| |
| MANY a green isle needs must be | |
| In the deep wide sea of misery, | |
| Or the mariner, worn and wan, | |
| Never thus could voyage on | |
| Day and night, and night and day, | 5 |
| Drifting on his dreary way, | |
| With the solid darkness black | |
| Closing round his vessel’s track; | |
| Whilst above, the sunless sky | |
| Big with clouds, hangs heavily, | 10 |
| And behind the tempest fleet | |
| Hurries on with lightning feet, | |
| Riving sail, and cord, and plank, | |
| Till the ship has almost drank | |
| Death from the o’er-brimming deep; | 15 |
| And sinks down, down, like that sleep | |
| When the dreamer seems to be | |
| Weltering through eternity; | |
| And the dim low line before | |
| Of a dark and distant shore | 20 |
| Still recedes, as ever still | |
| Longing with divided will, | |
| But no power to seek or shun, | |
| He is ever drifted on | |
| O’er the unreposing wave, | 25 |
| To the haven of the grave. | |
| What, if there no friends will greet; | |
| What, if there no heart will meet | |
| His with love’s impatient beat; | |
| Wander whereso’er he may, | 30 |
| Can he dream before that day | |
| To find refuge from distress | |
| In friendship’s smile, in love’s caress? | |
| Then ’twill wreak him little woe | |
| Whether such there be or no: | 35 |
| Senseless is the breast, and cold, | |
| Which relenting love would fold; | |
| Bloodless are the veins and chill | |
| Which the pulse of pain did fill; | |
| Every little living nerve | 40 |
| That from bitter words did swerve | |
| Round the tortured lips and brow, | |
| Are like sapless leaflets now | |
| Frozen upon December’s bough. | |
| |
| On the beach of a northern sea | 45 |
| Which tempests shake eternally, | |
| As once the wretch there lay to sleep, | |
| Lies a solitary heap, | |
| One white skull and seven dry bones, | |
| On the margin of the stones, | 50 |
| Where a few gray rushes stand, | |
| Boundaries of the sea and land: | |
| Nor is heard one voice of wail | |
| But the sea-mews, as they sail | |
| O’er the billows of the gale; | 55 |
| Or the whirlwind up and down | |
| Howling, like a slaughtered town, | |
| When a king in glory rides | |
| Through the pomp of fratricides: | |
| Those unburied bones around | 60 |
| There is many a mournful sound; | |
| There is no lament for him, | |
| Like a sunless vapour, dim, | |
| Who once clothed with life and thought | |
| What now moves nor murmurs not. | 65 |
| |
| Ay, many flowering islands lie | |
| In the waters of wide Agony: | |
| To such a one this morn was led | |
| My bark, by soft winds piloted. | |
| —’Mid the mountains Euganean | 70 |
| I stood listening to the paean | |
| With which the legion’d rooks did hail | |
| The Sun’s uprise majestical: | |
| Gathering round with wings all hoar, | |
| Through the dewy mist they soar | 75 |
| Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven | |
| Bursts, and then,—as clouds of even | |
| Fleck’d with fire and azure, lie | |
| In the unfathomable sky,— | |
| So their plumes of purple grain | 80 |
| Starr’d with drops of golden rain | |
| Gleam above the sunlight woods, | |
| As in silent multitudes | |
| On the morning’s fitful gale | |
| Through the broken mist they sail; | 85 |
| And the vapours cloven and gleaming | |
| Follow down the dark steep streaming, | |
| Till all is bright, and clear, and still | |
| Round the solitary hill. | |
| Beneath is spread like a green sea | 90 |
| The waveless plain of Lombardy, | |
| Bounded by the vaporous air, | |
| Islanded by cities fair; | |
| Underneath day’s azure eyes, | |
| Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies,— | 95 |
| A peopled labyrinth of walls, | |
| Amphrite’s destined halls, | |
| Which her hoary sire now paves | |
| With his blue and beaming waves. | |
| Lo! the sun upsprings behind, | 100 |
| Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined | |
| On the level quivering line | |
| Of the waters crystalline; | |
| And before that chasm of light, | |
| As within a furnace bright, | 105 |
| Column, tower, and dome, and spire, | |
| Shine like obelisks of fire, | |
| Pointing with inconstant motion | |
| From the altar of dark ocean | |
| To the sapphire-tinted skies; | 110 |
| As the flames of sacrifice | |
| From the marble shrines did rise | |
| As to pierce the dome of gold | |
| Where Apollo spoke of old. | |
| |
| Sun-girt City! thou hast been | 115 |
| Ocean’s child, and then his queen; | |
| Now is come a darker day, | |
| And thou soon must be his prey, | |
| If the power that raised thee here | |
| Hallow so thy watery bier. | 120 |
| A less drear ruin then than now | |
| With thy conquest-branded brow | |
| Stooping to the slave of slaves | |
| From thy throne among the waves, | |
| Wilt thou be,—when the sea-mew | 125 |
| Flies, as once before it flew, | |
| O’er thine isles depopulate, | |
| And all is in its ancient state, | |
| Save where many a palace-gate | |
| With green sea-flowers overgrown | 130 |
| Like a rock of ocean’s own, | |
| Topples o’er the abandon’d sea | |
| As the tides change sullenly. | |
| The fisher on his watery way | |
| Wandering at the close of day, | 135 |
| Will spread his sail and seize his oar | |
| Till he pass the gloomy shore, | |
| Lest thy dead should, from their sleep, | |
| Bursting o’er the starlight deep, | |
| Lead a rapid masque of death | 140 |
| O’er the waters of his path. | |
| |
| Noon descends around me now: | |
| ’Tis the noon of autumn’s glow, | |
| When a soft and purple mist | |
| Like a vaporous amethyst, | 145 |
| Or an air-dissolve´d star | |
| Mingling light and fragrance, far | |
| From the curved horizon’s bound | |
| To the point of heaven’s profound, | |
| Fills the overflowing sky; | 150 |
| And the plains that silent lie | |
| Underneath; the leaves unsodden | |
| Where the infant frost has trodden | |
| With his morning-winge´d feet | |
| Whose bright print is gleaming yet; | 155 |
| And the red and golden vines | |
| Piercing with their trellised lines | |
| The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; | |
| The dun and bladed grass no less, | |
| Pointing from this hoary tower | 160 |
| In the windless air; the flower | |
| Glimmering at my feet; the line | |
| Of the olive-sandall’d Apennine | |
| In the south dimly islanded; | |
| And the Alps, whose snows are spread | 165 |
| High between the clouds and sun; | |
| And of living things each one; | |
| And my spirit, which so long | |
| Darken’d this swift stream of song,— | |
| Interpenetrated lie | 170 |
| By the glory of the sky; | |
| Be it love, light, harmony, | |
| Odour, or the soul of all | |
| Which from heaven like dew doth fall, | |
| Or the mind which feels this verse, | 175 |
| Peopling the lone universe. | |
| |
| Noon descends, and after noon | |
| Autumn’s evening meets me soon, | |
| Leading the infantine moon | |
| And that one star, which to her | 180 |
| Almost seems to minister | |
| Half the crimson light she brings | |
| From the sunset’s radiant springs: | |
| And the soft dreams of the morn | |
| (Which like winge´d winds had borne | 185 |
| To that silent isle, which lies | |
| ’Mid remember’d agonies, | |
| The frail bark of this lone being), | |
| Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, | |
| And its ancient pilot, Pain, | 190 |
| Sits beside the helm again. | |
| |
| Other flowering isles must be | |
| In the sea of life and agony: | |
| Other spirits float and flee | |
| O’er that gulf: ev’n now, perhaps, | 195 |
| On some rock the wild wave wraps, | |
| With folding wings they waiting sit | |
| For my bark, to pilot it | |
| To some calm and blooming cove, | |
| Where for me, and those I love, | 200 |
| May a windless bower be built, | |
| Far from passion, pain, and guilt, | |
| In a dell ’mid lawny hills | |
| Which the wild sea-murmur fills, | |
| And soft sunshine, and the sound | 205 |
| Of old forests echoing round, | |
| And the light and smell divine | |
| Of all flowers that breathe and shine. | |
| —We may live so happy there, | |
| That the spirits of the air | 210 |
| Envying us, may even entice | |
| To our healing paradise | |
| The polluting multitude; | |
| But their rage would be subdued | |
| By that clime divine and calm, | 215 |
| And the winds whose wings rain balm | |
| On the uplifted soul, and leaves | |
| Under which the bright sea heaves; | |
| While each breathless interval | |
| In their whisperings musical | 220 |
| The inspired soul supplies | |
| With its own deep melodies; | |
| And the Love which heals all strife | |
| Circling, like the breath of life, | |
| All things in that sweet abode | 225 |
| With its own mild brotherhood. | |
| They, not it, would change; and soon | |
| Every sprite beneath the moon | |
| Would repent its envy vain, | |
| And the Earth grow young again! | 230 |
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