William Lisle Bowles: Verses about Sick

Oh, Mary, when distress and anguish came,
And slow disease preyed on thy wasted frame;
When every friend, ev'n like thy bloom, was fled,
And Want bowed low thy unsupported head;
Sure sad Humanity a tear might give,
And Virtue say, Live, beauteous sufferer, live!
But should there one be found, (amidst the few
Who with compassion thy last pangs might view),
One who beheld thy errors with a tear,
To whom the ruins of thy heart were dear,
Who fondly hoped, the ruthful season past,
Thy faded virtues might revive at last;
Should such be found--oh! when he saw thee lie,
Closing on every earthly hope thine eye;
When he beheld despair, with rueful trace,
Mark the strange features of thy altered face;
When he beheld, as painful death drew nigh,
Thy pale, pale cheek, thy feebly lifted eye,
Thy chill, shrunk hand, hung down as in despair,
Or slowly raised, with many a muttered prayer;--
When thus, in early youth, he saw thee bend
Poor to the grave, and die without a friend;
Some sadder feelings might unbidden start,
And more than common pity touch his heart!
The eventful scene is closed; with pausing dread
And sorrow I drew nigh the silent bed;
Thy look was calm--thy heart was cold and still,
As if the world had never used it ill;
Methought the last faint smile, with traces weak,
Still seemed to linger on thy faded cheek.
Poor Mary! though most beauteous in thy face,
Ere sorrow touched it, beamed each lovely grace;
Yet, oh! thy living features never wore
A look so sweet, so eloquent before,
As this, which bids all human passions cease,
And tells my pitying heart you died in peace!

How cheering are thy prospects, airy hill,
To him who, pale and languid, on thy brow
Pauses, respiring, and bids hail again
The upland breeze, the comfortable sun,
And all the landscape's hues! Upon the point
Of the descending steep I stand.
How rich,
How mantling in the gay and gorgeous tints
Of summer! far beneath me, sweeping on,
From field to field, from vale to cultured vale,
The prospect spreads its crowded beauties wide!
Long lines of sunshine, and of shadow, streak
The farthest distance; where the passing light
Alternate falls, 'mid undistinguished trees,
White dots of gleamy domes, and peeping towers,
As from the painter's instant touch, appear.
As thus the eye ranges from hill to hill,
Here white with passing sunshine, there with trees
Innumerable shaded, clustering more,
As the long vale retires, the ample scene,
Warm with new grace and beauty, seems to live.
Lives! all is animation! beauty! hope!
Snatched from the dark and dreamless grave, so late,
Shall I pass silent, now first issuing forth,
To feel again thy fragrance, to respire
Thy breath, to hail thy look, thy living look,
O Nature!
Let me the deep joy contrast,
Which now the inmost heart like music fills,
With the sick chamber's sorrows, oft from morn,
Silent, till lingering eve, save when the sound
Of whispers steal, and bodings breathed more low,
As friends approach the pillow: so awaked
From deadly trance, the sick man lifts his eyes,
Then in despondence closes them on all,
All earth's fond wishes! Oh, how changed are now
His thoughts! he sees rich nature glowing round,
He feels her influence! languid with delight,
And whilst his eye is filled with transient fire,
He almost thinks he hears her gently say,
Live, live! O Nature, thee, in the soft winds,
Thee, in the soothing sound of summer leaves,
When the still earth lies sultry; thee, methinks,
Ev'n now I hear bid welcome to thy vales
And woods again!
And I will welcome them,
And pour, as erst, the song of heartfelt praise.
From yonder line, where fade the farthest hills
Which bound the blue lap of the swelling vale,
On whose last line, seen like a beacon, hangs
Thy tower, benevolent, accomplished Hoare,
To where I stand, how wide the interval!
Yet instantaneous, to the hurrying eye
Displayed; though peeping towers and villages
Thick scattered, 'mid the intermingling elms,
And towns remotely marked by hovering smoke,
And grass-green pastures with their herds, and seats
Of rural beauty, cottages and farms,
Unnumbered as the hedgerows, lie between!
Roaming at large to where the gray sky bends,
The eye scarce knows to rest, till back recalled
By yonder ivied cloisters in the plain,
Whose turret, peeping pale above the shade,
Smiles in the venerable grace of years.
As the few threads of age's silver hairs,
Just sprinkled o'er the forehead, lend a grace
Of saintly reverence, seemly, though compared
With blooming Mary's tresses like the morn;
So the gray weather-stained towers yet wear
A secret charm impressive, though opposed
To views in verdure flourishing, the woods,
And scenes of Attic taste, that glitter near.
O venerable pile, though now no more
The pensive passenger, at evening, hears
The slowly-chanted vesper; or the sounds
Of 'Miserere,' die along the vale;
Yet piety and honoured age retired,
There hold their blameless sojourn, ere the bowl
Be broken, or the silver chord be loosed.
Nor can I pass, snatched from untimely fate,
Without a secret prayer, that so my age,
When many a circling season has declined,
In charity and peace may wait its close.
Yet still be with me, O delightful friend,
Soothing companion of my vacant hours,
Oh, still be with me, Spirit of the Muse!
Not to subdue, or hold in moody spell,
The erring senses, but to animate
And warm my heart, where'er the prospect smiles,
With Nature's fairest views; not to display
Vain ostentations of a poet's art,
But silent, and associate of my joys
Or sorrows, to infuse a tenderness,
A thought, that seems to mingle, as I gaze,
With all the works of GOD. So cheer my path,
From youth to sober manhood, till the light
Of evening smile upon the fading scene.
And though no pealing clarion swell my fame,
When all my days are gone; let me not pass,
Like the forgotten clouds of yesterday,
Nor unremembered by the fatherless
Of the loved village where my bones are laid.

WRITTEN DURING SICKNESS AT BATH.

When I lie musing on my bed alone,
And listen to the wintry waterfall;
And many moments that are past and gone,
Moments of sunshine and of joy, recall;

Though the long night is dark and damp around,
And no still star hangs out its friendly flame;
And the winds sweep the sash with sullen sound,
And freezing palsy creeps o'er all my frame;

I catch consoling phantasies that spring
From the thick gloom, and as the night airs beat,
They touch my heart, like wind-swift wires that ring
In mournful modulations, strange and sweet.

Was it the voice of thee, my buried friend?
Was it the whispered vow of faithful love?
Do I in Knoyle's green shades thy steps attend,
And hear the high pines murmur thus above?

'Twas not thy voice, my buried friend!--Oh, no:
'Twas not, O Knoyle! the murmur of thy trees;
But at the thought I feel my bosom glow,
And woo the dream whose air-drawn shadows please.

And I can think I see the groves again,
The larches that yon peaceful roof embower;
The airy down, the cattle-speckled plain,
And the slant sunshine on the village tower.

And I can think I hear its Sabbath chime
Come smoothly softened down the woody vale;
Or mark on yon lone eminence sublime,
Fast whirling in the wind, the white mill's sail.

Phantom, that by my bed dost beckoning glide,
Spectre of Death, to the damp charnel hie!
Thy dim pale hand, thy festering visage hide;
Thou com'st to say, I with thy worms shall lie!

Thou com'st to say that my once vacant mind
Amid those scenes shall never more rejoice;
Nor on the day of rest the hoary hind
Bend o'er his staff, attentive to my voice.

Hast thou not visited that pleasant place
Where in this hard world I have happiest been?
And shall I tremble at thy lifted mace
That hath pierced all on which life seemed to lean?

But Hope might whisper: Many a smiling day
And many a cheerful eve may yet be mine,
Ere age's autumn strew my locks with gray,
And weary to the dust my steps decline.

I argue not, but uncomplaining bow
To Heaven's high 'hest; secure, whate'er my lot,
Meek spirit of resigned Content, that thou
Wilt smooth my pillow, and forsake me not!

Thou to the turfy hut with pilgrim feet
Wanderest, from halls of loud tumultuous joy;
Or on the naked down, when the winds beat,
Dost sing to the forsaken shepherd boy.

Thou art the sick man's nurse, the poor man's friend,
And through each change of life thou hast been mine;
In every ill thou canst a comfort blend,
And bid the eye, though sad, in sadness shine.

Thee I have met on Cherwell's willowed side,
And when our destined road far onward lay,
Thee I have found, whatever chance betide,
The kind companion of my devious way.

With thee unwearied have I loved to roam,
By the smooth-flowing Scheldt, or rushing Rhine;
And thou hast gladdened my sequestered home,
And hung my peaceful porch with eglantine.

When cares and crosses my tired spirits tried,
When to the dust my father I resigned;
Amidst the quiet shade unseen I sighed,
And, blest with thee, forgot a world unkind.

Ev'n now, while toiling through the sleepless night,
A tearful look to distant scenes I cast,
And the glad objects that once charmed my sight
Remember, like soft views of 'faerie' past;

I see thee come half-smiling to my bed,
With Fortitude more awfully severe,
Whose arm sustaining holds my drooping head,
Who dries with her dark locks the tender tear.

O firmer Spirit! on some craggy height
Who, when the tempest sails aloft, dost stand,
And hear'st the ceaseless billows of the night
Rolling upon the solitary strand;

At this sad hour, when no harsh thoughts intrude
To mar the melancholy mind's repose,
When I am left to night and solitude,
And languid life seems verging to its close;

Oh, let me thy pervading influence feel;
Be every weak and wayward thought repressed;
And hide thou, as with plates of coldest steel,
The faded aspect and the throbbing breast!

Silent the motley pageant may retreat,
And vain mortality's brief scenes remove;
Yet let my bosom, whilst with life it beat,
Breathe a last prayer for all on earth I love.

Slow-creeping pain weighs down my heavy eye,
A chiller faintness steals upon my breast;
'O gentle Muse, with some sweet lullaby'
Rock me in long forgetfulness to rest!

Spirit of Death! whose outstretched pennons dread
Wave o'er the world beneath their shadow spread;
Who darkly speedest on thy destined way,
Midst shrieks and cries, and sounds of dire dismay;
Spirit! behold thy victory! Assume
A form more terrible, an ampler plume;
For he, who wandered o'er the world alone,
Listening to Misery's universal moan;
He who, sustained by Virtue's arm sublime,
Tended the sick and poor from clime to clime,
Low in the dust is laid, thy noblest spoil!
And Mercy ceases from her awful toil!
'Twas where the pestilence at thy command
Arose to desolate the sickening land,
When many a mingled cry and dying prayer
Resounded to the listening midnight air,
When deep dismay heard not the frequent knell,
And the wan carcase festered as it fell:
'Twas there, with holy Virtue's awful mien,
Amid the sad sights of that fearful scene,
Calm he was found: the dews of death he dried;
He spoke of comfort to the poor that cried;
He watched the fading eye, the flagging breath,
Ere yet the languid sense was lost in death;
And with that look protecting angels wear,
Hung o'er the dismal couch of pale Despair!
Friend of mankind! thy righteous task is o'er;
The heart that throbbed with pity beats no more.
Around the limits of this rolling sphere,
Where'er the just and good thy tale shall hear,
A tear shall fall: alone, amidst the gloom
Of the still dungeon, his long sorrow's tomb,
The captive, mourning, o'er his chain shall bend,
To think the cold earth holds his only friend!
He who with labour draws his wasting breath
On the forsaken silent bed of death,
Remembering thy last look and anxious eye,
Shall gaze around, unvisited, and die.
Friend of mankind, farewell! These tears we shed--
So nature dictates--o'er thy earthly bed;
Yet we forget not, it was His high will,
Who saw thee Virtue's arduous task fulfil,
Thy spirit from its toil at last should rest:--
So wills thy GOD, and what He wills is best!
Thou hast encountered dark Disease's train,
Thou hast conversed with Poverty and Pain,
Thou hast beheld the dreariest forms of woe,
That through this mournful vale unfriended go;
And, pale with sympathy, hast paused to hear
The saddest plaints e'er told to human ear.
Go then, the task fulfilled, the trial o'er,
Where sickness, want, and pain are known no more!
How awful did thy lonely track appear,
Enlightening Misery's benighted sphere!
As when an angel all-serene goes forth
To still the raging tempest of the north,
The embattled clouds that hid the struggling day,
Slow from his face retire in dark array;
On the black waves, like promontories hung,
A light, as of the orient morn, is flung,
Till blue and level heaves the silent brine,
And the new-lighted rocks at distance shine;
Ev'n so didst thou go forth with cheering eye--
Before thy glance the shades of misery fly;
So didst thou hush the tempest, stilling wide
Of human woe the loud-lamenting tide.
Nor shall the spirit of those deeds expire,
As fades the feeble spark of vital fire,
But beam abroad, and cheer with lustre mild
Humanity's remotest prospects wild,
Till this frail orb shall from its sphere be hurled,
Till final ruin hush the murmuring world,
And all its sorrows, at the awful blast
Of the archangel's trump, be but as shadows past!
Relentless Time, that steals with silent tread,
Shall tear away the trophies of the dead.
Fame, on the pyramid's aspiring top,
With sighs shall her recording trumpet drop;
The feeble characters of Glory's hand
Shall perish, like the tracks upon the sand;
But not with these expire the sacred flame
Of Virtue, or the good man's honoured name.
HOWARD! it matters not, that far away
From Albion's peaceful shore thy bones decay:
Him it might please, by whose sustaining hand
Thy steps were led through many a distant land.
Thy long and last abode should there be found,
Where many a savage nation prowls around:
That Virtue from the hallowed spot might rise,
And, pointing to the finished sacrifice,
Teach to the roving Tartar's savage clan
Lessons of love, and higher aims of man.
The hoary chieftain, who thy tale shall hear,
Pale on thy grave shall drop his faltering spear;
The cold, unpitying Cossack thirst no more
To bathe his burning falchion deep in gore;
Relentless to the cry of carnage speed,
Or urge o'er gasping heaps his panting steed!
Nor vain the thought that fairer hence may rise
New views of life, and wider charities.
Far from the bleak Riphean mountains hoar,
From the cold Don, and Wolga's wandering shore,
From many a shady forest's lengthening tract,
From many a dark-descending cataract,
Succeeding tribes shall come, and o'er the place,
Where sleeps the general friend of human race,
Instruct their children what a debt they owe;
Speak of the man who trode the paths of woe;
Then bid them to their native woods depart,
With new-born virtue stirring in their heart.
When o'er the sounding Euxine's stormy tides
In hostile pomp the Turk's proud navy rides,
Bent on the frontiers of the Imperial Czar,
To pour the tempest of vindictive war;
If onward to those shores they haply steer,
Where, HOWARD, thy cold dust reposes near,
Whilst o'er the wave the silken pennants stream,
And seen far off the golden crescents gleam,
Amid the pomp of war, the swelling breast
Shall feel a still unwonted awe impressed,
And the relenting Pagan turn aside
To think--on yonder shore the _Christian_ died!
But thou, O Briton! doomed perhaps to roam
An exile many a year and far from home,
If ever fortune thy lone footsteps leads
To the wild Nieper's banks, and whispering reeds,
O'er HOWARD's grave thou shalt impassioned bend,
As if to hold sad converse with a friend.
Whate'er thy fate upon this various scene,
Where'er thy weary pilgrimage hath been,
There shalt thou pause; and shutting from thy heart
Some vain regrets that oft unbidden start,
Think upon him to every lot resigned,
Who wept, who toiled, and perished for mankind.
For me, who musing, HOWARD, on thy fate,
These pensive strains at evening meditate,
I thank thee for the lessons thou hast taught
To mend my heart, or animate my thought.
I thank thee, HOWARD, for that awful view
Of life which thou hast drawn, most sad, most true.
Thou art no more! and the frail fading bloom
Of this poor offering dies upon thy tomb.
Beyond the transient sound of earthly praise
Thy virtues live, perhaps, in seraph's lays!
I, borne in thought, to the wild Nieper's wave,
Sigh to the reeds that whisper o'er thy grave.

Mortal! who, armed with holy fortitude,
The path of good right onward hast pursued;
May HE, to whose eternal throne on high
The sufferers of the earth with anguish cry,
Be thy protector! On that dreary road
That leads thee patient to the last abode
Of wretchedness, in peril and in pain,
May HE thy steps direct, thy heart sustain!
'Mid scenes, where pestilence in darkness flies;
In caverns, where deserted misery lies;
So safe beneath His shadow thou may'st go,
To cheer the dismal wastes of human woe.
O CHARITY! our helpless nature's pride,
Thou friend to him who knows no friend beside,
Is there in morning's breath, or the sweet gale
That steals o'er the tired pilgrim of the vale,
Cheering with fragrance fresh his weary frame,
Aught like the incense of thy sacred flame?
Is aught in all the beauties that adorn
The azure heaven, or purple lights of morn;
Is aught so fair in evening's lingering gleam,
As from thine eye the meek and pensive beam
That falls like saddest moonlight on the hill
And distant grove, when the wide world is still!
Thine are the ample views, that unconfined
Stretch to the utmost walks of human kind:
Thine is the spirit that with widest plan
Brother to brother binds, and man to man.
But who for thee, O Charity! will bear
Hardship, and cope with peril and with care!
Who, for thy sake, will social sweets forego
For scenes of sickness, and the sights of woe!
Who, for thy sake, will seek the prison's gloom,
Where ghastly Guilt implores her lingering doom;
Where Penitence unpitied sits, and pale,
That never told to human ears her tale;
Where Agony, half-famished, cries in vain;
Where dark Despondence murmurs o'er her chain;
Where gaunt Disease is wasted to the bone,
And hollow-eyed Despair forgets to groan!
Approving Mercy marks the vast design,
And proudly cries--HOWARD, the task be thine!
Already 'mid the darksome vaults profound,
The inner prison deep beneath the ground,
Consoling hath thy tender look appeared:
In horror's realm the voice of peace is heard!
Be the sad scene disclosed; fearless unfold
The grating door--the inmost cell behold!
Thought shrinks from the dread sight; the paly lamp
Burns faint amid the infectious vapours damp;
Beneath its light full many a livid mien,
And haggard eye-ball, through the dusk are seen.
In thought I see thee, at each hollow sound,
With humid lids oft anxious gaze around.
But oh! for him who, to yon vault confined,
Has bid a long farewell to human kind;
His wasted form, his cold and bloodless cheek,
A tale of sadder sorrow seem to speak:
Of friends, perhaps now mingled with the dead;
Of hope, that, like a faithless flatterer, fled
In the utmost hour of need; or of a son
Cast to the bleak world's mercy; or of one
Whose heart was broken, when the stern behest
Tore him from pale affection's bleeding breast.
Despairing, from his cold and flinty bed,
With fearful muttering he has raised his head:
What pitying spirit, what unwonted guest,
Strays to this last retreat, these shades unblest?
From life and light shut out, beneath this cell
Long have I bid the cheering sun farewell.
I heard for ever closed the jealous door,
I marked my bed on the forsaken floor,
I had no hope on earth, no human friend:
Let me unpitied to the dust descend!
Cold is his frozen heart--his eye is reared
To Heaven no more--and on his sable beard
The tear has ceased to fall. Thou canst not bring
Back to his mournful heart the morn of spring;--
Thou canst not bid the rose of health renew
Upon his wasted cheek its crimson hue;
But at thy look, (ere yet to hate resigned,
He murmurs his last curses on mankind),
At thy kind look one tender thought shall rise,
And his full soul shall thank thee ere he dies!
Oh ye, who list to Pleasure's vacant song,
As in her silken train ye troop along;
Who, like rank cowards, from affliction fly,
Or, whilst the precious hours of life pass by,
Lie slumbering in the sun! Awake, arise,
To these instructive pictures turn your eyes;
The awful view with other feelings scan,
And learn from HOWARD what man owes to man!
These, Virtue! are thy triumphs, that adorn
Fitliest our nature, and bespeak us born
For loftier action; not to gaze and run
From clime to clime; nor flutter in the sun,
Dragging a droning flight from flower to flower,
Like summer insects in a gaudy hour;
Nor yet o'er love-sick tales with fancy range,
And cry--'Tis pitiful, 'tis wondrous strange!
But on life's varied views to look around,
And raise expiring sorrow from the ground:--
And he who thus has borne his part assigned
In the sad fellowship of human kind,
Or for a moment soothed the bitter pain
Of a poor brother, has not lived in vain!
But 'tis not that Compassion should bestow
An unavailing tear on want or woe:
Lo! fairer Order rises from thy plan,
Befriending virtue, and adorning man.
That Comfort cheers the dark abode of pain,
Where wan Disease prayed for relief in vain;
That Mercy soothes the hard behest of law;
That Misery smiles upon her bed of straw;
That the dark felon's clan no more, combined,
Murmur in murderous leagues against mankind;
That to each cell, a mild yet mournful guest,
Contrition comes, and calms the laboring breast,
Whilst long-forgotten tears of virtue flow;
Thou, generous friend of all--to thee we owe!
To thee, that Pity sees her views expand
To many a cheerless haunt, and distant land!
Whilst warm Philanthropy extends her ray,
Wide as the world, and general as the day!
HOWARD! I view those deeds, and think how vain
The triumphs of weak man, the feeble strain
That Flattery brings to Conquest's crimson car,
Amid the bannered host, and the proud tents of war!
From realm to realm the hideous War-fiend hies
Wide o'er the wasted earth; before him flies
Affright, on pinions fleeter than the wind;
Whilst Death and Desolation fast behind
The havoc of his echoing march pursue:
Meantime his steps are bathed in the warm dew
Of bloodshed, and of tears;--but his dread name
Shall perish--the loud clarion of his fame
One day shall cease, and, wrapt in hideous gloom,
Forgetfulness bestride his shapeless tomb!
But bear thou fearless on;--the God of all,
To whom the afflicted kneel, the friendless call,
From His high throne of mercy shall approve
The holy deeds of Mercy and of Love:
For when the vanities of life's brief day
Oblivion's hurrying wing shall sweep away,
Each act by Charity and Mercy done,
High o'er the wrecks of time, shall live alone,
Immortal as the heavens, and beauteous bloom
To other worlds, and realms beyond the tomb.

The night was still and clear, when, o'er the snows,
Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,--
A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone,
Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone;
And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke,
Thus to the spirits of the fire he spoke:--

Ye, who tread the hidden deeps,
Where the silent earthquake sleeps;
Ye, who track the sulphurous tide,
Or on hissing vapours ride,--
Spirits, come!
From worlds of subterraneous night;
From fiery realms of lurid light;
From the ore's unfathomed bed;
From the lava's whirlpools red,--
Spirits, come!
On Chili's foes rush with vindictive sway,
And sweep them from the light of living day!
Heard ye not the ravenous brood,
That flap their wings, and scream for blood?
On Peru's devoted shore
Their murderous beaks are red with gore;
Yet here, impatient for new prey,
The insatiate vultures track their way.
Let them perish! they, whose bands
Swept remote and peaceful lands!
Let them perish!--on their head,
Descend the darkness of the dead!
Spirits, now your caves forsake:
Hark! ten thousand warriors wake!--
Spirits, their high cause defend!--
From your caves ascend! ascend!

As thus the Genius of the Andes spoke,
The trembling mountain heaved with darker smoke;
Lightnings, and phantom-forms, by fits appeared;
His mighty voice far off Osorno heard;
The caverned deeps shook through their vast profound,
And Chimborazzo's height rolled back the sound.
With lifted arm, and towering stature high,
And aspect frowning to the middle sky
(Its misty form dilated in the wind),
The phantom stood,--till, less and less defined,
Into thin air it faded from the sight,
Lost in the ambient haze of slow-returning light.
Its feathery-seeming crown, its giant spear,
Its limbs of huge proportion, disappear;
And the bare mountains to the dawn disclose
The same long line of solitary snows.
The morning shines, the military train
Streams far and wide along the tented plain;
And plaited cuirasses, and helms of steel,
Throw back the sunbeams, as the horsemen wheel:
Thus, with arms glancing to the eastern light,
Pass, in review, proud steeds and cohorts bright;
For all the host, by break of morrow's gray,
Wind back their march to Penco's northern bay,
Valdivia, fearful lest confederate foes,
Ambushed and dark, his progress might oppose,
Marshals to-day the whole collected force,
File and artillery, cuirassier and horse:
Himself yet lingers ere he joins the train,
That moves, in ordered march, along the plain,
While troops, and Indian slaves beneath his eye,
The labours of the rising city ply:
Wide glows the general toil; the mole extends,
The watch-tower o'er the desert surge ascends;
And battlements, and rising ramparts, shine
Above the ocean's blue and level line.
The sun ascended to meridian height,
And all the northern bastions shone in light;
With hoarse acclaim, the gong and trumpet rung,
The Moorish slaves aloft their cymbals swung,
When the proud victor, in triumphant state,
Rode forth, in arms, through the portcullis' gate.
With neck high-arching as he smote the ground,
And restless pawing to the trumpet's sound,--
With mantling mane, o'er his broad shoulders spread,
And nostrils blowing, and dilated red,--
The coal-black steed, in rich caparison
Far trailing to the ground, went proudly on.
Proudly he tramped, as conscious of his charge,
And turned around his eye-balls, bright and large,
And shook the frothy boss, as in disdain;
And tossed the flakes, indignant, off his mane;
And, with high-swelling veins, exulting pressed
Proudly against the barb his heaving breast.
The fate of empires glowing in his thought,
Thus armed, the tented field Valdivia sought.
On the left side his poised shield he bore,
With quaint devices richly blazoned o'er;
Above the plumes, upon his helmet's cone,
Castile's imperial crest illustrious shone;
Blue in the wind the escutcheoned mantle flowed,
O'er the chained mail, which tinkled as he rode.
The barred vizor raised, you might discern
His clime-changed countenance, though pale, yet stern,
And resolute as death,--whilst in his eye
Sat proud Assurance, Fame, and Victory.
Lautaro, now in manhood's rising pride,
Rode, with a lance, attendant at his side,
In Spanish mantle gracefully arrayed;
Upon his brow a tuft of feathers played:
His glossy locks, with dark and mantling grace,
Shaded the noonday sunbeams on his face.
Though passed in tears the dayspring of his youth,
Valdivia loved his gratitude and truth:
He, in Valdivia, owned a nobler friend;
Kind to protect, and mighty to defend.
So, on he rode; upon his youthful mien
A mild but sad intelligence was seen;
Courage was on his open brow, yet care
Seemed like a wandering shade to linger there;
And though his eye shone, as the eagle's, bright,
It beamed with humid, melancholy light
When now Valdivia saw the embattled line,
Helmets, and swords, and shields, and matchlocks, shine;
Now the long phalanx still and steady stand,
Fixed every eye, and motionless each hand;
Then slowly clustering, into columns wheel,
Each with the red-cross banners of Castile;
While trumps, and drums, and cymbals, to his ear
Made music such as soldiers love to hear;
While horsemen checked their steeds, or, bending low
With levelled lances, o'er the saddle-bow,
Rode gallantly at tilt; and thunders broke,
Instant involving van and rear in smoke,
Till winds the obscuring volume rolled away,
And the red file, stretched out in long array,
More radiant moved beneath the beams of day;
While ensigns, arms, and crosses, glittered bright,--
Philip! he cried, seest thou the glorious sight?
And dost thou deem the tribes of this poor land
Can men, and arms, and steeds, like these, withstand?
Forgive!--the youth replied, and checked a tear,--
The land where my forefathers sleep is dear!--
My native land!--this spot of blessed earth,
The scene where I, and all I love, had birth!
What gratitude fidelity can give
Is yours, my lord!--you shielded--bade me live,
When, in the circuit of the world so wide,
I had but one, one only friend beside.
I bowed resigned to fate; I kissed the hand,
Red with the best blood of my father's land!
But mighty as thou art, Valdivia, know,
Though Cortes' desolating march laid low
The shrines of rich, voluptuous Mexico;
With carcases, though proud Pizarro strew
The Sun's imperial temple in Peru,
Yet the rude dwellers of this land are brave,
And the last spot they lose will be their grave!
A moment's crimson crossed Valdivia's cheek--
Then o'er the plain he spurred, nor deigned to speak,
Waving the youth, at distance, to retire;
None saw the eye that shot terrific fire.
As their commander sternly rode along,
Troop after troop, halted the martial throng;
And all the pennoned trumps a louder blast
Blew, as the Southern World's great victor passed.
Lautaro turned, scarce heeding, from the view,
And from the noise of trumps and drums withdrew;
And now, while troubled thoughts his bosom swell,
Seeks the gray Missionary's humble cell.
Fronting the ocean, but beyond the ken
Of public view, and sounds of murmuring men,
Of unhewn roots composed, and gnarled wood,
A small and rustic oratory stood;
Upon its roof of reeds appeared a cross,
The porch within was lined with mantling moss;
A crucifix and hour-glass, on each side--
One to admonish seemed, and one to guide;
This, to impress how soon life's race is o'er;
And that, to lift our hopes where time shall be no more.
O'er the rude porch, with wild and gadding stray,
The clustering copu weaved its trellis gay;
Two mossy pines, high bending, interwove
Their aged and fantastic arms above.
In front, amid the gay surrounding flowers,
A dial counted the departing hours,
On which the sweetest light of summer shone,--
A rude and brief inscription marked the stone:
To count, with passing shade, the hours,
I placed the dial 'mid the flowers;
That, one by one, came forth, and died,
Blooming, and withering, round its side.
Mortal, let the sight impart
Its pensive moral to thy heart!
Just heard to trickle through a covert near,
And soothing, with perpetual lapse, the ear,
A fount, like rain-drops, filtered through the stone,
And, bright as amber, on the shallows shone.
Intent his fairy pastime to pursue,
And, gem-like, hovering o'er the violets blue,
The humming-bird, here, its unceasing song
Heedlessly murmured, all the summer long;
And when the winter came, retired to rest,
And from the myrtles hung its trembling nest.
No sounds of a conflicting world were near;
The noise of ocean faintly met the ear,
That seemed, as sunk to rest the noontide blast,
But dying sounds of passions that were past;
Or closing anthems, when, far off, expire
The lessening echoes of the distant choir.
Here, every human sorrow hushed to rest,
His pale hands meekly crossed upon his breast,
Anselmo sat: the sun, with westering ray,
Just touched his temples, and his locks of gray.
There was no worldly feeling in his eye;
The world to him was 'as a thing gone by.'
Now, all his features lit, he raised his look,
Then bent it thoughtful, and unclasped the book;
And whilst the hour-glass shed its silent sand,
A tame opossum licked his withered hand.
That sweetest light of slow-declining day,
Which through the trellis poured its slanting ray,
Resting a moment on his few gray hairs,
Seemed light from heaven sent down to bless his prayers.
When the trump echoed to the quiet spot,
He thought upon the world, but mourned it not;
Enough if his meek wisdom could control,
And bend to mercy, one proud soldier's soul;
Enough, if, while these distant scenes he trod,
He led one erring Indian to his God.
Whence comes my son? with kind complacent look
He asked, and closed again the embossed book.
I come to thee for peace, the youth replied:
Oh, there is strife, and cruelty, and pride,
In this sad Christian world! My native land
Was happy, ere the soldier, with his band
Of fell destroyers, like a vulture, came,
And gave its peaceful scenes to blood and flame.
When will the turmoil of earth's tempests cease?
Father, I come to thee for peace--for peace!
Seek peace, the father cried, with God above:
In His good time, all will be peace and love.
We mourn, indeed, mourn that all sounds of ill,
Earth's fairest scenes with one deep murmur fill;
That yonder sun, when evening paints the sky,
Sinks, beauteous, on a world of misery;
The course of wide destruction to withstand,
We lift our feeble voice--our trembling hand;
But still, bowed low, or smitten to the dust,
Father of mercy, still in Thee we trust!
Through good or ill, in poverty or wealth,
In joy or woe, in sickness or in health,
Meek Piety thy awful hand surveys,
And the faint murmur turns to prayer and praise!
We know--whatever evils we deplore--
Thou hast permitted, and we know no more!
Behold, illustrious on the subject plain,
Some tow'r-crowned city of imperial Spain!
Hark! 'twas the earthquake! clouds of dust alone
Ascend from earth, where tower and temple shone!
Such is the conqueror's dread path: the grave
Yawns for its millions where his banners wave;
But shall vain man, whose life is but a sigh,
With sullen acquiescence gaze and die?
Alas, how little of the mighty maze
Of Providence our mortal ken surveys!
Heaven's awful Lord, pavilioned in the clouds,
Looks through the darkness that all nature shrouds;
And, far beyond the tempest and the night,
Bids man his course hold on to scenes of endless light.

Oh! lend that lute, sweet Archimage, to me!
Enough of care and heaviness
The weary lids of life depress,
And doubly blest that gentle heart shall be,
That wooes of poesy the visions bland,
And strays forgetful o'er enchanted land!
Oh! lend that lute, sweet Archimage, to me!
So spoke, with ardent look, yet eyebrow sad,
When he had passed o'er many a mountain rude,
And many a wild and weary solitude,
'Mid a green vale, a wandering minstrel-lad.
With eyes that shone in softened flame,
With wings and wand, young Fancy came;
And as she touched a trembling lute,
The lone enthusiast stood entranced and mute.
It was a sound that made his soul forego
All thoughts of sadness in a world of woe.
Oh, lend that lute! he cried: Hope, Pity, Love,
Shall listen; and each valley, rock, and grove,
Shall witness, as with deep delight,
From orient morn to dewy-stealing night.
My spirit, rapt in trance of sweetness high,
Shall drink the heartfelt sound with tears of ecstasy!
As thus he spoke, soft voices seemed to say,
Come away, come away;
Where shall the heart-sick minstrel stray,
But (viewing all things like a dream)
By haunted wood, or wizard stream?
That, like a hermit weeping,
Amid the gray stones creeping;
With voice distinct, yet faint,
Calls on Repose herself to hear its soothing plaint.
For him, romantic Solitude
Shall pile sublime her mountains rude;
For him, with shades more soft impressed,
The lucid lake's transparent breast
Shall show the banks, the woods, the hill,
More clear, more beautiful, more still.
For him more musical shall wave
The pines o'er Echo's moonlit cave;
While sounds as of a fairy lyre
Amid the shadowy cliffs expire!
This valley where the raptured minstrel stood
Was shaded with a circling slope of wood,
And rich in beauty, with that valley vied,
Thessalian Tempe, crowned with verdant bay,
Where smooth and clear Peneus winds his way;
And Ossa and Olympus, on each side,
Rise dark with woods; or that Sicilian plain
Which Arethusa's clearest waters lave,
By many a haunt of Pan, and wood-nymph's cave,
Lingering and listening to the Doric strain
Of him, the bard whose music might succeed
To the wild melodies of Pan's own reed!
This scene the mistress of the valley held,
Fancy, a magic maid; and at her will,
Aerial castles crowned the gleaming hill,
Or forests rose, or lapse of water welled.
Sometimes she sat with lifted eye,
And marked the dark storm in the western sky;
Sometimes she looked, and scarce her breath would draw,
As fearful things, not to be told, she saw;
And sometimes, like a vision of the air,
On wings of shifting light she floated here and there.
In the breeze her garments flew,
Of the brightest skiey blue,
Lucid as the tints of morn,
When Summer trills his pipe of corn:
Her tresses to each wing descending fall,
Or, lifted by the wind,
Stream loose and unconfined,
Like golden threads, beneath her myrtle coronal.
The listening passions stood aloof and mute,
As oft the west wind touched her trembling lute.
But when its sounds the youthful minstrel heard,
Strange mingled feelings, not to be expressed,
Rose undefined, yet blissful, on his breast,
And all the softened scene in sweeter light appeared.
Then Fancy waved her wand, and lo!
An airy troop went beckoning by:
Come, from toil and worldly woe;
Come, live with us in vales remote! they cry.
These are the flitting phantasies; the dreams
That lead the heart through all that elfin land,
Where half-seen shapes entice with whispers bland.
Meantime the clouds, impressed with livelier beams,
Roll, in the lucid track of air,
Arrayed in coloured brede, with semblances more fair.
The airy troop, as on they sail,
Thus the pensive stranger hail:
In the pure and argent sky,
There our distant chambers lie;
The bed is strewed with blushing roses,
When Quietude at eve reposes,
Oft trembling lest her bowers should fade,
In the cold earth's humid shade.
Come, rest with us! evanishing, they cried--
Come, rest with us! the lonely vale replied.
Then Fancy beckoned, and with smiling mien,
A radiant form arose, like the fair Queen
Of Beauty: from her eye divinely bright,
A richer lustre shot, a more attractive light.
She said: With fairer tints I can adorn
The living landscape, fairer than the morn.
The summer clouds in shapes romantic rolled,
And those they edge the fading west, like gold;
The lake that sleeps in sunlight, yet impressed
With shades more sweet than real on its breast;
'Mid baffling stones, beneath a partial ray,
The small brook huddling its uneven way;
The blue far distant hills, the silvery sea,
And every scene of summer speaks of me:
But most I wake the sweetest wishes warm,
Where the fond gaze is turned on woman's breathing form.
So passing silent through a myrtle grove,
Beauty first led him to the bower of Love.
A mellow light through the dim covert strayed,
And opening roses canopied the shade.
Why does the hurrying pulse unbidden leap!
Behold, in yonder glade that nymph asleep!
The heart-struck minstrel hangs, with lingering gaze,
O'er every charm his eye impassioned strays!
An edge of white is seen, and scarcely seen,
As soft she breathes, her coral lips between;
A lambent ray steals from her half-closed eye,
As her breast heaves a short imperfect sigh.
Sleep, winds of summer, o'er the leafy bower,
Nor move the light bells of the nodding flower;
Lest but a sound of stirring leaves might seem
To break the charm of her delicious dream!
And ye, fond, rising, throbbing thoughts, away,
Lest syren Pleasure all the soul betray!
Oh! turn, and listen to the ditty
From the lowly cave of Pity.
On slaughter's plain, while Valour grieves,
There he sunk to rest,
And the ring-dove scattered leaves
Upon his bleeding breast!
Her face was hid, while her pale arms enfold
What seemed an urn of alabaster cold;
To this she pressed her heaving bosom bare:
The drops that gathered in the dank abode
Fell dripping, on her long dishevelled hair;
And still her tears, renewed, and silent, flowed:
And when the winds of autumn ceased to swell,
At times was heard a slow and melancholy knell!
'Twas in the twilight of the deepest wood,
Beneath whose boughs like sad Cocytus, famed
Through fabling Greece, from lamentation named
A river dark and silent flowed, there stood
A pale and melancholy man, intent
His look upon that drowsy stream he bent,
As ever counting, when the fitful breeze
With strange and hollow sound sung through the trees,
Counting the sallow leaves, that down the current went.
He saw them not:
Earth seemed to him one universal blot.
Sometimes, as most distempered, to and fro
He paced; and sometimes fixed his chilling look
Upon a dreadful book,
Inscribed with secret characters of woe;
While gibbering imps, as mocking him, appeared,
And airy laughter 'mid the dusk was heard.
Then Fancy waved her wand again,
And all that valley that so lovely smiled
Was changed to a bare champaign, waste and wild.
'What pale and phantom-horseman rides amain?'
'Tis Terror;--all the plain, far on, is spread
With skulls and bones, and relics of the dead!
From his black trump he blew a louder blast,
And earthquakes muttered as the giant passed.
Then said that magic maid, with aspect bland,
'Tis thine to seize his phantom spear,
'Tis thine his sable trumpet to command,
And thrill the inmost heart with shuddering fear.
But hark! to Music's softer sound,
New scenes and fairer views accordant rise:
Above, around,
The mingled measure swells in air, and dies.
Music, in thy charmed shell,
What sounds of holy magic dwell!
Oft when that shell was to the ear applied,
Confusion of rich harmonies,
All swelling rose,
That came, as with a gently-swelling tide:
Then at the close,
Angelic voices seemed, aloft,
To answer as it died the cadence soft.
Now, like the hum of distant ocean's stream,
The murmurs of the wond'rous concave seem;
And now exultingly their tones prolong
The chorded paeans of the choral song,
Then Music, with a voice more wildly sweet
Than winds that pipe on the forsaken shore,
When the last rain-drops of the west are o'er,
Warbled: Oh, welcome to my blest retreat,
And give my sounds to the responsive lyre:
With me to these melodious groves retire,
And such pure feelings share,
As, far from noise and folly, soothe thee there.
Here Fancy, as the prize were won,
And now she hailed her favourite son,
With energy impatient cried:
The weary world is dark and wide,
Lo! I am with thee still to comfort and to guide.
Nor fear, if, grim before thine eyes,
Pale worldly Want, a spectre, lowers;
What is a world of vanities
To a world as sweet as ours!
When thy heart is sad and lone,
And loves to dwell on pleasures flown,
When that heart no more shall bound
At some kind voice's well-known sound,
My spells thy drooping languor shall relieve,
And airy spirits touch thy lonely harp at eve.
Look!--Delight and Hope advancing,
Music joins her thrilling notes,
O'er the level lea come dancing;
Seize the vision as it floats,
Bright-eyed Rapture hovers o'er them,
Waving light his seraph wings,
Youth exulting flies before them,
Scattering cowslips as he sings!
Come now, my car pursue,
The wayward Fairy cried;
And high amid the fields of air,
Above the clouds, together we will ride,
And posting on the viewless winds,
So leave the cares of earth and all its thoughts behind.
I can sail, and I can fly,
To all regions of the sky,
On the shooting meteor's course,
On a winged griffin-horse!
She spoke: when Wisdom's self drew nigh,
A noble sternness in her searching eye;
Like Pallas helmed, and in her hand a spear,
As not in idle warfare bent, but still,
As resolute, to cope with every earthly ill.
In youthful dignity severe,
She stood: And shall the aspiring mind,
To Fancy be alone resigned!
Alas! she cried, her witching lay
Too often leads the heart astray!
Still, weak minstrel, wouldst thou rove,
Drooping in the distant grove,
Forgetful of all ties that bind
Thee, a brother, to mankind?
Has Fancy's feeble voice defied
The ills to poor humanity allied?
Can she, like Wisdom, bid thy soul sustain
Its post of duty in a life of pain!
Can she, like meek Religion, bid thee bear
Contempt and hardship in a world of care!
Yet let not my rebuke decry,
In all, her blameless witchery,
Or from the languid bosom tear
Each sweet illusion nourished there.
With dignity and truth, combined,
Still may she rule the manly mind;
Her sweetest magic still impart
To soften, not subdue, the heart:
Still may she warm the chosen breast,
Not as the sovereign, but the guest.
Then shall she lead the blameless Muse
Through all her fairest, wildest views;
To mark amid the flowers of morn,
The bee go forth with early horn;
Or when the moon, a softer light
Sheds on the rocks and seas of night,
To hear the circling fairy bands
Sing, Come unto these yellow sands!
Sweeter is our light than day,
Fond enthusiast, come away!
Then Chivalry again shall call
The champions to her bannered hall!
The pipe, and song, with many a mingled shout,
Ring through the forest, as the satyr-rout,
Dance round the dragon-chariot of Romance;
Forth pricks the errant knight with rested lance;
Imps, demons, fays, in antic train succeed,
The wandering maiden, and the winged steed!
The muttering wizard turns, with haggard look,
The bloody leaves of the accursed book,
Whilst giants, from the gloomy castle tower,
With lifted bats of steel, more dreadful lower!
At times, the magic shall prevail
Of the wild and wonderous tale;
At times, high rapture shall prolong
The deep, enthusiastic song.
Hence, at midnight, thou shalt stray,
Where dark ocean flings its spray,
To hear o'er heaven's resounding arch
The Thunder-Lord begin his march!
Or mark the flashes, that present
Some far-off shattered monument;
Whilst along the rocky vale,
Red fires, mingled with the hail,
Run along upon the ground,
And the thunders deeper sound!
The loftier Muse, with awful mien,
Upon a lonely rock is seen:
Full is the eye that speaks the dauntless soul;
She seems to hear the gathering tempest roll
Beneath her feet; she bids an eagle fly,
Breasting the whirlwind, through the dark-red sky;
Or, with elated look, lifts high the spear,
As sounds of distant battles roll more near.
Now deep-hushed in holy trance,
She sees the powers of Heaven advance,
And wheels, instinct with spirit, bear
God's living chariot through the air;
Now on the wings of morn she seems to rise,
And join the strain of more than mortal harmonies.
Thy heart shall beat exulting as she sings,
And thou shalt cry: Give me an angel's wings!
With sadder sound, o'er Pity's cave,
The willow in the wind shall wave;
And all the listening passions stand,
Obedient to thy great command.
With Poesy's sweet charm impressed,
Fancy thus shall warm thy breast;
Still her smiling train be thine,
Still her lovely visions shine,
To cheer, beyond my boasted power,
A sad or solitary hour.
Thus let them soothe a while thy heart,
'Come like shadows, so depart;'
But never may the witching lay
Lead each sense from life astray;
For vain the poet's muse of fire,
Vain the magic of his lyre,
Unless the touch subdued impart
Truth and wisdom to the heart!

I am the comforter of them that mourn;
My scenes well shadowed, and my carol sweet,
Cheer the poor passengers of life's rude bourne,
Till they are sheltered in that last retreat,
Where human toils and troubles are forgot.
These sounds I heard amid this mortal road,
When I had reached with pain one pleasant spot,
So that for joy some tears in silence flowed;
I raised mine eyes, sickness had long depressed,
And felt thy warmth, O sun! come cheering to my breast.

The storm of night had ceased upon the plain,
When thoughtful in the forest-walk I strayed,
To the long hollow murmur of the main
Listening, and to the many leaves that made
A drowsy cadence, as the high trees waved;
When straight a beauteous scene burst on my sight;
Smooth were the waters that the lowland laved:
And lo! a form, as of some fairy sprite,
Who held in her right hand a budding spray,
And like a sea-maid sung her sweetly warbled lay.

Soothing as steals the summer-wave she sung:
The grisly phantoms of the night are gone
To hear in shades forlorn the death-bell rung;
But thou whom sickness hast left weak and wan,
Turn from their spectre-terrors the green sea
That whispers at my feet, the matin gale
That crisps its shining marge shall solace thee,
And thou my long-forgotten voice shalt hail,
For I am Hope, whom weary hearts confess
The soothest sprite that sings on life's long wilderness.

As slowly ceased her tender voice, I stood
Delighted: the hard way, so lately passed,
Seemed smooth; the ocean's bright extended flood
Before me stretched; the clouds that overcast
Heaven's melancholy vault hurried away,
Driven seaward, and the azure hills appeared;
The sunbeams shone upon their summits gray,
Strange saddening sounds no more by fits were heard,
But birds, in new leaves shrouded, sung aloft,
And o'er the level seas Spring's healing airs blew soft.

As when a traveller, who many days
Hath journeyed 'mid Arabian deserts still,
A dreary solitude far on surveys,
And met, nor flitting bird, nor gushing rill,
But near some marble ruin, gleaming pale,
Sighs mindful of the haunts of cheerful man,
And thinks he hears in every sickly gale
The bells of some approaching caravan;
At length, emerging o'er the dim tract, sees
Damascus' golden fanes, and minarets, and trees:

So beat my bosom when my winding way
Led through the thickets to a sheltered vale,
Where the fair syren sat; a smooth clear bay
Skirted with woods appeared, where many a sail
Went shining o'er the watery surface still,
Lessening at last in the gray ocean flood;
And yonder, half-way up the fronting hill,
Peeping from forth the trees, a cottage stood,
Above whose peaceful umbrage, trailing high,
A little smoke went up, and stained the cloudless sky.

I turned, and lo! a mountain seemed to rise,
Upon whose top a spiry citadel
Lifted its dim-seen turrets to the skies,
Where some high lord of the domain might dwell;
And onward, where the eye scarce stretched its sight,
Hills over hills in long succession rose,
Touched with a softer and yet softer light,
And all was blended as in deep repose;
The woods, the sea, the hills that shone so fair,
Till woods, and sea, and hills seemed fading into air.

At once, methought, I saw a various throng
To this enchanting spot their footsteps bend;
All drawn, sweet Hope! by thy inspiring song,
Which melodies scarce mortal seem to blend.
First buxom Youth, with cheeks of glowing red,
Came lightly tripping o'er the morning dew,
He wore a harebell garland on his head,
And stretched his hands at the bright-bursting view:
A mountain fawn went bounding by his side,
Around whose slender neck a silver bell was tied.

Then said I: Mistress of the magic song,
Oh, pity 'twere that hearts that know no guile
Should ever feel the pangs of truth or wrong!
She heeded not, but sang with lovelier smile:
Enjoy, O youth, the season of thy May;
Hark, how the throstles in the hawthorn sing!
The hoary Time, that resteth night nor day,
O'er the earth's shade may speed with noiseless wing;
But heed not thou; snatch the brief joys that rise,
And sport beneath the light of these unclouded skies.

His fine eye flashing an unwonted fire,
Then Fancy o'er the glade delighted went;
He struck at times a small and silver lyre,
Or gazed upon the rolling element;
Sometimes he took his mirror, which did show
The various landscape lovelier than the life;
Beaming more bright the vivid tints did glow,
And so well mingled was the colours' strife,
That the fond heart, the beauteous shades once seen,
Would sigh for such retreats, for vales and woods so green!

Gay was his aspect, and his airy vest,
As loose it flowed, such colours did display,
As paint the clouds reposing in the west,
Or the moist rainbow's radiant arch inlay;
And now he tripped, like fairy of the wood,
And seemed with dancing spirits to rejoice,
And now he hung his head in pensive mood:
Meantime, O Hope! he listened to thy voice,
And whilst of joy and youth it cheerly sung,
He touched his answering harp, and o'er the valley sprung.

Pleasure, a frolic nymph, to the glad sound
Came dancing, as all tears she might forget;
And now she gazed with a sweet archness round,
And wantonly displayed a silken net:
She won her way with fascinating air--
Her eyes illumined with a tender light,
Her smile's strange blandishment, her shaded hair
That lengthening hung, her teeth as ivory white,
That peeped from her moist lip, seemed to inspire
Tumultuous wishes warm, and dreams of fond desire.

What softer passions did thy bosom move,
When those melodious measures met thine ear,
Child of Sincerity, and virtuous Love!
Thine eyes did shine beneath a blissful tear
That still were turned towards the tranquil scene,
Where the thin smoke rose from the embowered cot;
And thou didst think, that there, with smile serene,
In quiet shades, and every pang forgot,
Thou mightest sink on pure Affection's breast,
And listen to the winds that whispered thee to rest.

I thought, O Love, how seldom art thou found
Without annoyance in this earthly state!
For, haply, thou dost feed some rankling wound,
Or on thy youth pale poverty doth wait,
Till years, on heavy wing, have rolled away;
Or where thou most didst hope firm faith to see,
Thou meetest fickleness estranged and cold;
Or if some true and tender heart there be,
On which, through every change, thy soul might trust,
Death comes with his fell dart, and smites it to the dust!

But lusty Enterprise, with looks of glee,
Approached the drooping youth, as he would say,
Come to the high woods and the hills with me,
And cast thy sullen myrtle-wreath away.
Upon a neighing courser he did sit,
That stretched its arched neck, in conscious pride,
And champed as with disdain a golden bit,
But Hope her animating voice applied,
And Enterprise with speed impetuous passed,
Whilst the long vale returned his wreathed bugle's blast.

Suddenly, lifting high his ponderous spear,
A mailed man came forth with scornful pride,
I saw him, towering in his proud career,
Along the valley with a giant stride:
Upon his helm, in letters of bright gold,
That to the sun's meridian splendour shone,
Ambition's name far off I might behold.
Meantime from earth there came a hollow moan;
But Fame, who followed, her loud trumpet blew,
And to the murmuring beach with eyes a-flame he flew.

And now already had he gained the strand,
Where a tall vessel rode with sail unfurled,
And soon he thought to reach the farther land,
Which to his eager eye seemed like a world
That he by strength might win and make his own;
And in that citadel, which shone so bright,
Seat him, a purple sovereign, on his throne.
So he went tilting o'er the waters white,
And whilst he oft looked back with stern disdain,
In louder tone, methought, was heard the inspiring strain:

By the shade of cities old,
By many a river stained with gore,
By the sword of Sesac bold,
Who smote the nations from the shore
Of ancient Nile to India's farthest plain,
By Fame's proud pillars, and by Valour's shield
By mighty chiefs in glorious battle slain,
Assert thy sway; amid the bloody field
Pursue thy march, and to the heights sublime
Of Honour's glittering cliffs, a mighty conqueror climb!

Then said I, in my heart: Man, thou dost rear
Thine eye to heaven, and vaunt thy lofty worth;
The ensign of dominion thou dost bear
O'er nature's works; but thou dost oft go forth,
Urged by proud hopes to ravage and destroy,
Thou dost build up a name by cruel deeds;
Whilst to the peaceful scenes of love and joy,
Sorrow, and crime, and solitude, succeeds.
Hence, when her war-song Victory doth sing,
Destruction flaps aloft her iron-hurtling wing.

But see, as one awakened from a trance,
With hollow and dim eyes and stony stare,
Captivity with faltering step advance!
Dripping and knotted was her coal-black hair;
For she had long been hid, as in the grave;
No sounds the silence of her prison broke,
Nor one companion had she in her cave,
Save Terror's dismal shape, that no word spoke;
But to a stony coffin on the floor
With lean and hideous finger pointed evermore.

The lark's shrill song, the early village chime,
The upland echo of the winding horn,
The far-heard clock that spoke the passing time,
Had never pierced her solitude forlorn;
At length, released from the deep dungeon's gloom,
She feels the fragrance of the vernal gale;
She sees more sweet the living landscape bloom,
And while she listens to Hope's tender tale,
She thinks her long-lost friends shall bless her sight,
And almost faints with joy amid the broad daylight.

And near the spot, as with reluctant feet,
Slowly desponding Melancholy drew,
The wind and rain her naked breast had beat,
Sunk was her eye, and sallow was her hue:
In the huge forest's unrejoicing shade
Bewildered had she wandered day by day,
And many a grisly fiend her heart dismayed,
And cold and wet upon the ground she lay;
But now such sounds with mellow sweetness stole,
As lapped in dreams of bliss her slow-consenting soul.

Next, to the woody glen poor Mania strayed,
Most pale and wild, yet gentle was her look;
A slender garland she of straw had made,
Of flowers and rushes from the running brook;
But as she sadly passed, the tender sound
Of its sharp pang her wounded heart beguiled;
She dropped her half-made garland on the ground,
And then she sighed, and then in tears she smiled:
But in such sort, that Pity would have said,
O GOD, be merciful to that poor hapless maid!

Now ravingly she cried: The whelming main--
The wintry wave rolls over his cold head;
I never shall behold his form again;
Hence flattering fancies--he is dead, is dead!
Perhaps on some wild shore he may be cast,
Where on their prey barbarians howling rush,
Oh, fiercer they, than is the whelming blast!
Hush, my poor heart! my wakeful sorrows, hush!
He lives! I yet shall press him to my heart,
And cry, Oh no, no, no,--we never more will part!

So sang she, when despairing, from his cell,
Hid furthest in the lone umbrageous wood,
Where many a winter he had loved to dwell,
Came grim Remorse; fixed in deep thought he stood,
His senses pierced by the unwonted tone;
Some stagnant blood-drops from his locks he shook;
He saw the trees that waved, the sun that shone,
He cast around an agonised look;
Then with a ghastly smile, that spoke his pain,
He hied him to his cave in thickest shades again.

And now the sun sank westward, and the sky
Was hung with thousand lucid pictures gay;
When gazing on the scene with placid eye,
An ancient man appeared in amice gray;
His sandal shoes were by long travel worn,
O'er hill and valley, many a weary mile,
Yet drooped he not, like one in years forlorn;
His pale cheek wore a sad, but tender smile;
'Twas sage Experience, by his look confessed,
And white as frost his beard descended to his breast.

Thus said I: Master, pleasant is this place,
And sweet are those melodious notes I hear,
And happy they among man's toiling race
Who, of their cares forgetful, wander near;
Me they delight, whom sickness and slow pain
Have bowed almost to death with heavy hand;
The fairy scenes refresh my heart again,
And, pleased, I listen to that music bland,
Which seems to promise hours of joy to come,
And bids me tranquil seek my poor but peaceful home.

He said: Alas! these shadows soon may fly,
Like the gay creatures of the element;
Yet do poor mortals still with raptured eye
Behold like thee the pictures they present;
And, charmed by Hope's sweet music, on they fare,
And think they soon shall reach that blissful goal,
Where never more the sullen knell of Care
For buried friends and severed loves shall toll:
So on they fare, till all their troubles cease,
And on a lap of earth they lie them down in peace.

But not there ceases their immortal claim;
From golden clouds I heard a small voice say:
Wisdom rejoiceth in a higher aim,
Nor heeds the transient shadows of a day;
These earthly sounds may die away, and all
These perishable pictures sink in night,
But Virtue from the dust her sons shall call,
And lead them forth to joy, and life, and light;
Though from their languid grasp earth's comforts fly,
And with the silent worm their buried bodies lie.

For other scenes there are; and in a clime
Purer, and other strains to earth unknown,
Where heaven's high host, with symphonies sublime,
Sing unto Him that sitteth on the throne.
Enough for man, if he the task fulfil
Which GOD ordained, and to his journey's end
Bear him right on, betide him good or ill;
Then Hope to soothe his death-bed shall descend,
Nor leave him, till in mansions of the blest
He gains his destined home, his everlasting rest.

Such are thy views, DISCOVERY! The great world
Rolls to thine eye revealed; to thee the Deep
Submits its awful empire; Industry
Awakes, and Commerce to the echoing marts
From east to west unwearied pours her wealth.
Man walks sublimer; and Humanity,
Matured by social intercourse, more high,
More animated, lifts her sovereign mien,
And waves her golden sceptre. Yet the heart
Asks trembling, is no evil found! Oh, turn,
Meek Charity, and drop a human tear
For the sad fate of Afric's injured sons,
And hide, for ever hide, the sight of chains,
Anguish, and bondage! Yes, the heart of man
Is sick, and Charity turns pale, to think
How soon, for pure religion's holy beam,
Dark crimes, that sullied the sweet day, pursued,
Like vultures, the Discoverer's ocean tract,
Screaming for blood, to fields of rich Peru,
Or ravaged Mexico, while Gold more Gold!
The caverned mountains echoed, Gold more Gold!
Then see the fell-eyed, prowling buccaneer,
Grim as a libbard! He his jealous look
Turns to the dagger at his belt, his hand
By instinct grasps a bloody scymitar,
And ghastly is his smile, as o'er the woods
He sees the smoke of burning villages
Ascend, and thinks ev'n now he counts his spoil.
See thousands destined to the lurid mine,
Never to see the sun again; all names
Of husband, sire, all tender charities
Of love, deep buried with them in that grave,
Where life is as a thing long passed; and hope
No more its sickly ray, to cheer the gloom,
Extends.
Thou, too, dread Ocean, toss thine arms,
Exulting, for the treasures and the gems
That thy dark oozy realm emblaze; and call
The pale procession of the dead, from caves
Where late their bodies weltered, to attend
Thy kingly sceptre, and proclaim thy might!
Lord of the Hurricane! bid all thy winds
Swell, and destruction ride upon the surge,
Where, after the red lightning flash that shows
The labouring ship, all is at once deep night
And long suspense, till the slow dawn of day
Gleams on the scattered corses of the dead,
That strew the sounding shore!
Then think of him,
Ye who rejoice with those you love, at eve,
When winds of winter shake the window-frame,
And more endear your fire, oh, think of him,
Who, saved alone from the destroying storm,
Is cast on some deserted rock; who sees
Sun after sun descend, and hopeless hears;
At morn the long surge of the troubled main,
That beats without his wretched cave; meantime
He fears to wake the echoes with his voice,
So dread the solitude!
Let Greenland's snows
Then shine, and mark the melancholy train
There left to perish, whilst the cold pale day
Declines along the further ice, that binds
The ship, and leaves in night the sinking scene.
Sad winter closes on the deep; the smoke
Of frost, that late amusive to the eye
Rose o'er the coast, is passed, and all is now
One torpid blank; the freezing particles
Blown blistering, and the white bear seeks her cave.
Ill-fated outcasts, when the morn again
Shall streak with feeble beam the frozen waste,
Your air-bleached and unburied carcases
Shall press the ground, and, as the stars fade off,
Your stony eyes glare 'mid the desert snows!
These triumphs boast, fell Demon of the Deep!
Though never more the universal shriek
Of all that perish thou shalt hear, as when
The deep foundations of the guilty earth
Were shaken at the voice of God, and man
Ceased in his habitations; yet the sea
Thy might tempestuous still, and joyless rule,
Confesses. Ah! what bloodless shadows throng
Ev'n now, slow rising from their oozy beds,
From Mete, and those gates of burial
That guard the Erythraean; from the vast
Unfathomed caverns of the Western main
Or stormy Orcades; whilst the sad shell
Of poor Arion, to the hollow blast
Slow seems to pour its melancholy tones,
And faintly vibrate, as the dead pass by.
I see the chiefs, who fell in distant lands,
The prey of murderous savages, when yells,
And shouts, and conch, resounded through the woods.
Magellan and De Solis seem to lead
The mournful train. Shade of Perouse! oh, say
Where, in the tract of unknown seas, thy bones
Th' insulting surge has swept?
But who is he,
Whose look, though pale and bloody, wears the trace
Of pure philanthropy? The pitying sigh
Forbid not; he was dear to Britons, dear
To every beating heart, far as the world
Extends; and my faint faltering touch ev'n now
Dies on the strings, when I pronounce thy name,
Oh, lost, lamented, generous, hapless Cook!
But cease the vain complaint; turn from the shores,
Wet with his blood, Remembrance: cast thine eyes
Upon the long seas, and the wider world,
Displayed from his research. Smile, glowing Health!
For now no more the wasted seaman sinks,
With haggard eye and feeble frame diseased;
No more with tortured longings for the sight
Of fields and hillocks green, madly he calls
On Nature, when before his swimming eye
The liquid long expanse of cheerless seas
Seems all one flowery plain. Then frantic dreams
Arise; his eye's distemper'd flash is seen
From the sunk socket, as a demon there
Sat mocking, till he plunges in the flood,
And the dark wave goes o'er him.
Nor wilt thou,
O Science! fail to deck the cold morai
Of him who wider o'er earth's hemisphere
Thy views extended. On, from deep to deep,
Thou shalt retrace the windings of his track;
From the high North to where the field-ice binds
The still Antarctic. Thence, from isle to isle,
Thou shalt pursue his progress; and explore
New-Holland's eastern shores, where now the sons
Of distant Britain, from her lap cast out,
Water the ground with tears of penitence,
Perhaps, hereafter, in their destined time,
Themselves to rise pre-eminent. Now speed,
By Asia's eastern bounds, still to the North,
Where the vast continents of either world
Approach: Beyond, 'tis silent boundless ice,
Impenetrable barrier, where all thought
Is lost; where never yet the eagle flew,
Nor roamed so far the white bear through the waste.
But thou, dread POWER! whose voice from chaos called
The earth, who bad'st the Lord of light go forth,
Ev'n as a giant, and the sounding seas
Roll at thy fiat: may the dark deep clouds,
That thy pavilion shroud from mortal sight,
So pass away, as now the mystery,
Obscure through rolling ages, is disclosed;
How man, from one great Father sprung, his race
Spread to that severed continent! Ev'n so,
FATHER, in thy good time, shall all things stand
Revealed to knowledge.
As the mind revolves
The change of mighty empires, and the fate
Of HIM whom Thou hast made, back through the dusk
Of ages Contemplation turns her view:
We mark, as from its infancy, the world
Peopled again, from that mysterious shrine
That rested on the top of Ararat,
Highest of Asian mountains; spreading on,
The Cushites from their mountain caves descend;
Then before GOD the sons of Ammon stood
In their gigantic might, and first the seas
Vanquished: But still from clime to clime the groan
Of sacrifice, and Superstition's cry,
Was heard; but when the Dayspring rose of heaven,
Greece's hoar forests echoed, The great Pan
Is dead! From Egypt, and the rugged shores
Of Syrian Tyre, the gods of darkness fly;
Bel is cast down, and Nebo, horrid king,
Bows in imperial Babylon: But, ah!
Too soon, the Star of Bethlehem, whose ray
The host of heaven hailed jubilant, and sang,
Glory to God on high, and on earth peace,
With long eclipse is veiled.
Red Papacy
Usurped the meek dominion of the Lord
Of love and charity: vast as a fiend
She rose, Heaven's light was darkened with her frown,
And the earth murmured back her hymns of blood,
As the meek martyr at the burning stake
Stood, his last look uplifted to his GOD!
But she is now cast down, her empire reft.
They who in darkness walked, and in the shade
Of death, have seen a new and holy light,
As in th' umbrageous forest, through whose boughs,
Mossy and damp, for many a league, the morn
With languid beam scarce pierces, here and there
Touching some solitary trunk, the rest
Dark waving in the noxious atmosphere:
Through the thick-matted leaves the serpent winds
His way, to find a spot of casual sun;
The gaunt hyaena through the thicket glides
At eve: then, too, the couched tiger's eye
Flames in the dusk, and oft the gnashing jaws
Of the fell crocodile are heard. At length,
By man's superior energy and toil,
The sunless brakes are cleared; the joyous morn
Shines through the opening leaves; rich culture smiles
Around; and howling to their distant wilds
The savage inmates of the wood retire.
Such is the scene of human life, till want
Bids man his strength put forth; then slowly spreads
The cultured stream of mild humanity,
And gentler virtues, and more noble aims
Employ the active mind, till beauty beams
Around, and Nature wears her richest robe,
Adorned with lovelier graces. Then the charms
Of woman, fairest of the works of Heaven,
Whom the cold savage, in his sullen pride,
Scorned as unworthy of his equal love,
With more attractive influence wins the heart
Of her protector. Then the names of sire,
Of home, of brother, and of children, grow
More sacred, more endearing; whilst the eye,
Lifted beyond this earthly scene, beholds
A Father who looks down from heaven on all!
O Britain, my loved country! dost thou rise
Most high among the nations! Do thy fleets
Ride o'er the surge of ocean, that subdued
Rolls in long sweep beneath them! Dost thou wear
Thy garb of gentler morals gracefully!
Is widest science thine, and the fair train
Of lovelier arts! While commerce throngs thy ports
With her ten thousand streamers, is the tract
Of the undeviating ploughshare white
That rips the reeking furrow, followed soon
By plenty, bidding all the scene rejoice,
Even like a cultured garden! Do the streams
That steal along thy peaceful vales, reflect
Temples, and Attic domes, and village towers!
Is beauty thine, fairest of earthly things,
Woman; and doth she gain that liberal love
And homage, which the meekness of her voice,
The rapture of her smile, commanding most
When she seems weakest, must demand from him,
Her master; whose stern strength at once submits
In manly, but endearing, confidence,
Unlike his selfish tyranny who sits
The sultan of his harem!
Oh, then, think
How great the blessing, and how high thy rank
Amid the civilised and social world!
But hast thou no deep failings, that may turn
Thy thoughts within thyself! Ask, for the sun
That shines in heaven hath seen it, hath thy power
Ne'er scattered sorrow over distant lands!
Ask of the East, have never thy proud sails
Borne plunder from dismembered provinces,
Leaving the groans of miserable men
Behind! And free thyself, and lifting high
The charter of thy freedom, bought with blood,
Hast thou not stood, in patient apathy,
A witness of the tortures and the chains
That Afric's injured sons have known! Stand up;
Yes, thou hast visited the caves, and cheered
The gloomy haunts of sorrow; thou hast shed
A beam of comfort and of righteousness
On isles remote; hast bid the bread-fruit shade
Th' Hesperian regions, and has softened much
With bland amelioration, and with charms
Of social sweetness, the hard lot of man.
But weighed in truth's firm balance, ask, if all
Be even. Do not crimes of ranker growth
Batten amid thy cities, whose loud din,
From flashing and contending cars, ascends,
Till morn! Enchanting, as if aught so sweet
Ne'er faded, do thy daughters wear the weeds
Of calm domestic peace and wedded love;
Or turn, with beautiful disdain, to dash
Gay pleasure's poisoned chalice from their lips
Untasted! Hath not sullen atheism,
Weaving gay flowers of poesy, so sought
To hide the darkness of his withered brow
With faded and fantastic gallantry
Of roses, thus to win the thoughtless smile
Of youthful ignorance! Hast thou with awe
Looked up to Him whose power is in the clouds,
Who bids the storm rush, and it sweeps to earth
The nations that offend, and they are gone,
Like Tyre and Babylon! Well weigh thyself:
Then shalt thou rise undaunted in the might
Of thy Protector, and the gathered hate
Of hostile bands shall be but as the sand
Blown on the everlasting pyramid.
Hasten, O Love and Charity! your work,
Ev'n now whilst it is day; far as the world
Extends may your divinest influence
Be felt, and more than felt, to teach mankind
They all are brothers, and to drown the cries
Of superstition, anarchy, or blood!
Not yet the hour is come: on Ganges' banks
Still superstition hails the flame of death,
Behold, gay dressed, as in her bridal tire,
The self-devoted beauteous victim slow
Ascend the pile where her dead husband lies:
She kisses his cold cheeks, inclines her breast
On his, and lights herself the fatal pile
That shall consume them both!
On Egypt's shore,
Where Science rose, now Sloth and Ignorance
Sleep like the huge Behemoth in the sun!
The turbaned Moor still stains with strangers' blood
The inmost sands of Afric. But all these
The light shall visit, and that vaster tract
From Fuego to the furthest Labrador,
Where roam the outcast Esquimaux, shall hear
The voice of social fellowship; the chief
Whose hatchet flashed amid the forest gloom,
Who to his infants bore the bleeding scalp
Of his fall'n foe, shall weep unwonted tears!
Come, Faith; come, Hope; come, meek-eyed Charity!
Complete the lovely prospect: every land
Shall lift up one hosannah; every tongue
Proclaim thee FATHER, INFINITE, and WISE,
And GOOD. The shores of palmy Senegal
(Sad Afric's injured sons no more enslaved)
Shall answer HALLELUJAH, for the LORD
Of truth and mercy reigns;--reigns KING OF KINGS;--
HOSANNAH--KING OF KINGS--and LORD OF LORDS!
So may His kingdom come, when all the earth,
Uniting thus as in one hymn of praise,
Shall wait the end of all things. This great globe,
His awful plan accomplished, then shall sink
In flames, whilst through the clouds, that wrap the place
Where it had rolled, and the sun shone, the voice
Of the ARCHANGEL, and the TRUMP OF GOD,
Amid heaven's darkness rolling fast away,
Shall sound!
Then shall the sea give up its dead;--
But man's immortal mind, all trials past
That shook his feverish frame, amidst the scenes
Of peril and distemper, shall ascend
Exulting to its destined seat of rest,
And 'justify His ways' from whom it sprung.

INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD SOMERS.

While summer airs scarce breathe along the tide,
Oft pausing, up the mountain's craggy side
We climb, how beautiful, how still, how clear,
The scenes that stretch around! The rocks that rear
Their shapes, in rich fantastic colours dressed;
The hill-tops, where the softest shadows rest;
The long-retiring bay, the level sand,
The fading sea-line, and the furthest land,
That seems, as low it lessens from the eye,
To steal away beneath the cloudless sky!
But yesterday, the misty morn was spread
In dreariness on the bleak mountain's head;
No glittering prospect from the upland smiled,
The driving squall came dark, the sea heaved wild,
And, lost and lonely, the wayfarer sighed,
Wet with the hoar spray of the flashing tide.
How changed is now the circling scene! The deep
Stirs not; the glancing roofs and white towers peep
Along the margin of the lucid bay;
The sails, descried far in the offing gray,
Hang motionless, and the pale headland's height
Is touched as with sweet gleams of fairy light!
Oh, lives there on earth's busy-stirring scene,
Whom Nature's tranquil charms, her airs serene,
Her seas, her skies, her sunbeams, fail to move
With stealing tenderness and grateful love!
Go, thankless man, to Misery's cave--behold
Captivity, stretched in her dungeon cold!
Or think on those who, in yon dreary mine,
Sunk fathoms deep beneath the rolling brine,
From year to year, amid the lurid shade,
O'er-wearied, ply their melancholy trade;
That thou may'st bless the glorious sun; and hail
Him who with beauty clothed the hill and vale;
Who bent the arch of the high heavens for thee,
And stretched in amplitude the broad blue sea!
Now sunk are all its murmurs; and the air
But moves by fits the bents, that here and there
Upshoot in casual spots of faded green:
Here straggling sheep the scanty pasture glean,
Or, on the jutting fragments that impend,
Stray fearlessly, and gaze, as we ascend.
Mountain, no pomp of waving woods hast thou,
That deck with varied shade thy hoary brow;
No sunny meadows at thy feet are spread,
No streamlets sparkle o'er their pebbly bed!
But thou canst boast thy beauties: ample views
That catch the rapt eye of the pausing Muse;
Headlands around new-lighted; sails, and seas,
Now glassy-smooth, now wrinkling to the breeze;
And when the drisly Winter, wrapped in sleet,
Goes by, and winds and rain thy ramparts beat,
Fancy can see thee standing thus aloof,
And frowning, bleak, and bare, and tempest-proof,
Look as with awful confidence, and brave
The howling hurricane, the dashing wave;
More graceful, when the storm's dark vapours frown,
Than when the summer suns in pomp go down!
And such is he, who, clad in watchet weeds,
And boasting little more than nature needs,
Can wrap him in contentedness, and wear
A port unchanged, in seasons rude or fair.
His may be Fancy's sunshine, and the Muse
May deck his visions with her fairest hues;
And he may lift his honest front, and say
To the hard storm, that rends his locks of gray,
I heed thee not;--he unappalled may stand
Beneath the cloud that shades a sinking land,
While heedless of the storm that onward sweeps,
Mad, impious Riot his loud wassail keeps,
Pre-eminent in native worth; nor bend,
Though gathering ills on his bare head descend:
And when the wasteful storm sweeps o'er its prey,
And rends the kingdoms of the world away,
He, firm as stands the rock's unshaken base,
Yet panting for a surer resting-place,
The human hurricane unmoved can see,
And say, O GOD, my refuge is in Thee!
States, anchored deep, that far their shadow cast,
Rock, and are scattered by the ALMIGHTY'S blast;
As when, awakened from his horrid sleep,
In fiery caves, a thousand fathoms deep,
The Earthquake's Demon hies aloft; he waits,
Nigh some high-turreted proud city's gates,
As listening to the mingled shouts and din
Of the mad crowd that feast or dance within.
Mean time sad Nature feels his sway, the wave
Heaves, and low sounds moan through the mountain cave;
Then all at once is still, still as midnight,
When not the lime-leaf moves: Oh, piteous sight!
For now the glittering domes crash from on high--
And hark, a strange and lamentable cry!
It ceases, and the tide's departing roar
Alone is heard upon the desert shore,
That, as it sweeps with slow huge swell away,
Remorseless mutters o'er its buried prey.
So Ruin hurrieth o'er this shaken ball:
He bids his blast go forth, and lo! doth fall
A Carthage or a Rome. Then rolls the tide
Of deep Forgetfulness, whelming the pride
Of man, his shattered and forsaken bowers,
His noiseless cities, and his prostrate towers.
Some columns, eminent and awful, stand,
Like Egypt's pillars on the lonely sand;
We read upon their base, inscribed by Fame,
A HOMER'S here, or here a SHAKESPEARE'S name;
Yet think not of the surge, that soon may sweep
Ourselves unnumbered to the oblivious deep.
Yet time has been, as mouldering legends say,
When all yon western tract, and this bright bay,
Where now the sunshine sleeps, and wheeling white
The sea-mew circles in fantastic flight,
Was peopled wide; but the loud storm hath raved,
Where its green top the high wood whispering waved,
And many a year the slowly-rising flood
Raked, where the Druids' uncooth altar stood.
Thou only, aged mountain, dost remain,
Stern monument amidst the deluged plain!
And fruitless the big waves thy bulwarks beat;
The big waves slow retire, and murmur at thy feet:
Thou, half-encircled by the refluent tide,
As if thy state its utmost rage defied,
Dost tower above the scene, as in thine ancient pride.
Mountain! the curious Muse might love to gaze
On the dim record of thy early days;
Oft fancying that she heard, like the low blast,
The sounds of mighty generations past.
Thee the Phoenician, as remote he sailed
Along the unknown coast, exulting hailed,
And when he saw thy rocky point aspire,
Thought on his native shores of Aradus or Tyre.
Distained with many a ghastly giant's blood,
Upon thy height huge Corineus stood,
And clashed his shield; whilst, hid in caves profound,
His monstrous foe cowered at the fearful sound.
Hark to the brazen clarion's pealing swell!
The shout at intervals, the deepening yell!
Long ages speed away, yet now again
The noise of battle hurtles on the plain!
Behold the dark-haired warriors!--down thy side,
O mountain! sternly terrible, they stride!
Ev'n now, impatient for the promised war,
They rear their axes huge, and shouting, cry to Thor.
The sounds of conflict cease--at dead of night
A voice is heard: Prepare the Druid rite!
And hark! the bard upon thy summit rings
The deep chords of his thrilling harp, and sings
To Night's pale Queen, that through the heavens wide,
Amidst her still host list'ning seems to ride!
Slow sinks the cadence of the solemn lay,
And all the sombrous scenery steals away--
The shadowy Druid throng, the darksome wood,
And the hoar altar, wet with human blood!
Marked ye the Angel-spectre that appeared?
By other hands the holy fane is reared
High on the point, where, gazing o'er the flood,
Confessed, the glittering apparition stood.
And now the sailor, on his watch of night,
Sees, like a glimmering star, the far-off light;
Or, homeward bound, hears on the twilight bay
The slowly-chanted vespers die away!
These scenes are fled and passed, yet still sublime,
And wearing graceful the gray tints of Time,
Upon the steep rock's craggy eminence
The embattled castle sits, surveying thence
The villages that strew the subject plain,
And the long winding of the lucid main:
Meantime the stranger marks its turrets high,
And muses on the tale of changeful years gone by.
Of this no more: lo! here our journey ends;
Wide and more wide the arch of heaven extends,
And on this topmost fragment as we lean,
We feel removed from dim earth's distant scene.
Lift up the hollow trump that on the ground
Is cast, and let it, rolling its long sound,
Speak to the surge below, that we may gain
Tidings from those who traverse the wide main.
Or tread we now some spot of wizard-land,
And mark the sable trump, that may command
The brazen doors to fly, and with loud call
Scare the grim giant in his murky hall!
Hail, solitary castle! that dost crown
This desert summit, and supreme look down
On the long-lessening landscape stretched below;
Fearless to trace thy inmost haunts we go!
We climb the steps:--No warning signs are sent,
No fiery shapes flash on the battlement.
We enter; the long chambers without fear
We traverse; no strange echoes meet the ear;
No time-worn tapestry spontaneous shakes,
No spell-bound maiden from her trance awakes,
But Taste's fair hand arrays the peaceful dome,
And hither the domestic virtues come;
Pleased, while to this secluded scene they bear
Sweets that oft wither in a world of care.
Castle! no more thou frownest on the main
In the dark terror of thy ancient reign;
No more thy long and dreary halls affright,
Swept by the stoled spirits of the night;
But calm, and heedless of the storms that beat,
Here Elegance and Peace assume their seat;
And when the night descends, and Ocean roars,
Rocking without upon his darkened shores,
These vaulted roofs to gentle sounds reply,
The voice of social cheer, or song of harmony.
So fade the modes of life with slow decay,
And various ages various hues display!
Fled are the grimly shadows of Romance--
And, pleased, we see in beauteous troop advance
New arts, new manners, from the Gothic gloom
Escaped, and scattering flowers that sweetlier bloom!
Refinement wakes; before her beaming eye
Dispersed, the fumes of feudal darkness fly.
Like orient Morning on the mountain's head,
A softer light on life's wide scene is shed;
Lapping in bliss the sense of human cares,
Hark! Melody pours forth her sweetest airs;
And like the shades that on the still lake lie,
Of rocks, or fringing woods, or tinted sky,
Painting her hues on the clear tablet lays,
And her own beauteous world with tender touch displays!
Then Science lifts her form, august and fair,
And shakes the night-dews from her glittering hair;
Meantime rich Culture clothes the living waste,
And purer patterns of Athenian Taste
Invite the eye, and wake the kindling sense;
And milder Manners, as they play, dispense,
Like tepid airs of Spring, their genial influence!
Such is thy boast, Refinement. But deep dyes
Oft mar the splendour of thy noontide skies:
Then Fancy, sick of follies that deform
The face of day, and in the sunshine swarm;
Sick of the fluttering fopperies that engage
The vain pursuits of a degenerate age;
Sick of smooth Sophistry's insidious cant,
Or cold Impiety's defying rant;
Sick of the muling sentiment that sighs
O'er its dead bird, while Want unpitied cries;
Sick of the pictures that pale Lust inflame,
And flush the cheek of Love with deep, deep shame;
Would fain the shade of elder days recall,
The Gothic battlements, the bannered hall;
Or list of elfin harps the fabling rhyme,
Or wrapped in melancholy trance sublime,
Pause o'er the working of some wond'rous tale,
Or bid the spectres of the castle hail!
Oh, might I now, amid the frowning storm,
Behold, great Vision of the Mount! thy form,
Such and so vast as thou wert seen of yore,
When looking steadfast to Bayonna's shore,
Thou sattest awful on the topmost stone,
Making the rock thy solitary throne!
For up the narrow steps, winding with pain,
The watch-tower's loftiest platform now we gain.
Departed spirit! fruitless is the prayer,
We see alone thy long-deserted chair;
And never more, or in the storm of night,
Or by the glimmering moon's illusive light,
Or when the flash, with red and hasty glance,
Sudden illumes the sea's remote expanse,
The shores, the cliffs, the mountain, till again
Deep darkness closes on the roaring main,
Shalt thou, dread Angel, with unaltered mien,
Sublime upon thy cloudy seat be seen!
Yet, musing much on wild tradition's lore,
And many a phantom tale, believed of yore,
Chiefly remembering the sweet song (whose strain
Shall never die) of him who wept in vain
For his loved Lycidas, in the wide sea
Whelmed, when he cried, great Angel, unto thee,
The fabled scene of thy renown we trace,
And hail, with thronging thoughts, thy hallowed resting-place!
The stealing Morn goes out--here let us end
Fitliest our song, and to the shore descend.
Yet once more, azure ocean, and once more,
Ye lighted headlands, and thou stretching shore,
Down on the beauties of your scenes we cast
A tender look, the longest and the last!
Amid the arch of heaven, extended clear,
Scarce the thin flecks of feathery clouds appear;
Beyond the long curve of the lessening bay
The still Atlantic stretches its bright way;
The tall ship moves not on the tranquil brine;
Around, the solemn promontories shine;
No sounds approach us, save, at times, the cry
Of the gray gull, that scarce is heard so high;
The billows make no noise, and on the breast
Of charmed Ocean, Silence sinks to rest!
Oh, might we thus from heaven's bright battlements
Behold the scene Humanity presents;
And see, like this, all harmonised and still,
And hear no far-off sounds of earthly ill!
Wide landscape of the world, in purest light
Arrayed, how fair, how cheering were the sight!
Alas! we think upon this seat of care,
And ask, if peace, if harmony be there.
We hear the clangours and the cries that shake
The mad world, and their dismal music make;
We see gaunt Vice, of dread, enormous size,
That fearless in the broad day sweltering lies,
And scorns the feeble arrow that assails
His Heaven-defying crest and iron scales;
His brows with wan and withered roses crowned,
And reeling to the pipe's lascivious sound,
We see Intemperance his goblet quaff;
And mocking Blasphemy, with mad loud laugh,
Acting before high Heaven a direr part,
Sport with the weapons that shall pierce his heart!
If o'er the southern wave we turn our sight,
More dismal shapes of hideous woe affright:
Grim-visaged War, that ruthless, as he hies,
Drowns with his trumpet's blast a brother's cries;
And Massacre, by yelling furies led,
With ghastly grin and eye-balls rolling red!
O'er a vast field, wide heaped with festering slain,
Hark! how the Demon Passions shout amain,
And cry, exulting, while the death-storm lowers,
Hurrah! the kingdoms of the world are ours!
O GOD! who madest man, I see these things,
And wearied wish for a fleet angel's wings,
That I might fly away, and hear no more
The surge that moans along this mortal shore!
But Joy's unclouded sunshine may not be,
Till, Father of all worlds, we rest with Thee!
Then Truth, uplifting from thy works the pall,
Shall speak: In wisdom hast Thou made them all;
Then angels and archangels, as they gaze,
And all the acclaiming host of heaven, shall raise
The loud hosannah of eternal praise!
Here all is mixed with sorrow; and the clouds
Hang awfully, whose shade the dim earth shrouds;
Therefore I mourn for man, and sighing say,
As down the steep I wind my homeward way,
Oh, when will Earth's long muttering tempests cease,
And all be sunshine (like this scene) and peace!

Come,--for the sun yet hangs above the bay,--
And whilst our time may brook a brief delay
With other thoughts, and, haply with a tear,
An old man's tale of sorrow thou shalt hear.
I wished not to reveal it;--thoughts that dwell
Deep in the lonely bosom's inmost cell
Unnoticed, and unknown, too painful wake,
And, like a tempest, the dark spirit shake,
When, starting from our slumberous apathy,
We gaze upon the scenes of days gone by.
Yet, if a moment's irritating flush,
Darkens thy cheek, as thoughts conflicting rush,
When I disclose my hidden griefs, the tale
May more than wisdom or reproof prevail.
Oh, may it teach thee, till all trials cease,
To hold thy course, though sorrowing, yet in peace;
Still looking up to Him, the soul's best stay,
Who Faith and Hope shall crown, when worlds are swept away!
Where fair Seville's Morisco turrets gleam
On Guadilquiver's gently-stealing stream;
Whose silent waters, seaward as they glide,
Reflect the wild-rose thickets on its side,
My youth was passed. Oh, days for ever gone!
How touched with Heaven's own light your mornings shone
Even now, when lonely and forlorn I bend,
My weary journey hastening to its end,
A drooping exile on a distant shore,
I mourn the hours of youth that are no more.
The tender thought amid my prayers has part,
And steals, at times, from Heaven my aged heart.
Forgive the cause, O God!--forgive the tear,
That flows, even now, o'er Leonora's bier;
For, 'midst the innocent and lovely, none
More beautiful than Leonora shone.
As by her widowed mother's side she knelt,
A sad and sacred sympathy I felt.
At Easter-tide, when the high mass was sung,
And, fuming high, the silver censer swung;
When rich-hued windows, from the arches' height,
Poured o'er the shrines a soft and yellow light;
From aisle to aisle, amid the service clear,
When 'Adoremus' swelled upon the ear.
(Such as to Heaven thy rapt attention drew
First in the Christian churches of Peru),
She seemed, methought, some spirit of the sky,
Descending to that holy harmony.
But wherefore tell, when life and hope were new,
How by degrees the soul's first passion grew!
I loved her, and I won her virgin heart;
But fortune whispered, we a while must part.
The minster tolled the middle hour of night,
When, waked to agony and wild affright,
I heard those words, words of appalling dread--
'The Holy Inquisition!'--from the bed
I started; snatched my dagger, and my cloak--
Who dare accuse me!--none, in answer, spoke.
The demons seized, in silence, on their prey,
And tore me from my dreams of bliss away.
How frightful was their silence, and their shade,
In torch-light, as their victim they conveyed,
By dark-inscribed, and massy-windowed walls,
Through the dim twilight of terrific halls;
(For thou hast heard me speak of that foul stain
Of pure religion, and the rights of Spain
Whilst the high windows shook to night's cold blast,
And echoed to the foot-fall as we passed!
They left me, faint and breathless with affright,
In a cold cell, to solitude and night;
Oh! think, what horror through the heart must thrill
When the last bolt was barred, and all at once was still!
Nor day nor night was here, but a deep gloom,
Sadder than darkness, wrapped the living tomb.
Some bread and water, nature to sustain,
Duly was brought when eve returned again;
And thus I knew, hoping it were the last,
Another day of lingering life was passed.
Five years immured in that deep den of night,
I never saw the sweet sun's blessed light.
Once as the grate, with sullen sound, was barred,
And to the bolts the inmost cavern jarred,
Methought I heard, as clanged the iron door,
A dull and hollow echo from the floor;
I stamped; the vault, and winding caves around,
Returned a long and melancholy sound.
With patient toil I raised a massy stone,
And looked into a depth of shade unknown;
The murky twilight of the lurid place
Helped me, at length, a secret way to trace:
I entered; step by step explored the road,
In darkness, from my desolate abode;
Till, winding through long passages of night,
I saw, at distance, a dim streak of light:--
It was the sun--the bright, the blessed beam
Of day! I knelt--I wept;--the glittering stream
Rolled on beneath me, as I left the cave,
Concealed in woods above the winding wave.
I rested on a verdant bank a while,
I saw around the summer landscape smile;
I gained a peasant's hut; nor dared to leave,
Till, with slow step, advanced the glimmering eve.
Remembering still affection's fondest hours,
I turned my footsteps to the city towers;
In pilgrim's dress, I traced the streets unknown:
No light in Leonora's lattice shone.
The morning came; the busy tumult swells;
Knolling to church, I heard the minster bells;
Involuntary to that scene I strayed,
Disguised, where first I saw my faithful maid.
I saw her, pallid, at the altar stand,
And yield, half-shrinking, her reluctant hand;
She turned her head; she saw my hollow eyes,
And knew me, wasted, wan, in my disguise;
She shrieked, and fell;--breathless, I left the fane
In agony--nor saw her form again;
And from that day her voice, her look were given,
Her name, her memory, to the winds of heaven.
Far off I bent my melancholy way,
Heart-sick and faint, and, in this gown of gray,
From every human eye my sorrows hid,
Unknown, amidst the tumult of Madrid.
Grief in my heart, despair upon my look,
With no companion save my beads and book,
My morsel with Affliction's sons to share,
To tend the sick and poor, my only care,
Forgotten, thus I lived; till day by day
Had worn nigh thirteen years of grief away.
One winter's night, when I had closed my cell,
And bid the labours of the day farewell,
An aged crone approached, with panting breath,
And bade me hasten to the house of death.
I came. With moving lips intent to pray,
A dying woman on a pallet lay;
Her lifted hands were wasted to the bone,
And ghastly on her look the lamp-light shone;
Beside the bed a pious daughter stands
Silent, and, weeping, kisses her pale hands.
Feebly she spoke, and raised her languid head,
Forgive, forgive!--they told me he was dead!--
But in the sunshine of that dreadful day,
That gave me to another's arms away,
I saw him, like a ghost, with deadly stare;
I saw his wasted eye-balls' ghastly glare;
I saw his lips (oh, hide them, God of love!)
I saw his livid lips, half-muttering, move,
To curse the maid--forgetful of her vow:--
Perhaps he lives to curse--to curse me now!
He lives to bless! I cried; and, drawing nigh,
Held up the crucifix; her heavy eye
She raised, and scarce pronounced--Does he yet live?
Can he his lost, his dying child forgive?
Will God forgive--the Lord who bled--will He?--
Ah, no, there is no mercy left for me!
Words were but vain, and colours all too faint,
That awful moment of despair to paint.
She knew me; her exhausted breath, with pain,
Drawing, she pressed my hand, and spoke again:
By a false guardian's cruel wiles deceived,
The tale of fraudful falsehood I believed,
And thought thee dead; he gave the stern command,
And bade me take the rich Antonio's hand.
I knelt, implored, embraced my guardian's knees;
Ruthless inquisitor, he held the keys
Of the dark torture-house. Trembling for life,
Yes, I became a sad, heart-broken wife!
Yet curse me not; of every human care
Already my full heart has had its share:
Abandoned, left in youth to want and woe,
Oh! let these tears, that agonising flow,
Witness how deep ev'n now my heart is rent!
Yet one is lovely--one is innocent!
Protect, protect, (and faint in death she smiled)
When I am dead, protect my orphan child!
The dreadful prison, that so long detained
My wasting life, her dying words explained.
The wretched priest, who wounded me by stealth,
Bartered her love, her innocence for wealth!
I laid her bones in earth; the chanted hymn
Echoed along the hollow cloister dim;
I heard, far off, the bell funereal toll,
And sorrowing said: Now peace be with her soul!
Far o'er the Western Ocean I conveyed,
And Indiana called the orphan maid;
Beneath my eye she grew, and, day by day,
Seemed, grateful, every kindness to repay.
Renouncing Spain, her cruelties and crimes,
Amid untutored tribes, in distant climes,
'Twas mine to spread the light of truth, or save
From stripes and torture the poor Indian slave.
I saw thee, young and innocent, alone,
Cast on the mercies of a race unknown;
I saw, in dark adversity's cold hour,
Thy virtues blooming, like a winter's flower;
From chains and slavery I redeemed thy youth,
Poured on thy mental sight the beams of truth;
By thy warm heart and mild demeanour won,
Called thee my other child--my age's son.
I need not tell the sequel;--not unmoved
Poor Indiana heard thy tale, and loved;
Some sympathy a kindred fate might claim;
Your years, your fortunes, and your friend the same;
Both early of a parent's care bereft,
Both strangers in a world of sadness left;
I marked each slowly-struggling thought; I shed
A tear of love paternal on each head;
And, while I saw her timid eyes incline,
Blessed the affection that had made her thine!
Here let the murmurs of despondence cease:
There is a God--believe--and part in peace!
Rich hues illumed the track of dying day
As the great sun sank in the western bay,
And only its last light yet lingering shone,
Upon the highest palm-tree's feathery cone;
When at a distance on the dewy plain,
In mingled group appeared an Indian train;
Men, women, children, round Anselmo press,
Farewell! they cried. He raised his hand to bless,
And said: My children, may the God above
Still lead you in the paths of peace and love;
To-morrow, we must part;--when I am gone,
Raise on this spot a cross, and place a stone,
That tribes unborn may some memorial have,
When I far off am mouldering in the grave,
Of that poor messenger, who tidings bore
Of Gospel-mercy to your distant shore.
The crowd retired; along the twilight gray,
The condor kept its solitary way,
The fire-flies shone, when to the hermit's cell
Who hastens but the minstrel Zarinel!
In foreign lands, far from his native home,
'Twas his, a gay, romantic youth, to roam,
With a light cittern o'er his shoulders slung,
Where'er he passed he played, and loved, and sung;
And thus accomplished, late had joined the train
Of gallant soldiers on the southern plain.
Father, he cried, uncertain of the fate
That may to-morrow's toilsome march await,
For long will be the road, I would confess
Some secret thoughts that on my bosom press.
They are of one I left, an Indian maid,
Whose trusting love my careless heart betrayed.
Say, may I speak?
Say on, the father cried,
Nor be to penitence all hope denied.
Then hear, Anselmo! From a very child
I loved all fancies marvellous and wild;
I turned from truth, to listen to the lore
Of many an old and fabling troubadour.
Thus, with impassioned heart, and wayward mind,
To dreams and shapes of shadowy things resigned,
I left my native vales and village home,
Wide o'er the world a minstrel boy to roam.
I never shall forget the day, the hour,
When, all my soul resigned to Fancy's power,
First, from the snowy Pyrenees, I cast
My labouring vision o'er the landscape vast,
And saw beneath my feet long vapours float,
Streams, mountains, woods, and ocean's mist remote.
There once I met a soldier, poor and old,
Who tales of Cortes and Bilboa told,
And this new world; he spoke of Indian maids,
Rivers like seas, and forests whose deep shades
Had never yet been pierced by morning ray,
And how the green bird mocked, and talked all day.
Imagination thus, in colours new,
This distant world presented to my view;
Young, and enchanted with the fancied scene,
I crossed the toiling seas that roared between,
And with ideal images impressed,
Stood on these unknown shores a wondering guest.
Still to romantic phantasies resigned,
I left Callao's crowded port behind,
And climbed the mountains which their shadow threw
Upon the lessening summits of Peru.
Some sheep the armed peasants drove before,
That all our food through the wild passes bore,
Had wandered in the frost-smoke of the morn,
Far from the track; I blew the signal horn--
But echo only answered: 'mid the snows,
Wildered and lost, I saw the evening close.
The sun was setting in the crimson west;
In all the earth I had no home of rest;
The last sad light upon the ice-hills shone;
I seemed forsaken in a world unknown;
How did my cold and sinking heart rejoice,
When, hark! methought I heard a human voice!
It might be some wild Indian's roving troop,
Or the dread echo of their distant whoop;
Still it was human, and I seemed to find
Again some commerce with remote mankind.
The voice comes nearer, rising through the shade--
Is it the song of some rude mountain-maid?
And now I heard the tread of hastening feet,
And, in the western glen, a Llama bleat.
I listened--all is still; but hark! again
Near and more near is heard the welcome strain;
It is a wild maid's carolling, who seeks
Her wandering Llama 'midst the snowy peaks:
Truant, she cried, thy lurking place is found!
With languid touch I waked the cittern's sound,
And soon a maid, by the pale light, I saw
Gaze breathless with astonishment and awe:
What instant terrors to her fancy rose,
Ha! is it not the Spirit of the snows!
But when she saw me, weary, cold, and weak,
Stretch forth my hand (for now I could not speak),
She pitied, raised me from the snows, and led
My faltering footsteps to her father's shed;
The Llama followed with her tinkling bell;
The dwelling rose within a craggy dell,
O'erhung with icy summits. To be brief,
She was the daughter of an aged chief;
He, by her gentle voice to pity won,
Showed mercy, for himself had lost a son.
The father spoke not; by the pine-wood blaze,
The daughter stood, and turned a cake of maize;
And then, as sudden shone the light, I saw
Such features as no artist hand might draw.
Her form, her face, her symmetry, her air,
Father! thy age must such recital spare:--
She saved my life; and kindness, if not love,
Might sure in time the coldest bosom move!
Mine was not cold; she loved to hear me sing,
And sometimes touched with playful hand the string;
And when I waked some melancholy strain,
She wept, and smiled, and bade me sing again.
So many a happy day, in this deep glen,
Far from the noise of life, and sounds of men,
Was passed! Nay, father, the sad sequel hear:
'Twas now the leafy spring-time of the year--
Ambition called me: true, I knew to part
Would break her generous, warm, and trusting heart;
True, I had vowed, but now estranged and cold,
She saw my look, and shuddered to behold:--
She would go with me, leave the lonely glade
Where she grew up, but my stern voice forbade;
She hid her face and wept: Go then away,
(Father, methinks, ev'n now, I hear her say)
Go to thy distant land, forget this tear,
Forget these rocks, forget I once was dear;
Fly to the world, o'er the wide ocean fly,
And leave me unremembered here to die!
Yet to my father should I all relate,
Death, instant death, would be a traitor's fate!
Nor fear, nor pity moved my stubborn mind,
I left her sorrows and the scene behind;
I sought Valdivia on the southern plain,
And joined the careless military train;
Oh! ere I sleep, thus, lowly on my knee,
Father, I absolution crave from thee!
Anselmo spoke, with look and voice severe:
Yes, thoughtless youth, my absolution hear.
First, by deep penitence the wrong atone,
Then absolution ask from God alone!
Yet stay, and to my warning voice attend,
And hear me as a father, and a friend.
Let Truth severe be wayward Fancy's guide,
Let stern-eyed Conscience o'er each thought preside;
The passions, that on noblest natures prey,
Oh! cast them, like corroding bonds, away!
Disdain to act mean falsehood's coward part,
And let religion dignify thine art.
If, by thy bed, thou seest at midnight stand
Pale Conscience, pointing, with terrific hand,
To deeds of darkness done, whilst, like a corse,
To shake thy soul, uprises dire Remorse;
Fly to God's mercy, fly, ere yet too late--
Perhaps one hour marks thy eternal fate;
Let the warm tear of deep contrition flow,
The heart obdurate melt, like softening snow,
The last vain follies of thy youth deplore,
Then go, in secret weep, and sin no more!
The stars innumerous in their watches shone--
Anselmo knelt before the cross alone.
Ten thousand glowing orbs their pomp displayed,
Whilst, looking up, thus silently he prayed:--
Oh! how oppressive to the aching sense,
How fearful were this vast magnificence,
This prodigality of glory, spread
Above a poor and dying emmet's head,
That toiled his transient hour upon the shore
Of mortal life, and then was seen no more;
If man beheld, on his terrific throne,
A dark, cold, distant Deity, alone!
Felt no relating, no endearing tie,
That Hope might upwards raise her glistening eye,
And think, with deep unutterable bliss,
In yonder radiant realm my kingdom is!
More glorious than those orbs that silent roll,
Shines Heaven's redeeming mercy on the soul--
Oh, pure effulgence of unbounded love!
In Thee, I think--I feel--I live--I move;
Yet when, O Thou, whose name is Love and Light,
When will thy Dayspring on these realms of night
Arise! Oh! when shall severed nations raise
One hallelujah of triumphant praise,
Tibet on Fars, Andes on Atlas call,
And 'roll the loud hosannah' round the ball!
Soon may Thy kingdom come, that love, and peace,
And charity, may bid earth's chidings cease!
Meantime, in life or death, through good or ill,
Thy poor and feeble servant, I fulfil,
As best I may, Thy high and holy will,
Till, weary, on the world my eyelids close,
And I enjoy my long and last repose!

God said, Let there be light, and there was light!
At once the glorious sun, at his command,
From space illimitable, void and dark,
Sprang jubilant, and angel hierarchies,
Whose long hosannahs pealed from orb to orb,
Sang, Glory be to Thee, God of all worlds!
Then beautiful the ball of this terrene
Rolled in the beam of first-created day,
And all its elements obeyed the voice
Of Him, the great Creator; Air, and Fire,
And Earth, and Water, each its ministry
Performed, whilst Chaos from his ebon throne
Leaped up; and so magnificent, and decked,
And mantled in its ambient atmosphere,
The living world began its state!
To thee,
Spirit of Air, I lift the venturous song,
Whose viewless presence fills the living scene,
Whose element ten thousand thousand wings
Fan joyous; o'er whose fields the morning clouds
Ride high; whose rule the lightning-shafts obey,
And the deep thunder's long-careering march!
The Winds too are thy subjects; from the breeze,
That, like a child upon a holiday,
On the high mountain's van pursues the down
Of the gray thistle, ere the autumnal shower
Steals soft, and mars his pastime; to the King
Of Hurricanes, that sounds his mighty shell,
And bids Tornado sweep the Western world.
Sylph of the Summer Gale, on thee I call!
Oh, come, when now gay June is in her car,
Wafting the breath of roses as she moves;
Come to this garden bower, which I have hung
With tendrils, and the fragrant eglantine,
And mandrake, rich with many mantling stars!
'Tis pleasant, when thy breath is on the leaves
Without, to rest in this embowering shade,
And mark the green fly, circling to and fro,
O'er the still water, with his dragon wings,
Shooting from bank to bank, now in quick turns,
Then swift athwart, as is the gazer's glance,
Pursuing still his mate; they, with delight,
As if they moved in morris, to the sound
Harmonious of this ever-dripping rill,
Now in advance, now in retreat, now round,
Dart through their mazy rings, and seem to say:
The Summer and the Sun are ours!
But thou,
Sylph of the Summer Gale, delay a while
Thy airy flight, whilst here Francesca leans,
And, charmed by Ossian's harp, seems in the breeze
To hear Malvina's plaint; thou to her ear
Come unperceived, like music of the song
From Cona's vale of streams; _then_ with the bee,
That sounds his horn, busied from flower to flower,
Speed o'er the yellow meadows, breathing ripe
Their summer incense; or amid the furze,
That paints with bloom intense the upland crofts,
With momentary essence tinge thy wings;
Or in the grassy lanes, one after one,
Lift light the nodding foxglove's purple bell.
Thence, to the distant sea, and where the flag
Hangs idly down, without a wavy curl,
Thou hoverest o'er the topmast, or dost raise
The full and flowing mainsail: Steadily,
The helmsman cries, as now thy breath is heard
Among the stirring cordage o'er his head;
So, steadily, he cries, as right he steers,
Speeds our proud ship along the world of waves.
Sylph, may thy favouring breath more gently blow,
More gently round the temples and the cheek
Of him, who, leaving home and friends behind,
In silence musing o'er the ocean leans,
And watches every passing shade that marks
The southern Channel's fast-retiring line;
Then, as the ship rolls on, keeps a long look
Fixed on the lessening Lizard, the last point
Of that delightful country, where he left
All his fond hopes behind: it lessens still;
Still, still it lessens, and now disappears!
He turns, and only sees the waves that rock
Boundless. How many anxious morns shall rise,
How many moons shall light the farthest seas,
O'er what new scenes and regions shall he stray,
A weary man, still thinking of his home,
Ere he again that shore shall view, and greet
With blissful thronging hopes and starting tears,
Of heartfelt welcome, and of warmest love!
Perhaps, ah! never! So didst thou go forth,
My poor lost brother!
The airs of morning as enticing played,
And gently, round thee, and their whisperings
Might sooth (if aught could sooth) a boding heart;
For thou wert bound to visit scenes of death,
Where the sick gale (alas! unlike the breeze
That bore the gently-swelling sail along)
Was tainted with the breath of pestilence,
That smote the silent camp, and night and day
Sat mocking on the putrid carcases.
Thou too didst perish! As the south-west blows,
Thy bones, perhaps, now whiten on the coast
Of old Algarva. I, meantime, these shades
Of village solitude, hoping erewhile
To welcome thee from many a toil restored,
Still deck, and now thy empty urn alone
I meet, where, swaying in the summer gale,
The willow whispers in my evening walk.
Sylph, in thy airy robe, I see thee float,
A rainbow o'er thy head, and in thy hand
The magic instrument, that, as thy wing,
Lucid, and painted like the butterfly's,
Waves to and from, most musically rings;
Sometimes in joyance, as the flaunting leaf
Of the white poplar, sometimes sad and slow,
As bearing pensive airs from Pity's grave.
Soft child of air, thou tendest on his sway,
As gentle Ariel at the bidding hies
Of mighty Prospero; yet other winds
Throng to his wizard 'hest, inspiring some,
Some melancholy, and yet soothing much
The drooping wanderer in the fading copse;
Some terrible, with solitude and death
Attendant on their march:--the wild Simoom,
Riding on whirling spires of burning sand,
That move along the Nubian wilderness,
And bury deep the silent caravan;--
Monsoon, up-starting from his half-year sleep,
Upon the vernal shores of Hindostan,
And tempesting with sounds of torrent rain,
And hail, the darkening main;--and red Sameel,
Blasting and withering, like a rivelled leaf,
The pilgrim as he roams;--Sirocco sad,
That pants, all summer, on the cloudless shores
Of faint Parthenope;--deep in the mine
Oft lurks the lurid messenger of death,
The ghastly fiend that blows, when the pale light
Quivers, and leaves the gasping wretch to die;--
The imp, that when the hollow curfew knolls,
Wanders the misty marish, lighting it
At night with errant and fantastic flame.
Spirit of air, these are thy ministers,
That wait thy will; but thou art all in all,
And dead without thee were the flower, the leaf,
The waving forest rivelled, the great sea
Still, the lithe birds of heaven extinct, and ceased
The soul of melting music.
This fair scene
Lives in thy tender touch, for so it seems;
Whilst universal nature owns thy sway;
From the mute insect on the summer pool,
That with long cobweb legs, firm as on earth
The ostrich skims, flits idly to and fro,
Making no dimple on the watery mass;
To the huge grampus, spouting, as he rolls,
A cataract, amid the cold clear sky,
And furrowing far and wide the northern deep.
Thy presence permeates and fills the whole!
As the poor butterfly, that, painted gay,
With mealy wings, red, amber, white, or dropped
With golden stains, floats o'er the yellow corn,
Idly, as bent on pastime, while the morn
Smiles on his devious voyage; if inclosed
In the exhausted prison, whence thy breath
With suction slow is drawn, he feels the change
How dire! in palsied inanition drops!
Weak flags his weary wing, and weaker yet;
His frame with tremulous convulsion moves
A moment, and the next is still in death.
So were the great and glorious world itself;
The tenants of its continents, all ceased!
A wide, a motionless, a putrid waste,
Its seas! How droops the languid mariner,
When not a breath, along the sluggish main,
Strays on the sultry surface as it sleeps;
When far away the winds are flown, to dash
The congregated ocean on the Cape
Of Southern Africa, leaving the while
The flood's vast surface noiseless, waveless, white,
Beneath Mozambique's long-reflected woods,
A gleaming mirror, spread from east to west,
Where the still ship, as on a bed of glass,
Sits motionless. Awake, ye hurricanes!
Ye winds that harrow up the wintry waste,
Awake! for Thunder in his sounding car,
Flashing thick lightning from the rolling wheels,
And the red volley, charged with instant death,
Were music to this lingering, sickening calm,
The same eternal sunshine; still, all still,
Without a vapour, or a sound.
If thus,
Beneath the burning, breathless atmosphere,
Faint Nature sickening droop; who shall ascend
The height, where Silence, since the world began,
Has sat on Cimborazzo's highest peak,
A thousand toises o'er the cloud's career,
Soaring in finest ether? Far below,
He sees the mountains burning at his feet,
Whose smoke ne'er reached his forehead; never there,
Though the black whirlwind shake the distant shores,
The passing gale has murmured; never there
The eagle's cry has echoed; never there
The solitary condor's weary wing
Hath yet ascended!
Let the rising thought
Beyond the confines of this vapoury vault
Be lifted, to the boundless void of space,
How dread, how infinite! where other worlds,
Ten million and ten million leagues aloft,
In other precincts with their shadows roll.
There roams the sole erratic comet, borne
With lightning speed, yet twice three hundred years
Its destined course accomplishing.
Then whirled,
Far from the attractive orb of central fire,
Back through the dim and infinite abyss,
Dread flaming visitant, ere thou return'st,
Empires may rise and fail; the palaces,
That shone on earth, may vanish like the dews
Of morning, scarce illumined ere they fly.
Dread flaming visitant, who that pursues
Thy long and lonely voyage, ev'n in thought,
(Till thought itself seem in the effort lost,)
But tremblingly exclaims, There is a God:
There is a God who lights ten thousand suns,
Round which revolve worlds wheeling amid worlds.
He launched thy voyage through the vast abyss,
He hears his universe, through all its orbs,
As with one voice, proclaim,
There is a God!
Lifted above this dim diurnal sphere,
So fancy, rising with her theme, ascends,
And voyaging the illimitable void,
Where comets flame, sees other worlds and suns
Emerge, and on this earth, like a dim speck,
Looks down: nor in the wonderful and vast
Of the dread scene magnificent, she views
Alone the Almighty Ruler, but the web
That shines in summer time, and only seen
In the slant sunbeam, wakes a moral thought.
In autumn, when the thin long spider gains
The leafy bush's top, he from his seat
Shoots the soft filament, like threads of air,
Scarce seen, into the sky; and thus sustained,
Boldly ascends into the breezy void,
Dependent on the trembling line he wove,
Insidious, and intent on scenes of spoil
And death:--So mounts Ambition, and aloft
On his proud summit meditates new scenes
Of plunder and dominion, till the breeze
Of fortune change, that blows to empty air
His feeble, frail support, and once again
Leaves him a reptile, struggling in the dust!
But what the world itself, what in His view
Whose dread Omnipotence is over all!
A twinkling air-thread in the vast of space.
And what the works of that proud insect, Man!
His mausoleums, fanes, and pyramids,
Frown in the dusk of long-revolving years,
While generations, as they rise and drop,
Each following each to silence and to dust,
Point as they pass, and say, It was a God
That made them: but nor date, nor name
Oblivion shows; cloud only, rolling on,
And wrapping darker as it rolls, the works
Of man!
Now raised on Contemplation's wing,
The blue vault, fervent with unnumbered stars,
He ranges: speeds, as with an angel's flight,
From orb to orb; sees distant suns illume
The boundless space, then bends his head to earth,
So poor is all he knows!
O'er sanguine fields
Now rides he, armed and crested like the god
Of fabled battles; where he points, pale Death
Strides over weltering carcases; nor leaves,--
But still a horrid shadow, step by step,
Stalks mocking after him, till now the noise
Of rolling acclamation, and the shout
Of multitude on multitude, is past:
The scene of all his triumphs, wormy earth,
Closes upon his perishable pride;
For 'dust he is, and shall to dust return'!
But Conscience, a small voice from heaven replies,
Conscience shall meet him in another world.
Let man, then, walk meek, humble, pure, and just;
Though meek, yet dignified; though humble, raised,
The heir of life and immortality;
Conscious that in this awful world he stands,
He only of all living things, ordained
To think, and know, and feel, there is a God!
Child of the air, though most I love to hear
Thy gentle summons whisper, when the Spring,
At the first carol of the village lark,
Looks out and smiles, or June is in her car;
Not undelightful is the purer air
In winter, when the keen north-east is high,
When frost fantastic his cold garland weaves
Of brittle flowers, or soft-succeeding snows
Gather without apace, and heavy load
The berried sweetbrier, clinging to my pane.
The blackbird, then, that marks the ruddy pods
Peep through the snow, though silent is his song,
Yet, pressed by cold and hunger, ventures near.
The robin group, familiar, muster round
The garden-shed, where, at his dinner set,
The laboured hind strews here and there a crumb
From his brown bread; then heedless of the winds
That blow without, and sweep the shivered snow,
Sees from his broken tube the smoke ascend
On an inverted barrow, as in state
He sits, though poor, the monarch of the scene,
As pondering deep the garden's future state,
His kingdom; the rude instruments of death
Lie at his feet, fashioned with simple skill,
With which he hopes to snare the prowling race,
The mice, rapacious of his vernal hopes.
So seated, on the spring he ruminates,
And solemn as a sophi, moves nor hand,
Nor eye, till haply some more venturous bird,
(The crumbs exhausted that he lately strewed
Upon the groundsill,) with often dipping beak,
And sidelong look, as asking larger dole,
Comes hopping to his feet: and say, ye great,
Ye mighty monarchs of this earthly scene,
What nobler views can elevate the heart
Of a proud patriot king, than thus to chase
The bold rapacious spoilers from the field,
And with an eye of merciful regard
To look on humble worth, wet from the storm,
And chilled by indigence!
But thoughts like these
Ill suit the radiant summer's rosy prime,
And the still temper of the calm blue sky.
The sunny shower is past; at intervals
The silent glittering drops descend; and mark,
Upon the blue bank of yon western cloud,
That looms direct against the emerging orb,
How bright, how beautiful the rainbow's hues
Steal out, how stately bends the graceful arch
Above the hills, and tinging at his foot
The mead and trees! Fancy might think young Hope
Pants for the vision, and with ardent eye
Pursues the unreal shade, and spreads her hands,
Weeping to see it fade, as all her dreams
Have faded.
These, O Air! are but the toys,
That sometimes deck thy fairy element;
So oft the eye observant loves to trace
The colours, and the shadows, and the forms,
That wander o'er the veering atmosphere.
See, in the east, the rare parhelia shine
In mimic glory, and so seem to mock
(Fixed parallel to the ascending or
The majesty, the splendour, and the shape,
Of the sole luminary that informs
The world with light and heat! The halo-ring
Bends over all!
With desultory shafts,
And long and arrowy glance, the night-lights shoot
Pale coruscations o'er the northern sky;
Now lancing to the cope, in sheets of flame,
Now wavering wild, as the reflected wave,
On the arched roof of the umbrageous grot.
Hence Superstition dreams of armaments,
Of fiery conflicts, and of bleeding fields
Of slaughter; so on great Jerusalem,
Ere yet she fell, the flaming meteor glared;
A waving sword ensanguined seemed to point
To the devoted city, and a voice
Was heard, Depart, depart!
The atmosphere,
That with the ceaseless hurry of its clouds,
Encircles the round globe, resembles oft
The passing sunshine, or the glooms that stray
O'er every human spirit.
Thin light streaks
Of thought pass vapoury o'er the vacant mind,
And fade to nothing. Now fantastic gleams
Play, flashing or expiring, of gay hope,
Or deep despair; then clouds of sadness close
In one dark settled gloom, and all the man
Droops, in despondence lost.
Aerial tints
Please most the pensive poet: and the views
He forms, though evanescent, and as vain
As the air's mockery, seem to his eye
Ev'n as substantial images, and shapes,
Till in a hurrying rack they all dissolve.
So in the cloudless sky, amusive shines
The soft and mimic scenery; distant hills
That, in refracted light, hang beautiful
Beneath the golden car of eve, ere yet
The daylight lingering fades.
Hence, on the heights
Of Apennine, far stretching to the south,
The goat-herd, while the westering sun, far off,
Hangs o'er the hazy ocean's brim, beholds
In the horizon's faintly-glowing verge
A landscape, like the rainbow, rise, with rocks
That softened shine, and shores that trend away,
Beneath the winding woods of Sicily,
And Etna, smouldering in the still pale sky;
And dim Messina, with her spires, and bays
That wind among the mountains, and the tower
Of Faro, gleaming on the tranquil straits;
Unreal all, yet on the air impressed,
From light's refracted ray, the shadow seems
The certain scene: the hind astonished views,
Yet most delighted, till at once the light
Changes, and all has vanished!
But to him,
How different in still air the unreal view,
Who wanders in Arabian solitudes,
When, faint with thirst, he sees illusive streams
Shine in the arid desert!
All around,
A silent waste of dark gray sand is spread,
Like ashes; not a speck in heaven appears,
But the red sun, high in his burning noon,
Shoots down intolerable fire: no sound
Of beast, or blast, or moving insect, stirs
The horrid stillness. Oh! what hand will guide
The pilgrim, panting in the trackless dust,
To where the pure and sparkling fountain cheers
The green oasis. See, as now his lip
Hangs parched and quivering, see before him spread
The long and level lake!
He gazes; still
He gazes, till he drops upon the sands,
And to the vision stretches, as he faints,
His feeble hand.
Come, Sylph of Summer, come!
Return to these green pastures, that, remote
From fiery blasts, or deadly blistering frosts,
Beneath the temperate atmosphere rejoice!
A crown of flame, a javelin in his hand,
Like the red arrow that the lightning shoots
Through night, impetuous steeds, and burning wheels,
That, as they whirl, flash to the cope of heaven,
Proclaim the angel of the world of fire!
The ocean-king, lord of the waters, rides
High on his hissing car, whose concave skirrs
The azure deep beneath him, flashing wide,
As to the sun the dark-green wave upturns,
And foaming far behind: sea-horses breast
The bickering surge, with nostrils sounding far,
And eyes that flash above the wave, and necks,
Whose mane, like breakers whitening in the wind,
Toss through the broken foam: he kingly bears
His trident sceptre high; around him play
Nereids, and sea-maids, singing as he rides
Their choral song: huge Triton, weltering on,
With scaly train, at times his wreathed shell
Sounds, that the caverns of old ocean shake!
But milder thou, soft daughter of the air,
Sylph of the Summer, come! the silent shower
Is past, and 'mid the dripping fern, the wren
Peeps, till the sun looks through the clouds again.
Oh, come, and breathe thy gentler influence,
And send a home-felt quiet to my heart,
Soothed as I hear, by fits, thy whisper run,
Stirring the tall acacia's pendent leaves,
And through yon hazel alley rustling soft
Upon the vacant ear!
Yon eastern downs,
That weather-fence the blossoms of the vale,
Where winds from hill to hill the mighty Dike,
Of Woden named, with many an antique mound,
The warrior's grave, bids exercise awake,
And health, the breeze of morning to inhale:
Meantime, remote from storms, the myrtle blooms
Beneath my southern sash.
The hurricane
May rend the pines of snowy Labrador,
The blasting whirlwinds of the desert sweep
The Nubian wilderness--we fear them not;
Nor yet, my country, do thy breezes bear,
From citrons, or the blooming orange-grove,
As in Rousillon's jasmine-bordered vales,
Incense at eve.
But temperate airs are thine,
England; and as thy climate, so thy sons
Partake the temper of thine isle; not rude,
Nor soft, voluptuous, nor effeminate;
Sincere, indeed, and hardy, as becomes
Those who can lift their look elate, and say,
We strike for injured freedom; and yet mild,
And gentle, when the voice of charity
Pleads like a voice from heaven: and, thanks to GOD,
The chain that fettered Afric's groaning race,
The murderous chain, that, link by link, dropped blood,
Is severed; we have lost that foul reproach
To all our virtuous boast!
Humanity,
England, is thine! not _that_ false substitute,
That meretricious sadness, which, all sighs
For lark or lambkin, yet can hear unmoved
The bloodiest orgies of blood-boltered France;
Thine is consistent, manly, rational,
Nor needing the false glow of sentiment
To melt it into sympathy, but mild,
And looking with a gentle eye on all;
Thy manners open, social, yet refined,
Are tempered with reflection; gaiety,
In her long-lighted halls, may lead the dance,
Or wake the sprightly chord; yet nature, truth,
Still warm the ingenuous heart: there is a blush
With those most gay, and lovely; and a tear
With those most manly!
Temperate Liberty
Hath yet the fairest altar on thy shores;
Such, and so warm with patriot energy,
As raised its arm when a false Stuart fled;
Yet mingled with deep wisdom's cautious lore,
That when it bade a Papal tyrant pause
And tremble, held the undeviating reins
On the fierce neck of headlong Anarchy.
Thy Church, (nor here let zealot bigotry,
Vaunting, condemn all altars but its own),
Thy Church, majestic, but not sumptuous,
Sober, but not austere, with lenity
Tempering her fair pre-eminence, sustains
Her liberal charities, yet decent state.
The tempest is abroad; the fearful sounds
Of armament, and gathering tumult, fill
The ear of anxious Europe. If, O GOD!
It is thy will, that in the storm of death,
When we have lifted the brave sword in vain,
We too should sink, sustain us in that hour!
Meantime be mine, in cheerful privacy,
To wait Thy will, not sanguine, nor depressed;
In even course, nor splendid, nor obscure,
To steal through life among my villagers!
The hum of the discordant crowd, the buzz
Of faction, the poor fly that threads the air
Self-pleased, the wasp that points its tiny sting
Unfelt, pass by me like the idle wind
That I regard not; while the Summer Sylph,
That whispers through the laurels, wakes the thought
Of quietude, and home-felt happiness,
And independence, in a land I love!