Selected Poems (105 page)

These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was gore.

CLXVII

1495

Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,

A long low distant murmur of dread sound,

Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound;

Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,

1500

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

Seems royal still, though with her head discrown’d,

And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief

She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

CLXVIII

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?

1505

Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low

Some less majestic, less beloved head?

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,

The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy,

1510

Death hush’d that pang for ever: with thee fled

The present happiness and promised joy

Which fill’d the imperial isles so full it seem’d to cloy.

CLXIX

Peasants bring forth in safety. – Can it be,

Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!

1515

Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,

And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard

Her many griefs for O
NE
; for she had pour’d

Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head

Beheld her Iris. – Thou, too, lonely lord,

1520

And desolate consort – vainly wert thou wed!

The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

CLXX

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made;

Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust

The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid

1525

The love of millions! How we did intrust

Futurity to her! and, though it must

Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem’d

Our children should obey her child, and bless’d

Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d

1530

Like stars to shepherds’ eyes: – ’twas but a meteor beam’d.

CLXXI

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:

The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue

Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,

Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung

1535

Its knell in princely ears, ’till the o’erstung

Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate
¹

Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung

Against their blind omnipotence a weight

Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, –

CLXXII

1540

These might have been her destiny; but no,

Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,

Good without effort, great without a foe;

But now a bride and mother – and now
there!

How many ties did that stern moment tear!

1545

From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast

Is link’d the electric chain of that despair,

Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and opprest

The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

CLXXIII

Lo, Nemi! navell’d in the woody hills

1550

So far, that the uprooting wind which tears

The oak from his foundation, and which spills

The ocean o’er its boundary, and bears

Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares

The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;

1555

And, calm as cherish’d hate, its surface wears

A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,

All coil’d into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

CLXXIV

And near Albano’s scarce divided waves

Shine from a sister valley; – and afar

1560

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves

The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war,

‘Arms and the Man,’ whose re-ascending star

Rose o’er an empire: — but beneath thy right

Tully reposed from Rome; – and where yon bar

1565

Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight

The Sabine farm was till’d, the weary bard’s delight.

CLXXV

But I forget. – My Pilgrim’s shrine is won,

And he and I must part, — so let it be, —

His task and mine alike are nearly done;

1570

Yet once more let us look upon the sea;

The midland ocean breaks on him and me,

And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calpe’s rock unfold

1575

Those waves, we follow’d on till the dark Euxine roll’d

CLXXVI

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years –

Long, though not very many, since have done

Their work on both; some suffering and some tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun:

1580

Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

We have had our reward – and it is here;

That we can yet feel gladden’d by the sun,

And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear

As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXVII

1585

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,

With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And, hating no one, love but only her!

Ye Elements! – in whose ennobling stir

1590

I feel myself exalted – Can ye not

Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

CLXXVIII

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

1595

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

1600

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal.

CLXXIX

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

1605

Man marks the earth with ruin – his control

Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

1610

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

CLXXX

His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fields

Are not a spoil for him, – thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

1615

For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

1620

And dashest him again to earth: – there let him lay.

CLXXXI

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

1625

Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

CLXXXII

1630

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee —

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters wasted them while they were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

1635

Has dried up realms to deserts: – not so thou,

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play –

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow –

Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

CLXXXIII