Sonnet. Milton
Oh bard! what though upon thy mortal eyes
There fell no glimmering ray of earthly light,
And the deep shadow of eternal night
Shut from thy gaze our lovely earth and skies,
Yet was it to thy spirit's vision given
To gaze upon the splendors of that shore
Eye had not seen, nor heart conceived before.
Then didst thou, Poet Laureate of heaven,
Sing of those courts and of that angel host,
Of that majestic Spirit who in vain
Dared, warred, and fell, never to rise again,
And of that Paradise so early lost,
In strains 'posterity shall not let die,'
In 'thoughts that wander through eternity.'
On Seeing Mrs. Kean As Constance In King John
'Twas no illusion; from the Past the veil was rent away;
The tide that never changes ebbed, and bore me to that day,
When in the lists and on the field brave deeds of arms were done,
When England blushed beneath the rule of recreant King John.
Scenes from that dim and buried Past came thronging on the gaze,
In all the splendid pageantry of those heroic days.
There Angiers' towers and battlements in stately grandeur frowned
Upon the engines of grim war grouped threat'ningly around:
And where the gathering warlike ranks in burnished armor gleamed,
The sacred Oriflamme of France, the Red Cross Banner streamed:
There Templars came with cross and sword, vowed to the Holy Land,
There were the fiery feudal lords, each with his vassal band:
And in his scarlet robes arrayed, the haughty legate strode,
As when above the prostrate King, in ancient days he trode.
Forgetful, for the hour I lived in that chivalric age,
Amid the stirring scenes portrayed on History's varied page.
But when the gentle Constance came and bowed her queenly head
To that wild tempest of the soul, that grief profound and dread,
The pageant vanished from my sight, I only heard her words,
I only felt the woe that thrilled the heart's electric chords.
Years bring decay and change and death to kingdom and to clime,
But human sympathy and love are changeless through all time:
In the eternal Now they live, though centuries o'er them roll;
They bloom forever fresh and young, immortal as the soul.
Thou, on whose brow the coronet of injured Constance shone,
Who to the glittering circlet gav'st a lustre not its own, -
Thou canst recall those lovely forms the faded Past inurns;
Thou summonest, and the shapeless dust to life and youth returns.
Thou hast the spell, the magic power, the heart's deep founts to move,
To wake the latent ecstasies of Hope, Despair and Love, -
And many a poet's loveliest dream now bears thy form and face,
Speaks in thy sweet impassioned voice, and wears thy matchless grace.
The Mediterranean
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.
