Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

LVII

Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song.
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly let us go.

Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale ;
But half my life I leave behind.
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass, my work will fail.

Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,

One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes.

I hear it now, and o'er and o'er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And Ave, Ave, Ave," said,
Adieu, adieu," for evermore.

66

LVIII

In those sad words I took farewell.
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace

Of hearts that beat from day to day, Half-conscious of their dying clay, And those cold crypts where they shall

cease.

The high Muse answer'd: "Wherefore grieve

Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,

And thou shalt take a nobler leave."

LXIV

Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The center of a world's desire;

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are stil!
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,

The limit of his narrower fate,

While yet beside its vocal springs He play'd at counsellors and kings With one that was his earliest mate;

Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labor of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands:
"Does my old friend remember me?”

LXVII

When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west
There comes a glory on the walls:

Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o'er the number of thy years.

The mystic glory swims away,
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray;

And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers in the dawn.

LXXIV

As sometimes in a dead man's face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out-to some one of his race;

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.

But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.

LXXVIII

Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth:
The silent snow possess'd the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve.

The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost, No wing of wind the region swept, But over all things brooding slept The quiet sense of something lost.

As in the winters left behind,

Again our ancient games had place, The mimic picture's breathing grace, And dance and song and hoodian-blind. Who show'd a token of distress?

No single tear, no mark of pain-
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?

O last regret, regret can die!

No-mixed with all this mystic frame, Her deep relations are the same, But with long use her tears are dry.

LXXXIII

Dip down upon the northern shore,

O sweet new-year delaying long; Thou doest expectant Nature wrong; Delaying long, delay no more.

What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place;
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.

O thou, new-year, delaying long,

Delayest the sorrow in my blood, That longs to burst a frozen bud And flood a fresher throat with song.

LXXXV

This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow'd most,
"T is better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all-

O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;

And whether trust in things above

Be dimm'd of sorrow, or sustain'd; And whether love for him have drain'd My capabilities of love;

Your words have virtue such as draws A faithful answer from the breast,

Thro' light reproaches, half expressed And loyal unto kindly laws.

My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna's fatal walls
God's finger touch'd him, and he slept.

The great Intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state, In circle round the blessed gate, Received and gave him welcome there

And led him thro' the blissful climes,

And show'd him in the fountain fresh All knowledge that the sons of flesh Shall gather in the cycled times.

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim, Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,

To wander on a darken'd earth, Where all things round me breathed of him.

O friendship, equal-poised control,

O heart, with kindliest motion warm, O sacred essence, other form, O solemn ghost, O crowned soul! Yet none could better know than I,

How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.

Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;

A life that all the Muses deck'd
With gifts of grace, that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilizing intellect:

And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.

Likewise the imaginative woe,

That loved to handle spiritual strife, Diffused the shock thro' all my life, But in the present broke the blow.

My pulses therefore beat again

For other friends that once I met; Nor can it suit me to forget The mighty hopes that make us men.

I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master'd Time;

Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears.
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this;

But Summer on the steaming floods, And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,

And Autumn, with a noise of rooks, That gather in the waning woods,

And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave.

My old affection of the tomb,

66

A part of stillness, yearns to speak:
Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.

"I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach ;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more."

And I," Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?"
And lightly does the whisper fall:
""T is hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all."

So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.

Now looking to some settled end,

That those things pass, and I shall prove A meeting somewhere, love with love, I crave your pardon, O my friend; If not so fresh, with love as true, I, clasping brother-hands, aver I could not, if I would, transfer The whole I felt for him to you.

For which be they that hold apart

The promise of the golden hours? First love, first friendship, equal powers.

That marry with the virgin heart.

Still mine, that cannot but deplore, That beats within a lonely place, That yet remembers his embrace, But at his footstep leaps no more,

My heart, tho' widow'd, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.

Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.

LXXXVI

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare

The round of space, and rapt below

Thro' all the dewy tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow

The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and
Death,

Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odor streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper "Peace.”

LXXXVII

I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro' the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organs make,

And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophet blazon'd on the panes;

And caught once more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about.

The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

Another name was on the door.

I linger'd; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys

That crash'd the glass and beat the floor;

Where once we held debate, a band

Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labor, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land;

When one would aim an arrow fair,

But send it slackly from the string; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, here and there;

And last the master-bowman, he,

Would cleave the mark. A willing

ear

We lent him. Who but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free

From point to point, with power and grace

And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,

And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly-wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo?

LXXXVIII

Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks,
O, tell me where the senses mix,
O, tell me where the passions meet,

Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ

Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy;

And I-my harp would prelude woe-
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.

XCVI

You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes

Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,

Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true; Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,

He would not make his judgment blind,

He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them; thus he came at length To find a stronger faith his own,

And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the
light,

And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud.

XCVII

My love has talk'd with rocks and trees; He finds on misty mountain-ground His own vast shadow glory-crown'd; He sees himself in all he sees.

Two partners of a married life-

I look'd on these and thought of thee In vastness and in mystery, And of my spirit as of a wife. These two-they dwelt with eye on eye. Their hearts of old have beat in tune, Their meetings made December June Their every parting was to die.

Their love has never past away;

The days she never can forget Are earnest that he loves her yet, Whate'er the faithless people say.

Her life is lone, he sits apart;

He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart."
He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
He reads the secret of the star,
He seems so near and yet so far,
He looks so cold: she thinks him kind.

She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither'd violet is her bliss ;
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all, she loves him more.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.

One whispers, "Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung."

The other answers, "Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray'd in after hours
With thy lost friend among the
bowers,

And this hath made them trebly dear."

These two have striven half the day,

And each prefers his separate claim, Poor rivals in a losing game, That will not yield each other way.

I turn to go; my feet are set

To leave the pleasant fields and farms;

They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret.

CIV

The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.

A single peal of bells below,

That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers' voices here they sound, In lands where not a memory strays, Nor landmark breathes of other days, But all is new unhallow'd ground.

CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor; Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land. Ring in the Christ that is to be.

[ocr errors][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »