Ah! Life looks gaily and gloomily in turns;
With a brow chequered like the sward, by leaves
Between which the light glints; and she, careless, wears
A wreath of flowers—part faded and part fresh.
And Death is beautiful and sad and still:
She seems too happy; happier far than life—
In but one feeling, apathy: and on
Her chill white brow frosts bright, a braid of snow.
And Immortality?
She looks alone;
As though she would not know her sisterhood.
And on her brow a diadem of fire,
Matched by the conflagration of her eye,
Outflaming even that eye which in my sleep
Beams close upon me till it bursts from sheer
O’erstrainedness of sight, burns.
What do they?
Each strives to win me to herself.
How?
Death
Opens her sweet white arms and whispers, peace!
Come say thy sorrows in this bosom! This
Will never close against thee; and my heart,
Though cold, cannot be colder much than man’s.
Come! All this soon must end; and soon the world
Shall perish leaf by leaf, and land by land;
Flower by flower—flood by flood—and hill
By hill, away; Oh! come, come! Let us die.
Say that thou wilt not die!
Nay, I love Death.
But Immortality, with finger spired,
Points to a distant, giant world—and says
There, there is my home! Live along with me!
Canst see that world?
Just—a huge shadowy shape;
It looks a disembodied orb—the ghost
Of some great sphere which God hath stricken dead:
Or like a world which God hath thought—not made.
Follow her Festus! Does she speak again?
She never speaks but once; and now, in scorn,
Points to this dim, dwarfed, misbegotten sphere.
Why let her pass?
That is the great world-question.
Life would not part with me; and from her brow
Tearing her wreath of passion-flowers, she flung
It round my neck and dared me struggle then.
I never could destroy a flower: and none
But fairest hands like thine can grace with me
The plucking of a rose. And Life, sweet Life!
Vowed she would crop the world for me and lay it
Herself before my feet even as a flower.
And when I felt that flower contained thyself—
One drop within its nectary kept for me,
I lost all count of those strange sisters three;
And where they be I know not. But I see
One who is more to me.
I know not how
Thou hast this power and knowledge. I but hope
It comes from good hands; if it be not thine
Own force of mind. It is much less what we do
Than what we think, which fits us for the future.
I wish we had a little world to ourselves;
With none but we two on it.
And if God
Gave us a star, what could we do with it
But that we could without it? Wish it not!
I’ll not wish then for stars; but I could love
Some peaceful spot where we might dwell unknown,
Where home-born joys might nestle round our hearts
As swallows round our roofs—and blend their sweets
Like dewy-tangled flowerets in one bed.
The sweetest joy, the widest woe is love;
The taint of earth, the odour of the skies,
Is in it. Would that I were aught but man!
The death of brutes, the immortality
Of fiend or angel, better seems than all
The doubtful prospects of our painted dust.
And all Morality can teach is—Bear!
And all Religion can inspire is—Hope!
It is enough. Fruition of the fruit
Of the great Tree of Life, is not for earth.
Stars are its fruit, its lightest leaf is life.
The heart hath many sorrows beside love,
Yea many as the veins which visit it.
The love of aught on earth is not its chief
Nor ought to be. Inclusive of them all
There is the one main sorrow, life;—for what
Can spirit, severed from the great one, God,
Feel but a grievous longing to rejoin
Its infinite—its author—and its end?
And yet is life a thing to be beloved,
And honored holily, and bravely borne.
A man’s life may be all ease, and his death
By some dark chance, unthought of agony:—
Or life may be all suffering, and decease
A flower-like sleep;—or both be full of woe,
Or each comparatively painless. Blame
Not God for inequalities like these!
They may be justified. How canst thou know?
They may be only seeming. Canst thou judge?
They may be done away with utterly
By loving, fearing, knowing God the Truth.
In all distress of spirit, grief of heart,
Bodily agony, or mental woe,
Rebuffs and vain assumptions of the world,
Or the poor spite of weak and wicked souls,
Think thou on God! Think what he underwent
And did for us as man. Weigh thou thy cross
With Christs, and judge which were the heavier.
Joy even in thine anguish!—such was His,
But measurelessly more. Thy suffering
Assimilateth thee to Him. Rejoice!
Think upon what thou shalt be! Think on God!
Then ask thyself, what is the world, and all
Its mountainous inequalities? Ah, what!
Are not all equal as dust-atomies?
My soul’s orb darkens as a sudden star,
Which having for a time exhausted earth
And half the Heavens of wonder, mortally
Passes for ever, not eclipsed, consumed;—
All but a cloudy vapour darkening there,
The very spot in space it once illumed.
Once to myself I seemed a mount of light;
But now, a pit of night.—No more of this!
Here have I lain all day in this green nook,
Shaded by larch and hornbeam, ash and yew;
A living well and runnel at my feet,
And wild flowers, dancing to some delicate air;
An urn-topped column and its ivy wreath
Skirting my sight as thus I lie and look
Upon the blue, unchanging, sacred skies:
And thou, too, gentle Clara by my side,
With lightsome brow and beaming eye, and bright
Long glorious locks, which drop upon thy cheek
Like goldhued cloudflakes on the rosy morn.
Oh! when the heart is full of sweets to o’erflowing,
And ringing to the music of its love,
Who but an angel or an hyprocrite
Could speak or think of happier states?
Farewell!
Remember what thou saidst about the stars. Goes.
Oh! why was woman made so fair? or man
So weak as to see that more than one had beaaty?
It is impossible to love but one.
And yet I dare not love thee as I could;
For all that the heart most longs for and deserves,
Passes the
