Poetry

from haunts of strife
Come to my mountain solitude,
And learn my frustrate life;

“O thou, who, ere thy flying span
Was past of cheerful youth,
Didst seek the solitary man
And love his cheerless truth⁠—

“Despair not thou as I despair’d,
Nor be cold gloom thy prison!
Forward the gracious hours have fared,
And see! the sun is risen.

“He melts the icebergs of the past,
A green, new earth appears.
Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,
Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears.

“The world’s great order dawns in sheen,
After long darkness rude,
Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,
With happier zeal pursued.

“With hope extinct and brow composed
I mark’d the present die;
Its term of life was nearly closed,
Yet it had more than I.

“But thou, though to the world’s new hour
Thou come with aspect marr’d,
Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power
Which best befits its bard;

“Though more than half thy years be past,
And spent thy youthful prime;
Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,
Hang weeds of our sad time,

“Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,
And traversed all the shade⁠—
Though late, though dimm’d, though weak, yet tell
Hope to a world new-made!

“Help it to fill that deep desire,
The dream which fill’d our brain,
Fix’d in our soul a thirst like fire,
Immedicable pain!

“Which to the wilderness drove out
Our life, to Alpine snow;
And palsied all our word with doubt,
And all our work with woe⁠—

“What still of strength is left, employ
That end to help attain:
One common wave of thought and joy
Lifting mankind again!”

The vision ended. I awoke
As out of sleep, and no
Voice moved⁠—only the torrent broke
The silence, far below.

Soft darkness on the turf did lie;
Solemn, o’er hut and wood,
In the yet star-sown nightly sky,
The peak of Jaman stood.

Still in my soul the voice I heard
Of Obermann⁠—away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirr’d,
Along the rocks of Naye

And Sonchaud’s piny flanks I gaze
And the blanch’d summit bare
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,

And the domed Velan with his snows
Behind the upcrowding hills
Doth all the heavenly opening close
Which the Rhone’s murmur fills⁠—

And glorious there, without a sound,
Across the glimmering lake,
High in the Valais depth profound,
I saw the morning break.

Persistency of Poetry

Though the Muse be gone away,
Though she move not earth to-day,
Souls, erewhile who caught her word,
Ah! still harp on what they heard.

Bacchanalia; or, the New Age

I

The evening comes, the fields are still.
The tinkle of the thirsty rill,
Unheard all day, ascends again;
Deserted is the new-reap’d grain,
Silent the sheaves! the ringing wain,
The reaper’s cry, the dogs’ alarms,
All housed within the sleeping farms!
The business of the day is done,
The last belated gleaner gone.
And from the thyme upon the height,
And from the elder-blossom white
And pale dog-roses in the hedge,
And from the mint-plant in the sedge,
In puffs of balm the night-air blows
The perfume which the day forgoes.
And on the pure horizon far,
See, pulsing with the first-born star,
The liquid sky above the hill!
The evening comes, the fields are still.

Loitering and leaping,
With saunter, with bounds⁠—
Flickering and circling
In files and in rounds⁠—
Gaily their pine-staff green
Tossing in air,
Loose o’er their shoulders white
Showering their hair⁠—
See! the wild Maenads
Break from the wood,
Youth and Iacchus
Maddening their blood!
See! through the quiet land
Rioting they pass⁠—
Fling the piled sheaves about,
Trample the grass!
Tear from the rifled hedge
Garlands, their prize;
Fill with their sports the field,
Fill with their cries!

Shepherd, what ails thee, then?
Shepherd, why mute?
Forth with thy joyous song!
Forth with thy flute!
Tempts not the revel blithe?
Lure not their cries?
Glow not their shoulders smooth?
Melt not their eyes?
Is not, on cheeks like those,
Lovely the flush?⁠—
Ah, so the quiet was!
So was the hush!

II

The epoch ends, the world is still,
The age has talk’d and work’d its fill⁠—
The famous orators have done,
The famous poets sung and gone,
The famous men of war have fought,
The famous speculators thought,
The famous players, sculptors, wrought,
The famous painters fill’d their wall,
The famous critics judged it all.
The combatants are parted now,
Uphung the spear, unbent the bow,
The puissant crown’d, the weak laid low!
And in the after-silence sweet,
Now strife is hush’d, our ears doth meet,
Ascending pure, the bell-like fame
Of this or that down-trodden name,
Delicate spirits, push’d away
In the hot press of the noon-day.
And o’er the plain, where the dead age
Did its now silent warfare wage⁠—
O’er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom,
Where many a splendour finds its tomb,
Many spent fames and fallen mights⁠—
The one or two immortal lights
Rise slowly up into the sky
To shine there everlastingly,
Like stars over the bounding hill.
The epoch ends, the world is still.

Thundering and bursting
In torrents, in waves⁠—
Carolling and shouting
Over tombs, amid graves⁠—
See! on the cumber’d plain
Clearing a stage,
Scattering the past about,
Comes the new age!
Bards make new poems,
Thinkers new schools,
Statesmen new systems,
Critics new rules!
All things begin again;
Life is their prize;
Earth with their deeds they fill,
Fill with their cries!

Poet, what ails thee, then?
Say, why so mute?
Forth with thy praising voice!
Forth with thy flute!
Loiterer! why sittest thou
Sunk in thy dream?
Tempts not the bright new age?
Shines not its stream?
Look, ah, what genius,
Art, science, wit!
Soldiers like Caesar,
Statesmen like Pitt!
Sculptors like Phidias,
Raphaels in shoals,
Poets like Shakespeare⁠—
Beautiful souls!
See, on their glowing cheeks
Heavenly the flush!
Ah, so the silence was!
So was the hush!

The world but feels the present’s spell,
The poet feels the past as well;
Whatever men have done, might do,
Whatever thought, might think it too.

Growing Old

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength⁠—
Not our bloom only, but our strength⁠—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!
’Tis not to have our life
Mellow’d and soften’d as with sunset glow,
A golden day’s decline!

’Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr’d;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers