affection:
I shall weep; but their love will be cooling: and he,
As he drifts to fatigue, discontent, and dejection,
Will be brought, thou poor heart! how much nearer to thee!
For cold is his eye to mere beauty, who, breaking
The strong band which beauty around him hath furl’d,
Disenchanted by habit, and newly awaking,
Looks languidly round on a gloom-buried world.
Through that gloom he will see but a shadow appearing,
Perceive but a voice as I come to his side:
But deeper their voice grows, and nobler their bearing,
Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.
Then—to wait. But what notes down the wind, hark! are driving?
’Tis he! ’tis the boat, shooting round by the trees!
Let my turn, if it will come, be swift in arriving!
Ah! hope cannot long lighten torments like these.
Hast thou yet dealt him, O Life, thy full measure?
World, have thy children yet bow’d at his knee?
Hast thou with myrtle-leaf crown’d him, O Pleasure?
Crown, crown him quickly, and leave him for me.
Consolation
Mist clogs the sunshine,
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere.
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul.
Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere, countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods.
Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gilt terraces
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun.
Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses.
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair.
Strange unlov’d uproar12
Shrills round their portal.
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm.
Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemm’d
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bow’d, asks alms.
No bolder Robber
Erst abode ambush’d
Deep in the sandy waste:
No clearer eyesight
Spied prey afar.
Saharan sand-winds
Sear’d his keen eyeballs.
Spent is the spoil he won.
For him the present
Holds only pain.
Two young, fair lovers,
Where the warm June wind,
Fresh from the summer fields
Plays fondly round them,
Stand, tranc’d in joy.
With sweet, join’d voices,
And with eyes brimming—
“Ah,” they cry, “Destiny!
Prolong the present!
Time! stand still here!”
The prompt stern Goddess
Shakes her head, frowning.
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone.
With weak indulgence
Did the just Goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthen’d also
Distress elsewhere.
The hour, whose happy
Unalloy’d moments
I would eternalize,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleas’d see end.
The bleak stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass’d by others
In warmth, light, joy.
Time, so complain’d of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours.
Sonnet to the Hungarian Nation
Not in sunk Spain’s prolong’d death agony;
Not in rich England, bent but to make pour
The flood of the world’s commerce on her shore;
Not in that madhouse, France, from whence the cry
Afflicts grave Heaven with its long senseless roar;
Not in American vulgarity,
Nor wordy German imbecility—
Lies any hope of heroism more.
Hungarians! Save the world! Renew the stories
Of men who against hope repell’d the chain,
And make the world’s dead spirit leap again!
On land renew that Greek exploit, whose glories
Hallow the Salaminian promontories,
And the Armada flung to the fierce main.
Switzerland
I
Meeting
Again I see my bliss at hand;
The town, the lake are here.
My Marguerite smiles upon the strand13
Unalter’d with the year.
I know that graceful figure fair,
That cheek of languid hue;
I know that soft, enkerchief’d hair,
And those sweet eyes of blue.
Again I spring to make my choice;
Again in tones of ire
I hear a God’s tremendous voice—
“Be counsell’d, and retire!”
Ye guiding Powers, who join and part,
What would ye have with me?
Ah, warn some more ambitious heart,
And let the peaceful be!
II
Parting
Ye storm-winds of Autumn
Who rush by, who shake
The window, and ruffle
The gleam-lighted lake;
Who cross to the hill-side
Thin-sprinkled with farms,
Where the high woods strip sadly
Their yellowing arms;—
Ye are bound for the mountains—
Ah, with you let me go
Where your cold distant barrier,
The vast range of snow,
Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
Its white peaks in air—
How deep is their stillness!
Ah! would I were there!
But on the stairs what voice is this I hear,
Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear?
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
Or was it from some sun-fleck’d mountain-brook
That the sweet voice its upland clearness took?
Ah! it comes nearer—
Sweet notes, this way!
Hark! fast by the window
The rushing winds go,
To the ice-cumber’d gorges,
The vast seas of snow.
There the torrents drive upward
Their rock-strangled hum,
There the avalanche thunders
The hoarse torrent dumb.
—I come, O ye mountains!
Ye torrents, I come!
But who is this, by the half-open’d door,
Whose figure casts a shadow on the floor?
The sweet blue eyes—the soft, ash-colour’d hair—
The cheeks that still their gentle paleness wear—
The lovely lips, with their arch smile, that tells
The unconquer’d joy in which her spirit dwells—
Ah! they bend nearer—
Sweet lips, this way!
Hark! the wind rushes past us—
Ah! with that let me go
To the clear waning hill-side
Unspotted by snow,
There to watch, o’er the sunk vale,
The frore mountain wall,
Where the nich’d snow-bed sprays down
Its powdery fall.
There its dusky blue clusters
The aconite spreads;
There the pines slope, the cloud-strips
Hung soft in their heads.
No life but, at moments,
The mountain-bee’s hum.
—I come, O ye mountains!
Ye pine-woods, I come!
Forgive me! forgive me!
Ah, Marguerite, fain
Would these arms reach to clasp thee:—
But see! ’tis in vain.
In the void air towards thee
My strain’d arms are cast.
But a sea rolls between us—
Our different past.
To the lips, ah! of others,
Those lips have been prest,
And others, ere I was,
Were clasp’d to that breast;
Far, far from each other
Our spirits have grown.
And what heart knows another?
Ah! who knows his own?
Blow, ye winds! lift me with you!
I come to the wild.
Fold closely, O Nature!
Thine arms round thy child.
To thee only God granted
A heart ever new:
To all always open;
To all always true.
Ah, calm me! restore me!
And dry up my tears
On thy high mountain platforms,
Where Morn first appears,
Where the
