right hand hath thine immortality
In an eternal grasping! thou, that lovest
The songful birds and grasses underfoot,
And also what change mars and tombs pollute —
I am the end of love! give love to Me!
O thou that sinnest, grace doth more abound
Than all thy sin! sit still beneath My rood,
And count the droppings of My victim-blood,
And seek none other sound!”
V.
Hearken, hearken!
Shall we hear the lapsing river
And our brother’s sighing ever,
And not the voice of God?
THE LOST BOWER.
I
In the pleasant orchard-closes,
“God bless all our gains,” say we,
But “May God bless all our losses”
Better suits with our degree.
Listen, gentle — ay, and simple! listen, children on the knee!
II
Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played,
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade:
Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up from glade to glade.
III
There is one hill I see nearer
In my vision of the rest;
And a little wood seems clearer
As it climbeth from the west,
Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest.
IV
Small the wood is, green with hazels,
And, completing the ascent,
Where the wind blows and sun dazzles,
Thrills in leafy tremblement,
Like a heart that after climbing beateth quickly through content.
V
Not a step the wood advances
O’er the open hill-top’s bound;
There, in green arrest, the branches
See their image on the ground:
You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.
VI
For you hearken on your right hand,
How the birds do leap and call
In the greenwood, out of sight and
Out of reach and fear of all;
And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheerful madrigal.
VII
On your left, the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale,
And five apple-trees stand dropping
Separate shadows toward the vale
Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their “All hail!”
VIII
Far out, kindled by each other,
Shining hills on hills arise,
Close as brother leans to brother
When they press beneath the eyes
Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of paradise.
IX
While beyond, above them mounted,
And above their woods alsò,
Malvern hills, for mountains counted
Not unduly, loom a-row —
Keepers of Piers Plowman’s visions through the sunshine and the snow.
X
Yet, in childhood, little prized I
That fair walk and far survey;
‘Twas a straight walk unadvised by
The least mischief worth a nay;
Up and down — as dull as grammar on the eve of holiday.
XI
But the wood, all close and clenching
Bough in bough and root in root, —
No more sky (for overbranching)
At your head than at your foot, —
Oh, the wood drew me within it by a glamou
r past dispute!
XII
Few and broken paths showed through it,
Where the sheep had tried to run, —
Forced with snowy wool to strew it
Round the thickets, when anon
They, with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into the sun.
XIII
But my childish heart beat stronger
Than those thickets dared to grow:
I could pierce them! I could longer
Travel on, methought, than so:
Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where they would go.
XIV
And the poets wander, said I,
Over places all as rude:
Bold Rinaldo’s lovely lady
Sat to meet him in a wood:
Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with solitude.
XV
And if Chaucer had not travelled
Through a forest by a well,
He had never dreamt nor marvelled
At those ladies fair and fell
Who lived smiling without loving in their island-citadel.
XVI
Thus I thought of the old singers
And took courage from their song,
Till my little struggling fingers
Tore asunder gyve and thong
Of the brambles which entrapped me, and the barrier branches strong.
XVII
On a day, such pastime keeping,
With a fawn’s heart debonair,
Under-crawling, overleaping
Thorns that prick and boughs that bear,
I stood suddenly astonied — I was gladdened unaware.
XVIII
From the place I stood in, floated
Back the covert dim and close,
And the open ground was coated
Carpet-smooth with grass and moss,
And the blue-bell’s purple presence signed it worthily across.
XIX
Here a linden-tree stood, bright’ning
All adown its silver rind;
For as some trees draw the lightning,
So this tree, unto my mind,
Drew to earth the blessèd sunshine from the sky where it was shrined.
XX
Tall the linden-tree, and near it
An old hawthorn also grew;
And wood-ivy like a spirit
Hovered dimly round the two,
Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I sing of thus to you.
XXI
‘Twas a bower for garden fitter
Than for any woodland wide:
Though a fresh and dewy glitter
Struck it through from side to side,
Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by garden-cunning plied.
XXII
Oh, a lady might have come there,
Hooded fairly like her hawk,
With a book or lute in summer,
And a hope of sweeter talk, —
Listening less to her own music than for footsteps on the walk!
XXIII
But that bower appeared a marvel
In the wildness of the place;
With such seeming art and travail,
Finely fixed and fitted was
Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from the base.
XXIV
And the ivy veined and glossy
Was enwrought with eglantine;
And the wild hop fibred closely,
And the large-leaved columbine,
Arch of door and window-mullion, did right sylvanly entwine.
XXV
Rose-trees either side the door were
Growing lithe and growing tall,
Each one set a summer warder
For the keeping of the hall, —
With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nodding at the wall.
XXVI
As I entered, mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot;
And a green elastic cushion,
Clasped within the linden’s root,
Took me in a chair of silence very rare and absolute.
XXVII
All the floor was paved with glory,
Greenly, silently inlaid
(Through quick motions made before me)
With fair counterparts in shade
Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted overhead.
XXVIII
“Is such pavement in a palace?”
So I questioned in my thought:
The sun, shining through the chalice
Of the red rose hung without,
Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my doubt.
XXIX
At the same time, on the linen
Of my childish lap there fell
Two white may-leaves, downward winning
Through the ceiling’s miracle,
From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing well.
XXX
Down to floor and up to ceiling
Quick I turned my childish face,
With an innocent appealing
For the secret of the place
To the trees, which surely knew it in partaking of the grace.
XXXI
Where’s no foot of human creature
How could reach a human hand?
And if this be work of Nature,
Why has Nature turned so bland,
Breaking off from other wild-work? It was hard to understand.
XXXII
Was she weary of rough-doing,
Of the bramble and the thorn?
Did she pause in tender rueing
Here of all her sylvan scorn?
Or in mock of Art’s deceiving was the sudden mildness worn?
XXXIII
Or could this same bower (I fancied)
Be the work of Dryad strong,
Who, surviving all that chancèd
In the world’s old pagan wrong,
Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last true poet’s song?
XXXIV
Or was this the house of fairies,
Left, because of the rough ways,
Unassoiled by Ave Marys
Which the passing pilgrim prays,
And beyond St. Catherine’s chiming on the blessèd Sabbath days?
XXXV
So, young muser, I sat listening
To my fancy’s wildest word:
On a sudden, through the glistening
Leaves around, a little stirred,
Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.
XXXVI
Softly, finely, it inwound me;
From the world it shut me in, —
Like a fountain, falling round me,
Which with silver waters thin
Clips a little water Naiad sitting smilingly within.
XXXVII
Whence the music came, who knoweth?
I know nothing: but indeed
Pan or Faunus never bloweth
So much sweetness from a reed
Which has sucked the milk of waters at the oldest river-head.
XXXVIII
Never lark the sun can waken
With such sweetness! when the lark,
The high planets overtaking
In the half-evanished Dark,
Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the mark.
XXXIX
Never nightingale so singeth:
Oh, she leans on thorny tree
And her poet-song she flingeth
Over pain to victory!
Yet she never sings such music, — or she sings it not to me.
XL
Never blackbirds, never thrushes
Nor small finches sing as sweet,
When the sun strikes through the bushes
To their crimson clinging feet,
And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer heavens complete.
XLI
If it were a bird, it seemèd
Most like Chaucer’s, which, in sooth,
He of green and azure dreamèd,
While it sat in spirit-ruth
On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her silent mouth.
XLII
If it were a bird? — ah, sceptic,
Give me “yea” or give me “nay” —
Though my soul were nympholeptic
As I heard that virèlay,
You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is far away!
XLIII
I rose up in exaltation
And an inward trembling heat,
And (it seemed) in geste of passion
Dropped the music to my feet
Like a garment rustling downwards — such a silence followed it!
XLIV
Heart and head beat through the quiet
Full and heavily, though slower:
In the song, I think, and by it,
Mystic Presences of power
Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned me to the Hour.
XLV
In a child-abstraction lifted,
Straightway from the bower I past,
Foot and soul being dimly drifted
Through the greenwood, till, at last,
In the hill-top’s open sunshine I all consciously was cast.
XLVI
Face to face with the true mountains
I stood silently and still,
Drawing strength from fancy’s dauntings,
From the air about the hill,
And from Nature’s open mercies and most debonair goodwill.
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 58