Selected Poems (102 page)

Her new-born Numa thou – with reign, alas! too brief.

CXV

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart

Which found no mortal resting-place so fair

As thine ideal breast; whate’er thou art

1030

Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air,

The nympholepsy of some fond despair;

Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,

Who found a more than common votary there

Too much adoring; whatso’er thy birth,

1035

Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

CXVI

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled

With thine Elysian water-drops; the face

Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,

Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,

1040

Whose green, wild margin now no more erase

Art’s works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,

Prison’d in marble, bubbling from the base

Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap

The rill runs o’er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep

CXVII

1045

Fantastically tangled; the green hills

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass

The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills

Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;

Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,

1050

Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes

Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;

The sweetness of the violet’s deep blue eyes,

Kiss’d by the breath of heaven, seems colour’d by its skies.

CXVIII

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,

1055

Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;

The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting

With her most starry canopy, and seating

Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?

1060

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting

Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell

Haunted by holy Love – the earliest oracle!

CXIX

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,

Blend a celestial with a human heart;

1065

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,

Share with immortal transports? could thine art

Make them indeed immortal, and impart

The purity of heaven to earthly joys,

Expel the venom and not blunt the dart –

1070

The dull satiety which all destroys —

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

CXX

Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert; whence arise

But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,

1075

Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,

Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,

And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants

Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies

O’er the world’s wilderness, and vainly pants

1080

For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI

Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art –

An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,

A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,

But never yet hath seen, nor e’er shall see

1085

The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,

Even with its own desiring phantasy,

And to a thought such shape and image given,

As haunts the unquench’d soul — parch’d — wearied — wrung — and riven.

CXXII

1090

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,

And fevers into false creation: – where,

Where are the forms the sculptor’s soul hath seized?

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare

1095

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreach’d Paradise of our despair,

Which o’er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

CXXIII

Who loves, raves – ’tis youth’s frenzy – but the cure

1100

Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure

Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind’s

Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,

1105

Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize – wealthiest when most undone.

CXXIV

We wither from our youth, we gasp away –

Sick – sick; unfound the boon – unslaked the thirst,

1110

Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first –

But all too late, – so are we doubly curst.

Love, fame, ambition, avarice – ’tis the same,

Each idle – and all ill – and none the worst –

1115

For all are meteors with a different name,

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

CXXV

Few — none — find what they love or could have loved,

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed

1120

Antipathies — but to recur, ere long,

Envenom’d with irrevocable wrong;

And Circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

1125

Whose touch turns Hope to dust, – the dust we all have trod.

CXXVI

Our life is a false nature – ’tis not in

The harmony of things, - this hard decree,

This uneradicable taint of sin,

This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,

1130

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be

The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew –

Disease, death, bondage – all the woes we see –

And worse, the woes we see not – which throb through

The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII

1135Yet let us ponder boldly – ’tis a base

Abandonment of reason to resign

Our right of thought – our last and only place

Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:

Though from our birth the faculty divine

1140

Is chain’d and tortured – cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,

And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine

Too brightly on the unprepared mind,

The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.

CXXVIII

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,

1145

Collecting the chief trophies of her line,

Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,

Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine

As ’twere its natural torches, for divine

Should be the light which streams here, to illume

1150

This long-explored but still exhaustless mine

Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

CXXIX

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

Floats o’er this vast and wondrous monument,

1155

And shadows forth its glory. There is given

Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,

A spirit’s feeling, and where he hath leant

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power

And magic in the ruin’d battlement

1160

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.

CXXX

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead,

Adorner of the ruin, comforter

And only healer when the heart hath bled –

1165

Time! the corrector where our judgments err,

The test of truth, love, – sole philosopher,

For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,

Which never loses though it doth defer —

Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift

1170

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:

CXXXI

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine

And temple more divinely desolate,

Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,

Ruins of years – though few, yet full of fate: –

1175

If thou hast ever seen me too elate,

Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne

Good, and reserved my pride against the hate

Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn

This iron in my soul in vain – shall
they
not mourn?

CXXXII

1180

And thou, who never yet of human wrong

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!

Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long –

Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss,

And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss

1185

For that unnatural retribution – just,

Had it but been from hands less near – in this

Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!

Dost thou not hear my heart? – Awake! thou shalt, and must.

CXXXIII

It is not that I may not have incurr’d

1190

For my ancestral faults or mine the wound

I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr’d

With a just weapon, it had flow’d unbound;

But now my blood shall not sink in the ground;

To thee I do devote it –
thou
shalt take

1195

The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found,

Which if
I
have not taken for the sake—

But let that pass – I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake

CXXXIV

And if my voice break forth, ’tis not that now

I shrink from what is suffer’d: let him speak