| |
| SWEET Spirit! Sister of that orphan one, 1 | |
| Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, | |
| In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee | |
| These votive wreaths of withered memory. | |
| |
| Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, | 5 |
| Pourest such music, that it might assuage | |
| The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, | |
| Were they not deaf to all sweet melody; | |
| This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale | |
| Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! | 10 |
| But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, | |
| And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. | |
| |
| High, spirit-wingèd Heart! who dost for ever | |
| Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, | |
| Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed | 15 |
| It over-soared this low and worldly shade, | |
| Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast | |
| Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest! | |
| I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be, | |
| Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. | 20 |
| |
| Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, | |
| Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman | |
| All that is insupportable in thee | |
| Of light, and love, and immortality! | |
| Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse! | 25 |
| Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe! | |
| Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form | |
| Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm! | |
| Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror! | |
| Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror | 30 |
| In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, | |
| All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on! | |
| Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now | |
| Flash, lighting-like, with unaccustomed glow; | |
| I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song | 35 |
| All of its much mortality and wrong, | |
| With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew | |
| From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, | |
| Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy: | |
| Then smile on it, so that it may not die. | 40 |
| |
| I never thought before my death to see | |
| Youth ’s vision thus made perfect. Emily, | |
| I love thee; though the world by no thin name | |
| Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame. | |
| Would we two had been twins of the same mother! | 45 |
| Or, that the name my heart lent to another | |
| Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee, | |
| Blending two beams of one eternity! | |
| Yet were one lawful and the other true, | |
| These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, | 50 |
| How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! | |
| I am not thine: I am a part of thee. | |
| |
| Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings; | |
| Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, | |
| Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, | 55 |
| All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, | |
| A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless? | |
| A well of sealed and secret happiness, | |
| Whose waters like blithe light and music are, | |
| Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star | 60 |
| Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone? | |
| A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone | |
| Amid rude voices? a belovèd light? | |
| A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight? | |
| A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play | 65 |
| Make music on, to soothe the roughest day | |
| And lull fond grief asleep? a buried treasure? | |
| A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure; | |
| A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?—I measure | |
| The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, | 70 |
| And find—alas! mine own infirmity. | |
| |
| She met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way, | |
| And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day, | |
| Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, | |
| Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, | 75 |
| In the suspended impulse of its lightness, | |
| Were less ethereally light: the brightness | |
| Of her divinest presence trembles through | |
| Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew | |
| Embodied in the windless Heaven of June | 80 |
| Amid the splendour-wingèd stars, the Moon | |
| Burns, inextinguishably beautiful: | |
| And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full | |
| Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, | |
| Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops | 85 |
| Of planetary music heard in trance. | |
| In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, | |
| The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap | |
| Under the lightnings of the soul—too deep | |
| For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. | 90 |
| The glory of her being, issuing thence, | |
| Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade | |
| Of unentangled intermixture, made | |
| By Love, of light and motion: one intense | |
| Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, | 95 |
| Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing | |
| Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing | |
| With the unintermitted blood, which there | |
| Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air | |
| The crimson pulse of living morning quiver), | 100 |
| Continuously prolonged, and ending never, | |
| Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled | |
| Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world; | |
| Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. | |
| Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress | 105 |
| And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress | |
| The air of her own speed has disentwined, | |
| The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind; | |
| And in the soul a wild odour is felt, | |
| Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt | 110 |
| Into the bosom of a frozen bud.— | |
| See where she stands! a mortal shape indued | |
| With love and life and light and deity, | |
| And motion which may change but cannot die; | |
| An image of some bright Eternity; | 115 |
| A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour | |
| Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender | |
| Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love | |
| Under whose motion life’s dull billows move; | |
| A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; | 120 |
| A Vision like incarnate April, warning, | |
| With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy | |
Into his summer grave.
Ah, woe is me! | |
| What have I dared? where am I lifted? how | |
| Shall I descend, and perish not? I know | 125 |
| That Love makes all things equal: I have heard | |
| By mine own heart this joyous truth averred: | |
| The spirit of the worm beneath the sod | |
| In love and worship, blends itself with God. | |
| |
| Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate | 130 |
| Whose course has been so starless! Oh, too late | |
| Belovèd! Oh, too soon adored, by me! | |
| For in the fields of immortality | |
| My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, | |
| A divine presence in a place divine; | 135 |
| Or should have moved beside it on this earth, | |
| A shadow of that substance, from its birth; | |
| But not as now:—I love thee; yes, I feel | |
| That on the fountain of my heart a seal | |
| Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright | 140 |
| For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. | |
| We—are we not formed, as notes of music are, | |
| For one another, though dissimilar; | |
| Such difference without discord, as can make | |
| Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake | 145 |
| As trembling leaves in a continuous air? | |
| |
| Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare | |
| Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. | |
| I never was attached to that great sect, | |
| Whose doctrine is, that each one should select | 150 |
| Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, | |
| And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend | |
| To cold oblivion, though it is in the code | |
| Of modern morals, and the beaten road | |
| Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, | 155 |
| Who travel to their home among the dead | |
| By the broad highway of the world, and so | |
| With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, | |
| The dreariest and the longest journey go. | |
| |
| True Love in this differs from gold and clay, | 160 |
| That to divide is not to take away. | |
| Love is like understanding, that grows bright, | |
| Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light, | |
| Imagination! which from earth and sky, | |
| And from the depths of human phantasy, | 165 |
| As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills | |
| The Universe with glorious beams, and kills | |
| Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow | |
| Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow | |
| The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, | 170 |
| The life that wears, the spirit that creates | |
| One object, and one form, and builds thereby | |
| A sepulchre for its eternity. | |
| |
| Mind from its object differs most in this: | |
| Evil from good: misery from happiness; | 175 |
| The baser from the nobler; the impure | |
| And frail, from what is clear and must endure. | |
| If you divide suffering and dross, you may | |
| Diminish till it is consumed away; | |
| If you divide pleasure and love and thought, | 180 |
| Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not | |
| How much, while any yet remains unshared, | |
| Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: | |
| This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw | |
| The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law | 185 |
| By which those live, to whom this world of life | |
| Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife | |
| Tills for the promise of a later birth | |
| The wilderness of this Elysian earth. | |
| |
| There was a Being whom my spirit oft | 190 |
| Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, | |
| In the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn, | |
| Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, | |
| Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves | |
| Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves | 195 |
| Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor | |
| Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore, | |
| Under the gray beak of some promontory | |
| She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, | |
| That I beheld her not. In solitudes | 200 |
| Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, | |
| And from the fountains, and the odours deep | |
| Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep | |
| Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, | |
| Breathed but of her to the enamoured air; | 205 |
| And from the breezes whether low or loud, | |
| And from the rain of every passing cloud, | |
| And from the singing of the summer birds, | |
| And from all sounds, all silence. In the words | |
| Of antique verse and high romance,—in form, | 210 |
| Sound, colour—in whatever checks that Storm | |
| Which with the shattered present chokes the past; | |
| And in that best philosophy, whose taste | |
| Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom | |
| As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; | 215 |
| Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.— | |
| |
| Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth | |
| I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, | |
| And towards the loadstar of my one desire, | |
| I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight | 220 |
| Is as a dead leaf’s in the owlet light, | |
| When it would seek in Hesper’s setting sphere | |
| A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, | |
| As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.— | |
| But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, | 225 |
| Passed, like a God throned on a wingèd planet, | |
| Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, | |
| Into the dreary cone of our life’s shade; | |
| And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, | |
| I would have followed, though the grave between | 230 |
| Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen: | |
| When a voice said:—‘O Thou of hearts the weakest, | |
| The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.’ | |
| Then I—‘Where?’ the world’s echo answered ‘where!’ | |
| And in that silence, and in my despair, | 235 |
| I questioned every tongueless wind that flew | |
| Over my tower of mourning, if it knew | |
| Whither ’twas fled, this soul out of my soul; | |
| And murmured names and spells which have control | |
| Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; | 240 |
| But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate | |
| The night which closed on her; nor uncreate | |
| That world within this Chaos, mine and me, | |
| Of which she was the veiled Divinity, | |
| The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her: | 245 |
| And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear | |
| And every gentle passion sick to death, | |
| Feeding my course with expectation’s breath, | |
| Into the wintry forest of our life; | |
| And struggling through its error with vain strife, | 250 |
| And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, | |
| And half bewildered by new forms, I past | |
| Seeking among those untaught foresters | |
| If I could find one form resembling hers, | |
| In which she might have masked herself from me. | 255 |
| There,—One, whose voice was venomed melody | |
| Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers; | |
| The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, | |
| Her touch was as electric poison,—flame | |
| Out of her looks into my vitals came, | 260 |
| And from her living cheeks and bosom flew | |
| A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew | |
| Into the core of my green heart, and lay | |
| Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray | |
| O’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime | 265 |
| With ruins of unseasonable time. | |
| |
| In many mortal forms I rashly sought | |
| The shadow of that idol of my thought, | |
| And some were fair—but beauty dies away: | |
| Other were wise—but honeyed words betray: | 270 |
| And One was true—oh! why not true to me? | |
| Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, | |
| I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, | |
| Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day | |
| Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. | 275 |
| When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again | |
| Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed | |
| As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed, | |
| As is the Moon, whose changes ever run | |
| Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; | 280 |
| The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles, | |
| Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles, | |
| That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame | |
| Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, | |
| And warms not but illumines. Young and fair | 285 |
| As the descended Spirit of that Sphere, | |
| She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night | |
| From its own darkness, until all was bright | |
| Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind, | |
| And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, | 290 |
| She led me to a cave in that wild place, | |
| And sate beside me, with her downward face | |
| Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon | |
| Waxing and waning o’er Endymion. | |
| And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, | 295 |
| And all my being became bright or dim | |
| As the Moon’s image in a summer sea, | |
| According as she smiled or frowned on me; | |
| And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed: | |
| Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:— | 300 |
| For at her silver voice came Death and Life, | |
| Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, | |
| Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, | |
| The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, | |
| And through the cavern without wings they flew, | 305 |
| And cried ‘Away, he is not of our crew.’ | |
| I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep. | |
| |
| What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, | |
| Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips | |
| Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse:— | 310 |
| And how my soul was as a lampless sea, | |
| And who was then its Tempest; and when She, | |
| The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost | |
| Crept o’er those waters, till from coast to coast | |
| The moving billows of my being fell | 315 |
| Into a death of ice, immovable:— | |
| And then—what earthquakes made it gape and split, | |
| The white Moon smiling all the while on it, | |
| These words conceal:—If not, each word would be | |
| The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me! | 320 |
| |
| At length, into the obscure Forest came | |
| The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. | |
| Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns | |
| Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn’s | |
| And from her presence life was radiated | 325 |
| Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead; | |
| So that her way was paved, and roofed above | |
| With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love; | |
| And music from her respiration spread | |
| Like light,—all other sounds were penetrated | 330 |
| By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, | |
| So that the savage winds hung mute around; | |
| And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair, | |
| Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air: | |
| Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, | 335 |
| When light is changed to love, this glorious One | |
| Floated into the cavern where I lay, | |
| And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay | |
| Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below | |
| As smoke by fire, and in her beauty’s glow | 340 |
| I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night | |
| Was penetrating me with living light: | |
| I knew it was the Vision veiled from me | |
| So many years—that it was Emily. | |
| |
| Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, | 345 |
| This world of love, this me; and into birth | |
| Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart | |
| Magnetic might into its central heart; | |
| And lift its billows and its mists, and guide | |
| By everlasting laws, each wind and tide | 350 |
| To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; | |
| And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave | |
| Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers | |
| The armies of the rainbow-wingèd showers; | |
| And, as those married lights, which from the towers | 355 |
| Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe | |
| In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe; | |
| And all their many-mingled influence blend, | |
| If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;— | |
| So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway | 360 |
| Govern my sphere of being, night and day! | |
| Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might; | |
| Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light; | |
| And, through the shadows of the seasons three, | |
| From Spring to Autumn’s sere maturity, | 365 |
| Light it into the Winter of the tomb, | |
| Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. | |
| Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce, | |
| Who drew the heart of this frail Universe | |
| Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion, | 370 |
| Alternating attraction and repulsion, | |
| Thine went astray and that was rent in twain; | |
| Oh, float into our azure heaven again! | |
| Be there love’s folding-star at thy return; | |
| The living Sun will feed thee from its urn | 375 |
| Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn | |
| In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn | |
| Will worship thee with incense of calm breath | |
| And lights and shadows; as the star of Death | |
| And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild | 380 |
| Called Hope and Fear—upon the heart are piled | |
| Their offerings,—of this sacrifice divine | |
A World shall be the altar.
Lady mine, | |
| Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth | |
| Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth | 385 |
| Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, | |
| Will be as of the trees of Paradise. | |
| |
| The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. | |
| To whatsoe’er of dull mortality | |
| Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; | 390 |
| To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, | |
| Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united | |
| Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. | |
| The hour is come:—the destined Star has risen | |
| Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. | 395 |
| The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set | |
| The sentinels—but true Love never yet | |
| Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence: | |
| Like lightning, with invisible violence | |
| Piercing its continents; like Heaven’s free breath, | 400 |
| Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death, | |
| Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way | |
| Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array | |
| Of arms; more strength has Love than he or they; | |
| For it can burst his charnel, and make free | 405 |
| The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, | |
The soul in dust and chaos.
Emily, | |
| A ship is floating in the harbour now, | |
| A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; | |
| There is a path on the sea’s azure floor, | 410 |
| No keel has ever ploughed that path before; | |
| The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; | |
| The treacherous ocean has foresworn its wiles; | |
| The merry mariners are bold and free; | |
| Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me? | 415 |
| Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest | |
| Is a far Eden of the purple East; | |
| And we between her wings will sit, while Night | |
| And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, | |
| Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, | 420 |
| Treading each other’s heels, unheededly. | |
| It is an Isle under Ionian skies, | |
| Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, | |
| And, for the harbours are not safe and good, | |
| This land would have remained a solitude | 425 |
| But for some pastoral people native there, | |
| Who from the Elysian, clear and golden air | |
| Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, | |
| Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. | |
| The blue Ægean girds this chosen home, | 430 |
| With ever-changing sound and light and foam, | |
| Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; | |
| And all the winds wandering along the shore | |
| Undulate with the undulating tide: | |
| There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; | 435 |
| And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, | |
| As clear as elemental diamond, | |
| Or serene morning air; and far beyond, | |
| The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer | |
| (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year), | 440 |
| Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls | |
| Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls | |
| Illumining, with sound that never fails | |
| Accompany the noonday nightingales; | |
| And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; | 445 |
| The light clear element which the isle wears | |
| Is heavy with scent of lemon-flowers, | |
| Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers | |
| And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; | |
| And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, | 450 |
| And dart their arrowy odour through the brain | |
| Till you might faint with that delicious pain, | |
| And every motion, odour, beam and tone | |
| With that deep music is in unison: | |
| Which is a soul within the soul—they seem | 455 |
| Like echoes of an antenatal dream.— | |
| It is an isle ’twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, | |
| Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; | |
| Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, | |
| Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. | 460 |
| It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, | |
| Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light | |
| Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they | |
| Sail onward far upon their fatal way: | |
| The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm | 465 |
| To other Lands, leave azure chasms of calm | |
| Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, | |
| From which its fields and woods ever renew | |
| Their green and golden immortality. | |
| And from the sea there rise, and from the sky | 470 |
| There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, | |
| Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, | |
| Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, | |
| Till the isle’s beauty, like a naked bride | |
| Glowing at once with love and loveliness, | 475 |
| Blushes and trembles at its own excess: | |
| Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less | |
| Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, | |
| An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile | |
| Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen | 480 |
| O’er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green, | |
| Filling their bare and void interstices.— | |
| But the chief marvel of the wilderness | |
| Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how | |
| None of the rustic island-people know; | 485 |
| ’Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height | |
| It overtops the woods; but, for delight, | |
| Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime | |
| Had been invented, in the world’s young prime; | |
| Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, | 490 |
| An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house | |
| Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. | |
| It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, | |
| But, as it were Titanic; in the heart | |
| Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown | 495 |
| Out of the mountains, from the living stone, | |
| Lifting itself in caverns light and high; | |
| For all the antique and learnèd imagery | |
| Has been erased, and in the place of it | |
| The ivy and the wild vine interknit | 500 |
| The volumes of their many twining stems; | |
| Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems | |
| The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky | |
| Peeps through their winter-roof of tracery | |
| With Moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, | 505 |
| Or fragments of the day’s intense serene:— | |
| Working mosaic on their Parian floors. | |
| And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers | |
| And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem | |
| To sleep in one another’s arms, and dream | 510 |
| Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we | |
| Read in their smiles, and call reality. | |
| |
| This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed | |
| Thee to be lady of the solitude.— | |
| And I have fitted up some chambers there | 515 |
| Looking toward the golden Eastern air, | |
| And level with the living winds, which flow | |
| Like waves above the living waves below.— | |
| I have sent books and music there, and all | |
| Those instruments with which high spirits call | 520 |
| The future from its cradle, and the past | |
| Out of its grave, and make the present last | |
| In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die. | |
| Folded within their own eternity. | |
| Our simple life wants little, and true taste | 525 |
| Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste | |
| The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, | |
| Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. | |
| The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet | |
| Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit | 530 |
| Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance | |
| Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; | |
| The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight | |
| Before our gate, and the slow, silent night | |
| Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. | 535 |
| Be this our home in life, and when years heap | |
| Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, | |
| Let us become the overhanging day, | |
| The living soul of this Elysian isle, | |
| Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile | 540 |
| We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, | |
| Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, | |
| And wander in the meadows, or ascend | |
| The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend, | |
| With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; | 545 |
| Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, | |
| Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea | |
| Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,— | |
| Possessing and possest by all that is | |
| Within that calm circumference of bliss, | 550 |
| And by each other, till to love and live | |
| Be one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive | |
| Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep | |
| The moonlight of the expired night asleep, | |
| Through which the awakened day can never peep; | 555 |
| A veil for our seclusion, close as Night’s, | |
| Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights; | |
| Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain | |
| Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. | |
| And we will talk, until thought’s melody | 560 |
| Become too sweet for utterance, and it die | |
| In words, to live again in looks, which dart | |
| With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, | |
| Harmonising silence without a sound. | |
| Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, | 565 |
| And our veins beat together; and our lips | |
| With other eloquence than words, eclipse | |
| The soul that burns between them, and the wells | |
| Which boil under our being’s inmost cells, | |
| The fountains of our deepest life, shall be | 570 |
| Confused in passion’s golden purity, | |
| As mountain-springs under the Morning Sun. | |
| We shall become the same, we shall be one | |
| Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? | |
| One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, | 575 |
| Till like two meteors of expanding flame, | |
| Those spheres instinct with it become the same, | |
| Touch, mingle, are tranfigured; ever still | |
| Burning, yet ever inconsumable: | |
| In one another’s substance finding food, | 580 |
| Like flames too pure and light and unimbued | |
| To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, | |
| Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: | |
| One hope within two wills, one will beneath | |
| Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, | 585 |
| One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, | |
| And one annihilation. Woe is me! | |
| The wingèd words on which my soul would pierce | |
| Into the heights of Love’s rare Universe, | |
| Are chains of lead around its flight of fire— | 590 |
| I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire! | |
| |
| Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign’s feet, | |
| And say:—‘We are the masters of thy slave; | |
| What wouldst thou with us and ours and thine?’ | |
| Then call your sisters from Oblivion’s cave, | 595 |
| All singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet, | |
| But its reward is in the world divine | |
| Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’ | |
| So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste | |
| Over the hearts of men, until ye meet | 600 |
| Marina, Vanna, Primus, 2 and the rest, | |
| And bid them love each other and be blest; | |
| And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, | |
| And come and be my guest,—for I am Love’s. | |
