Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta: Verses about Beautiful

Oh Sun! oh glorious Sun!
The spell of winter binds me strong and dread
In the dark sleep, the coldness of the dead;
And song and beauty from thy haunts are gone.

The skies above me lower,
The frozen tempests beat upon my breast,
That wearily by its snow-shroud is prest;
And the wild winds rave o'er me in mad power.

At thine averted gaze,
Benumbed and desolate, I droop and die:
Life of my life! Lord of my destiny!
Shine on me with thy life-imparting rays.

Look from thy radiant throne,
And o'er this waste, drear and unlovely now,
Young summer's gorgeous loveliness shall glow,
And beauty clasp me in her magic zone.

Fair landscapes shall arise,
O'er which a sky of tenderest blue shall bend,
Where forest, hill, and vale, and stream shall blend
In beauty like a dream of Paradise.

And in thy living beams
The flowers shall wake, and every dewy cup
Shall send the homage of its perfume up,
And give thy brightness back in rosy gleams.

A full deep symphony,
The voice of streams, the air's melodious sighs,
Songs from all living things shall mingling rise
In one eternal hymn of love to thee.

* * * * * *

In vain, oh Earth, in vain; -
What heeds the Sun, if light or shadow rest
Upon the bosom in his smile so blest,
Or if thou perish in thine icy chain.

If from the shining host,
Like the lost Pleiad, thou wert stricken down,
He would not miss thee from his starry crown -
He would not mark one ray of brightness lost.

Then for the song and bloom,
The untold wealth of beauty, buried deep
Within thy frozen heart, in death-like sleep,
Oh! mourn thou not within thy conscious tomb.

In life's freshness, and its fulness, —
In thy womanhood's young bloom,
While thy brow was all unclouded
With a darkening ray of gloom, —
The Angel Death hath said to thee,
'Thy Father calls thee home.'

And, as fades some lovely vision
In the morning's gathering light,
Or as sinks some unsphered radiance
From the starry crown of night,
Or as dies some burst of music, —
Thou hast vanished from our sight.

Far across the foaming waters,
From the country of thy birth,
From thy childhood's friends and memories,
From thy father's silent hearth,
A strange soil unveils its bosom,
And must clasp thee, earth to earth.

But the soft Spring sky bends o'er thee,
As thou goest to thy rest,
And Mount Auburn's green recesses
Soon in beauty will be drest;
And with waving leaves and blossoms,
Welcome in their lovely guest.

And when Summer all her glory
O'er that hallowed scene shall shed,
Then shall come the loved and living,
With hushed voice and noiseless tread;
And with tears bedew the flowers,
In that city of the dead.

There, where winds sigh through the pine trees,
Where the silver water flows;
Where the pale stars keep their vigils,
And the genial sunlight glows,
Oh, how calm will be thy slumber!
How I envy thy repose!

There, young mother, — with thy nursling
Safely pillowed on thy heart,
Safely shielded from the tempest,
From the poison and the dart, —
Ye will fade away together,
As the violets depart.

But not thus, oh gentle stranger,
Shall thy loved remembrance flee;
In the hearts where thou wast cherished,
The sweet memories of thee,
Like the evergreens above thee
Fresh and beautiful shall be.

Why mounts my blood to cheek and brow,
Like an ascending flame,
Whene'er from careless lips I hear
The accents of thy name?

Why, when my idle fancy seeks
Some pictured form to trace,
Beneath my pencil still will grow
The features of thy face?

Why comes thy haunting shadow thus
Between the world and me,
To bind my spirit with a charm
That blinds to all but thee?

To bid me watch thine upward course,
Thy path from mine so far;
As earth, 'mid all the hosts of heaven,
Watches the polar star?

Thy cold and polished courtesy,
Each look and tone of thine,
Might well have roused the woman's pride
In duller souls than mine.

They tell me, too, thy heart is light, -
That more than once thou'st loved;
And 'mid all flowers of loveliness
That bee-like thou hast roved.

Why is it, then, while o'er thy heart
There comes no thought of me,
The good, the true, the beautiful,
All speak to me of thee?

Think'st thou 'tis what the world calls love,
Love that return is seeking?
No - I would scorn a love I sought,
Although my heart were breaking.

It is because within the human heart
There is an altar to an _Unknown God,_
Who from the gods of this world dwells apart,
And in the Unseen, the Unreal, has his abode.

This disembodied thought the soul pursues,
And seeking in the visible a sign,
She moulds an image, like the apostate Jews,
And sets her idol on the vacant shrine.

Thus worshipped once an Indian maid the sun;
Thus was an Arab boy won by a star;
Thus loved a maid of France the god in stone;
And thus did Numa love a shape of air.

What were the sun, the star, the god, to them,
The fond idolators! thou art to me;
And rapturous as a poet's earliest dream,
Is the sweet worship that I give to thee.

The world around me is so dark and cold,
Life hath for me such draughts of bitter sadness,
Oh, bid me not the mocking Real behold!
Oh, wake me not from this delicious madness!

On what sweet shore the blue AEgean laves,
Where loveliness is wedded to decay, -
Beauty to desolation, - 'mid the graves
Of an immortal race, and ruins, gray
With the dim veil of years, a sleeper lay; -
And in his dream, Time's never-ebbing tide
Rolled back, and bore him to that earlier day,
When Greece was decked in beauty, like a bride,
Glory upon her path and freedom by her side.

Against the radiance of her azure sky,
Rose many a pillared fane, divinely wrought,
Whose marble forms defied mortality; -
There pale Philosophy unveiled, and taught
Her mystic lore, and waged her war of thought,
And all her bright and baseless visions wove; -
There Art her never-dying treasures brought:
He saw Apelles' glowing canvas move,
And at Pygmalion's prayer the statue wake to love.

Then came her bards, her orators and sages; -
Once more he heard those voices that had rung
Down through the vista of succeeding ages:
'The blind old bard of Scio's isle' there strung
His matchless lyre, and breathed the earliest song:
And now Demosthenes before him stood,
Pouring his tide of eloquence, that strong,
Deep and o'erwhelming, swayed the multitude,
As the invisible wind sways the wild ocean's flood.

Armed warriors too were there, their helmets gleaming
On deathless Marathon's green, sea-girt plain,
That now with Persia's choicest blood was streaming:
Thermopylae's 'three hundred' fought again;
Again its pass was piled with countless slain,
From the invader's host, as on that day
When Sparta's bravest sons had vowed to drain
Their heart's best blood for her. There, as he lay,
These glorious visions passed, in beautiful array.

The dreamer woke, - he rested there alone,
By that high temple whence had Pallas fled:
Where once she lingered, now the crescent shone,
And round him wandered many a turbanned head,
Treading in mockery o'er the immortal dead;
And conscious Nature there, as if to screen
The nakedness of Ruin, had ouspread
Her gayest flowers to deck her saddest scene,
And hung, o'er mouldering walls, her tapestry of green.

And many a Grecian slave to Turkish foe
In hopeless bondage bowed the unwilling knee,
And, all too weak to strike the avenging blow,
To rend the galling chains of slavery,
And write their names once more among the free,
But humbled in despair, unmoved behold
Their shrine defaced, their altars borne away,
By every plunderer, even the hallowed mould
Of Marathon itself, exchanged for foreign gold.

And as he mused upon her buried worth,
'Mid her fallen columns and her ruined fanes, -
That none were there to lead her children forth;
To strike with them, and burst their servile chains,
And with their blood to wash away the stains
That their great name on Freedom's record dyed, -
He touched his harp, and the enchanting strains,
The world was hushed to hear - and then aside
Bade Poesy retire, and made sad Greece his bride.

A fitting bride for one like him, who stood
On that high steep, where few have dared their flight;
Against whose name Time's all resistless flood
Shall dash in vain; who, through decay and blight
And desolation, dazzled with the light
That fast consumed him, where he stood on high,
Like a lone star on the dark brow of night: -
He sleeps upon that shore - a Grecian sky,
For a high soul like his, were fitting canopy.

Rest, warrior bard! Above thy head shall bloom
The greenest laurel of Peneus' tide; -
Genius shall come a pilgrim to thy tomb,
And for her champion Freedom turn aside,
To weep the bitter tears she may not hide;
And thy young handmaid, Poesy, shall shed
Her brightest halo there; and Greece, thy bride,
Shall give to thee (and oh, can more be said!)
A name to live with hers - a home among her Dead.

Hail! thou eternal flood, whose restless waves
Roll onward in their course, as wild and free,
As if the shores they lashed were not the graves
Of mouldering empires; When I think of thee,
Thou dost remind me of that ebbless sea -
The sea of Time, whose tide sweeps unconfined,
Its channel Earth, its shores Eternity;
Whose billows roll resistless o'er mankind; -
Like that thou rollest on, nor heed'st the wrecks behind.

Thy shores were empires; but the tide of Time
Rolled o'er them, and they fell; and there they lie,
Wrecked in their greatness, mouldering, yet sublime
And beautiful in their mortality.
And god-like men were there, the wise and free;
But what are they who now look o'er thy waves?
They're but as worms that feed on their decay;
They kneel to stranger lords - a land of slaves,
Of men whose only boast is their ancestral graves.

Upon thy shores the Holy Prophets trod,
  And from their hill-tops came the voice of One
Whom _thou_ obeyest, even the Eternal God;
And on thy breast the star of Bethlehem shone:
That star, though quenched in blood, hath risen a sun,
And other climes are radiant with its light;
But thy fair shores, alas! it shines not on,
Save when some land, with its effulgence bright,
Reflects the heavenly rays upon their moral night.

Philosophy hath decked her form divine,
In all her loveliest draperies, and wrought
Her brightest dreams by thee, thy shores her shrine,
Thy sons her oracles, the kings of thought;
But they have passed, and, save their names, are naught,
And their bright dreams are buried like their clay,
Or shattered, like the fanes where they were taught.
But though religions, empires, men decay,
Thou, restless, changeless flood - thou dost not pass away.

There Poesy hath woven such fair dreams,
That man hath deemed them bright reality;
There she hath peopled hills, and vales, and streams,
And thy blue waters with her phantasy;
And fabled gods left heaven to roam by thee:
There she embodied passions of the heart,
In such fair forms, that frail morality
Failed to conceive, until triumphal Art
Bade from the Parian stone the immortal image start.

The loftiest bards, whose names illume the past,
Have sung upon thy shores; and thy deep tone
Ceased at their Orphean lyres; - but now the last,
'The pilgrim bard,' whose matchless song alone
Had made thy name immortal as his own, -
A stranger of the north, but, 'as it were
A child of thee,' his spirit too hath flown.
Thus have the greatest passed. Thine azure air
Still echoes to their song, but thou alone art there.

Thine empires, one by one, have fall'n, and now
The last is crumbling in decay: - yes, she,
The coronet upon thy furrowed brow,
The mistress of the world, the queen of thee,
The paradise of earth, sweet Italy;
Stript of her queenly robes, in dust she lies,
Enchained by _slaves,_ nor struggling to be free.
There hath she fallen, as the dolphin dies,
More brightly beautiful in her last agonies.

But though thy shores are sepulchres, that Time
Hath peopled with dead empires; though they are
But shattered wrecks, and every other clime
Hath sprung from their decay; yet Nature there
Hath made their _pall_ of beauty sadly fair;
And they shall be, while thy blue waves shall foam,
The Mecca of the world, - the altar, where
Science, Devotion, Genius, Art shall come,
And feel as Moslems feel above their prophet's tomb.

And thou, unchanging flood, that wanderest on,
Through that dark path of ruin and decay,
Still must thou roll untended and alone.
Men shall arise, and shine, and pass away,
Like the bright bubbles of thy glittering spray;
And thrones shall totter, kingdoms be laid waste -
Yea, empires rise and fall along thy way,
Like the dark heavings of thy troubled breast;
But thou shalt still roll on - for thee there is no rest.