Poetry

mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth.”

“We came⁠—and to thy Earth⁠—but not to us
Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:
We came, my love; around, above, below,
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
She grants to us, as granted by her God⁠—
But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled
Never his fairy wing o’er fairer world!
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea⁠—
But when its glory swell’d upon the sky,
As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,
We paused before the heritage of men,
And thy star trembled⁠—as doth Beauty then!”

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

Romance35

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been⁠—a most familiar bird⁠—
Taught me my alphabet to say⁠—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child⁠—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings⁠—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away⁠—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

To ⸻

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds,
Are lips⁠—and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words⁠—

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined
Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall⁠—

Thy heart⁠—thy heart!⁠—I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of truth that gold can never buy⁠—
Of the bawbles that it may.

To ⸻

I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath⁠—little of Earth in it⁠—
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:⁠—
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.

To Marie Louise

Not long ago, the writer of these lines,
In the mad pride of intellectuality,
Maintained “the power of words”⁠—denied that ever
A thought arose within the human brain
Beyond the utterance of the human tongue:
And now, as if in mockery of that boast,
Two words⁠—two foreign soft dissyllables⁠—
Italian tones, made only to be murmured
By angels dreaming in the moonlit “dew
That hangs like chains of pearl on Hermon hill,”⁠—
Have stirred from out the abysses of his heart,
Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of thought,
Richer, far wider, far diviner visions
Than even the seraph harper, Israfel,
(Who has “the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures”)
Could hope to utter. And I! my spells are broken.
The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand.
With thy dear name as text, though bidden by thee,
I can not write⁠—I can not speak or think⁠—
Alas, I can not feel; for ’tis not feeling,
This standing motionless upon the golden
Threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams,
Gazing, entranced, adown the gorgeous vista,
And thrilling as I see, upon the right,
Upon the left, and all the way along,
Amid empurpled vapors, far away
To where the prospect terminates⁠—thee only!

Fairyland

Dim vales⁠—and shadowy floods⁠—
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over.
Huge moons there wax and wane⁠—
Again⁠—again⁠—again⁠—
Every moment of the night⁠—
Forever changing places⁠—
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down⁠—still down⁠—and down
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain’s eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be⁠—
O’er the strange woods⁠—o’er the sea⁠—
Over spirits on the wing⁠—
Over every drowsy thing⁠—
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light⁠—
And then, how deep!⁠—O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like⁠—almost anything⁠—
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before⁠—
Videlicet a tent⁠—
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies,
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

The City in the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently⁠—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free⁠—
Up domes⁠—up spires⁠—up kingly halls⁠—
Up fanes⁠—up Babylon-like walls⁠—
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers⁠—
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathèd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye⁠—
Not the gayly-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass⁠—
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea⁠—
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave⁠—there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide⁠—
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow⁠—
The hours are breathing faint and low⁠—
And when, amid no