Mathilde Blind: Verses about Spring

Dark sod pierced by flames of flowers,
Dead wood freshly quickening,
Bright skies dusked with sudden showers,
Lit by rainbows on the wing.

Cuckoo calls and young lambs' bleating,
Nimble airs which coyly bring
Little gusts of tender greeting
From shy nooks where violets cling.

Half-fledged buds and birds and vernal
Fields of grass dew-glistening;
Evanescent life's eternal
Resurrection, bridal Spring!

Oh ye, all ye, who suffer here below,
Schooled in the baffling mystery of pain,
Who on life's anvil bear the fateful strain,
Wrong as forged iron, hammered blow on blow.
Take counsel with your grief, in that you know,
That he who suffers suffers not in vain,
Nay, that it shall be for the whole world's gain,
And wisdom prove the priceless price of woe.

Thus in some new-found land where no man's feet
Have trod a path, bold voyagers astray,
May fall foredone by torturing thirst and heat:
But from the impotent body of defeat--
The winners spring who carve a conquering way--
Measured by milestones of their perished clay.

Oh in this dearth and winter of the soul,
When even Hope, still wont to soar and sing,
Droopeth, a starveling bird whose downy wing
Stiffens ere dead through the dank drift it fall--
Yea, ere Hope perish utterly, I call
On thee, fond Memory, that thou haste and bring
One leaf, one blossom from that far-off spring
When love's auroral light lay over all.

Bring but one pansy: haply so the thrill
Of poignant yearning for those glad dead years
May, like the gusty south, breathe o'er the chill
Of frozen grief, dissolving it in tears,
Till numb Hope, stirred by that warm dropping rain,
Will deem, perchance, Love's springtide come again.

THE young birds shy twitter
In hedges and bowers,
Fields brighten and glitter
With dewdrops and flowers.
Over flood, over fallow,
Impelled by old yearning,
The nest-building swallow
Exults at returning;
For dark days and hoary
Are routed and over,
Dark Winter is gone;
Resplendent in glory,
The earth meets her lover,
Her bridegroom the Sun.

Must I alone sorrow,
Despairingly languish,
Breaks never a morrow
On the night of my anguish?
The jubilant gladness
In bird, beam, and blossom,
But deepens the sadness
That weighs on my bosom.
Oh, Spring, in whose azure
Wake follow the starling,
The daisy, the dove;
Sweet spendthrift of pleasure,
Brings also my darling,
Oh bring me my love!

The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.

The April sun, the April sun,
Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,
And in grey shaw and woodland dun
The little leaves spring forth and tender
Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,
For warmth towards the April sun,
One after one.

And between shower and shine hath birth
The rainbow's evanescent glory;
Heaven's light that breaks on mists of earth!
Frail symbol of our human story,
It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,
The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,
Like Life on earth.

THE flowers are at their Bacchanals
Among the lusty green;
Wild Orchis and Narcissus waltz
With Marguerite for queen.
Birds join in glees and madrigals
To little loves unseen;
And unimprisoned Waterfalls
Flash laughing in between.

The Sunlight, leaping from the Heights,
Flames o'er the fields of May,
Winged with unnumbered swallow-flights
Fresh from the long sea way;

And butterflies and insect mites,
Born with the new-blown day,
Cross fires in shifting opal lights
From spray to beckoning spray.

The dandelion puffs her balls,
Free spinsters of the air,
Who scorn to wait for beetle calls
Or bees to find them fair;
But breaking through the painted walls
Their sisters tamely bear,
Fly off in dancing down, which falls
And sprouts up everywhere.

And far above Earth's flower-filled lap
And rosy revelry,
The mountain mothers feed her sap
From herded clouds on high--
Each pinnacle and frozen pap
Whose life has long gone by,
A bridge which spans the mighty gap
Between the earth and sky.
St. Gotthardt.

I charge you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

W.K.C.--3rd MARCH, 1879.

'A free man thinks of nothing so little as of death; and his wisdom is a meditation, not of death, but of life.' --Spinoza.

'DRAW back the curtain, wife,' he said;
And, dying, raised his feeble head,
As all his gathered soul leaped sheer
Into his waning eyes, and yearned
After the journeying sun which turned
Towards that other hemisphere.

Then, as its incandescent bulk
Sank slowly, like the foundering hulk
Of some lone burning ship at sea,
His life set with it--bright as brief--
In that invincible belief
Of Man's august supremacy.

Truth's vanward hero! Calmly brave
Fronting the dumb unfathomed grave
With unintimidated eyes;
Though not for him, beyond its night,
Resuscitated Hope alight
Prescient, on peaks of Paradise.

And like some solemn parting word
From one belovèd friend on board
Bound for some undiscovered shore,
To one who stands with straining gaze
To catch the last look of a face
Which he may see, ah never more--

So, ere he drifted to the deep
Unknowable, the utter sleep,
Out, out beyond life's harbour bar,
He whispered, 'Perfect! no one knows
How perfect!' and his eyes did close
Even like a sun-extinguished star.

His eyes did close: I held his hand:
I loved, so came to understand
The inmost working of his mind;
Yea, in that clasp, I know not how,
Did not his life of life then flow
Through mine, while mine was left behind?

I know not how, and yet it seems
As in some prank of shifting dreams,
That it was I who died, not he:
And then again, I know not how,
I feel new powers upheave and glow,
And all his life that stirs in me.

I am no longer what I was;
My nature is the pictured glass,
Where he who lived lives on and on;
All ye who loved him, ye may see
His spirits still investing me,
As moonlight but reflects the sun.

For ever deepening grows his sway:
A voice cries in me night and day:
'He'll never die to me, his wife;
In our strong love death hath no part;
I hold and fold him in my heart--
There he shall live while I have life.'

Thou art the goal for which my spirit longs;
As dove on dove,
Bound for one home, I send thee all my songs
With all my love.

Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights;
Safe locked in thee,
My heart would anchor after stormful nights
Alone at sea.

Thou art the rest of which my life is fain,
The perfect peace;
Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain
And toil, would cease.

Thou art the heaven to which my soul would go!
O dearest eyes,
Lost in your light you would turn hell below
To Paradise.

Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns!
Yea, near or far--
Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns
With star on star,

Or where, enkindled by the fires of June,
The fresh earth glows,
Blushing beneath the mystical white moon
Through rose on rose--

Thee, thee, I see, thee feel in all live things,
Beloved one;
In the first bird which tremulously sings
Ere peep of sun;

In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge,
Rocked to and fro,
When dying summer shudders in the sedge,
And swallows go;

When roaring snows rush down the mountain-pass,
March floods with rills
Or April lightens through the living grass
In daffodils;

When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat
With tare and thistle,
And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat,
The starlings whistle;

When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare
In the wild weather,
And clouds with flaming craters smoke and flare
Red o'er red heather;

When the bent moon, on frostbound midnights waking,
Leans to the snow
Like some world-mother whose deep heart is breaking
O'er human woe.

As the round sun rolls red into the ocean,
Till all the sea
Glows fluid gold, even so life's mazy motion
Is dyed with thee:

For as the wave-like years subside and roll,
O heart's desire,
Thy soul glows interfused within my soul,
A quenchless fire.

Yea, thee I feel, all storms of life above,
Near though afar;
O thou my glorious morning star of love,
And evening star.

I.
SHE stood against the Orient sun,
Her face inscrutable for light;
A myriad larks in unison
Sang o'er her, soaring out of sight.

A myriad flowers around her feet
Burst flame-like from the yielding sod,
Till all the wandering airs were sweet
With incense mounting up to God.

A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
Towards her, from the Occident,
Girdling the cloud-wrack which enshrined
Half the light-bearing firmament.

Lit showers flashed golden o'er the hills,
And trees flung silver to the breeze,
And, scattering diamonds, fleet-foot rills
Fled laughingly across the leas.

Yea Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
And writ in flowers thine awful name;
Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
And life a brand which feeds thy flame.



II.
WINDING all my life about thee,
Let me lay my lips on thine;
What is all the world without thee,
Mine--oh mine!

Let me press my heart out on thee,
Crush it like a fiery vine,
Spilling sacramental on thee
Love's red wine.

Let thy strong eyes yearning o'er me
Draw me with their force divine;
All my soul has gone before me
Clasping thine.

Irresistibly I follow,
As wherever we may run
Runs our shadow, as the swallow
Seeks the sun.

Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
All my spirit to thy sway,
As a star is drowned in splendour
Of the day.


III.
I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

NOW the earth in fields and hills
Stirs with pulses of the Spring,
Next-embowering hedges ring
With interminable trills;
Sunlight runs a race with rain,
All the world grows young again.

Young as at the hour of birth:
From the grass the daisies rise
With the dew upon their eyes,
Sun-awakened eyes of earth;
Fields are set with cups of gold;
Can this budding world grow old?

Can the world grow old and sere,
Now when ruddy-tasselled trees
Stoop to every passing breeze,
Rustling in their silken gear;
Now when blossoms pink and white
Have their own terrestrial light?

Brooding light falls soft and warm,
Where in many a wind-rocked nest,
Curled up 'neath the she-bird's breast,
Clustering eggs are hid from harm;
While the mellow-throated thrush
Warbles in the purpling bush.

Misty purple bathes the Spring:
Swallows flashing here and there
Float and dive on waves of air,
And make love upon the wing;
Crocus-buds in sheaths of gold
Burst like sunbeams from the mould.

Chestnut leaflets burst their buds,
Perching tiptoe on each spray,
Springing toward the radiant day,
As the bland, pacific floods
Of the generative sun
All the teeming earth o'errun.

Can this earth run o'er with beauty,
Laugh through leaf and flower and grain,
While in close-pent court and lane,
In the air so thick and sooty,
Little ones pace to and fro,
Weighted with their parents' woe?

Woe-predestined little ones!
Putting forth their buds of life
In an atmosphere of strife,
And crime breeding ignorance;
Where the bitter surge of care
Freezes to a dull despair.

Dull despair and misery
Lie about them from their birth;
Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
Are their earliest lullaby;
Fathers have they without name,
Mothers crushed by want and shame.

Brutish, overburthened mothers,
With their hungry children cast
Half-nude to the nipping blast;
Little sisters with their brothers
Dragging in their arms all day
Children nigh as big as they.

Children mothered by the street:
Shouting, flouting, roaring after
Passers-by with gibes and laughter,
Diving between horses' feet,
In and out of drays and barrows,
Recklessly, like London sparrows.

Mudlarks of our slums and alleys,
All unconscious of the blooming
World behind those housetops looming.
Of the happy fields and valleys,
Of the miracle of Spring
With its boundless blossoming.

Blossoms of humanity!
Poor soiled blossoms in the dust!
Through the thick defiling crust
Of soul-stifling poverty,
In your features may be traced
Childhood's beauty half effaced--

Childhood, stunted in the shadow
Of the light-debarring walls:
Not for you the cuckoo calls
O'er the silver-threaded meadow;
Not for you the lark on high
Pours his music from the sky.

Ah! you have your music too!
And come flocking round that player
Grinding at his organ there,
Summer-eyed and swart of hue,
Rattling off his well-worn tune
On this April afternoon.

Lovely April lights of pleasure
Flit o'er want-beclouded features
Of these little outcast creatures,
As they swing with rhythmic measure,
In the courage of their rags,
Lightly o'er the slippery flags.

Little footfalls, lightly glancing
In a luxury of motion,
Supple as the waves of ocean
In your elemental dancing,
How you fly, and wheel, and spin,
For your hearts too dance within.

Dance along with mirth and laughter,
Buoyant, fearless, and elate,
Dancing in the teeth of fate,
Ignorant of your hereafter
That with all its tragic glooms
Blindly on your future looms.

Past and future, hence away!
Joy, diffused throughout the earth,
Centre in this moment's mirth
Of ecstatic holiday:
Once in all their lives' dark story,
Touch them, Fate! with April glory.

Far in the fiery wilderness,
Beyond the town of Assouan,
Left languishing in sore distress,
There lay a dying Dragoman.
Alone amid the waste, alone,
The hot sand burnt him to the bone;
And on his breast, like heated stone,
The burden of the air did press.

His head was pillowed on a tomb,
Reared to some holy Sheik of old;
The irresistible Simoom
Whirled drifts of sand that rose and rolled
Around him, and the panting air
Was one sulphureous spectral glare,
Shot with such gleams as lights the lair
Of tigers in a jungle's gloom.

Groaning, he closed his bloodshot eyes,
As if to shut out all he feared;
And greedily a swarm of flies
Fell on his face and tangled beard.
He lay like one who ne'er would lift
His head above that ashy drift;
When lo, there gleamed across a rift
The blue oasis of the skies.

Like smoke dispersing far and wide,
The draggled sands were blown away;
The wild clouds in a refluent tide
Receded from the face of day.
The lingering airs yet lightly blew
Till the last speck cleared out of view,
And left the hushed Eternal Blue,
And nothing else beside.

Then once again, with change of moods,
A mighty shadow, broadening, fell
Across those shadeless solitudes,
Without a Palm, without a Well.
Wing wedged in wing, an ordered mass
Unnumbered numbers pass and pass,
As if one Will, one only, was
In all those moving multitudes.

A chord thrilled in the sick man's brain;
He raised his heavy-lidded eyes,
He raised his heavy head with pain,
And caught a glimpse of netted skies,
Meshed in ten thousand wings in flight
That cleft the air. Oh wondrous sight!
He gasped, he shrieked in sheer delight:
"The Storks! The Storks fly home again!

"I too, O Storks, I too, even I,
Would see my native land again.
Oh, had I wings that I might fly
With you, wild birds, across the main!
Take, take me to the land, I pray,
The land where nests are full in May,
The land where my young children play:
Oh, take me with you, or I die.

"My lonely heart blooms like a flower,
My children, when I think of you,
My love is like an April shower,
And fills my heart with drops of dew.
Along their unknown tracks, ah me!
The Storks will fly across the sea;
My children soon will hail with glee
Their red bills on the rain-washed tower."

Home-sickness seized him for the herds
That browse upon the fresh green leas;
Home-sickness for the cuckoo birds
That shout afar in feathery trees;
For running stream and rippling rill
That, racing, turning his woodland mill:
And tears on tears began to fill
His eyes, confusing all he sees.

Again he doats on rosy cheeks
Of children rolling in the grass;
Again the busy days and weeks,
The months and years serenely pass.
Black forest clocks tick day and night,
His board and bed are snowy white,
His humble house is just as bright
As if it were a house of glass.

Again, beneath the high-peaked roof,
His wife's unresting shuttle flies
Across the even warp and woof;
Again his thrifty mother plies
Her wheel, that hums like noontide bees;
And lint-locked babes about her knees
Hark to strange tales of talking trees,
And Storks deep versed in sage replies.

Again the ring of swinging chimes
Calls all the pious folk to church,
With shining Sunday face, betimes,
Through rustling woods of beech and birch

Full of moist glimmering hollows where
The pines bow murmuring as in prayer,
And musically through the air
The forest's mighty Choral swells.

Again, O Lord, again he sees
The place where Heaven came down one day;
Where, in a space of bloom and bees,
He won his wife one morn of May.
Warm pulses shook and thrilled his blood,
Wild birds were singing in the wood,
The flowering world in bridal mood
Joined in the Pinewood's symphonies.

Again, O Lord, in grief and fear,
He bids good-bye to all he loves;
The waters swell, the woods are sere,
The Storks are gone, and hushed the doves.
He goes with them; he goes to heal
The sickness whose insidious seal
Is set on him. Ah, tears will steal
And blur the Storks that disappear.

A furnace fire behind the hill,
The sun has burnt itself away;
The ghost of light, transparent, chill,
Yet floats upon the edge of day.
And all the desert holds its breath
As if it felt and crouched beneath
The filmy, flying bat of death
About a heart for ever still.

And one by one, seraphic, bland,
The bright stars open in the skies;
The large above the Shadow land
The white-faced moon begins to rise.
And all the wilderness grows wan
Beneath the stars, that one by one
Look down upon the lifeless man
As if they were his children's eyes.

When ich Dich liebe was geht es Dich an?

I.
THE air is full of the peal of bells,
The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells;
But athwart and above their ringing--
Throbbing clear like the light of a star
Lost in the sunrise--I hear afar
The skylark's jubilant singing.

II.
The clouds all woollen and white on high,
Like flocks of heavenly sheep go by,
Go through heaven's sapphire meadows;
While here on the earth's green meadows, deep
In sapphire flowers, our earthly sheep
Loll in their loitering shadows.

III.
Come, we will sit by the wayside here,
They must cross this field to the chapel, dear,
The loved by the side for her lover.
Grey, through the glimmer of vernal green,
Its time-worn tower may just be seen
Through the yews which curtain it over.

IV.
Nay, little brother, why should I pine?
Dare a violet ask that the sun should shine,
The shining sun shine for it solely?
Lowly it lifteth its meek blue eye,
And yields up its soul to the sun on high,
Nor asks for love, loving so wholly.

V.
He passed by the garden where, snow-white and red,
I tended the flowers which give us our bread,
And watered my lilies and roses;
He passed and repassed both early and late,
And lingering, often would lean on the gate
While I tied for him one of my posies.

VI.
Day after day would he pass this way,
And his smiling was sweet as the flowers of May,
Or the scent of the bee-haunted clover;
And a softer flame seemed to light up his eye
Than the lily-white moon's in the rose-hued sky,
Ere the blush of the May-day is over.

VII.
Aye, day after day he would stop on his way,
While the trees were in leaf and the meadows were gay,
And the curled little lambs were grazing;
As he went, or returned in the waning light
From the smoke-capped city whose lamps by night
Turn the black clouds red with their blazing.

VIII.
It's a year to-day when the young sun sets
Since I gave him that first bunch of violets
From the root on the grave of our mother.
Though thou seest them not with the bodily eye,
The language of flowers much better than I
I know that thou knowest, my brother.

IX.
Violets--then golden daffodils
Which the light of the sun like a wine-cup fills--
Tall tulips like flames upspringing--
Golden-brown wallflowers bright as his locks--
Marigolds--balsams--and perfumed stocks
Whose scent's like a blackbird's singing.

X.
You see, my darling, I never forget!
Aye, those were your own very words--ere yet
Our father lost his all in yon city,
Where the people, they say, in their struggle for gold,
Become like wild beasts, and the feeble and old
Are trampled upon without pity.

XI.
Poor father was better to-day: for the smile
Of the sun seemed to gladden him too for awhile
As he sat by the bright little casement,
With buttercups heaped on his knees without stint,
Which, deeming them childishly fresh from the mint,
He counted in chuckling amazement.

XII.
The air is full of the peal of bells--
The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells!
And there floats o'er the fields, o'er the fallows,
Borne on the wind with the wind-blown chimes,
From the old house hidden in older limes,
A chatter of maidens and swallows.

XIII.
Ah, give me the flowers!--the last year was all
In tune with the flowers from the spring to the fall,
And with singing of birds in the bowers;
And once--ah, look not so angry, dear!--
He whispered so softly I scarce could hear,
'You yourself are the flower of all flowers!'

XIV.
But oh, when the wind was loud in the trees,
When the fluttering petals snowed down on the leas,
And the dim sun went out like an ember,
He stood by the gate all drenched with the mist,
And I gave him my last Christmas rose, which he kissed
For the last time that last of November.

XV.
Say, could he help if a hope as sweet
As the wild thyme had sprouted under his feet?
If his face in my heart is enfolden,
As the sun-smit globes of the summer rain
Reflect and hold and refract again
The sun, the eternally golden.

XVI.
He cometh, he cometh, oh brother, there!
Ah would that you saw the glint of his hair,
For he looks like that saint in the story
Whom you loved so to hear of in days of old,
Till he lit up your dreams with his curls of gold,
Exhaling a mystical glory.

XVII.
The unseen wings of the morning air
Fan his brow and ruffle his hair
As he steps with a stately measure;
White daisies under his feet are spread,
White butterflies hover above his head,
White clouds high up in the azure:

XVIII.
Pelt him with sunlit April rain,
Rain which ripens the earth-hid grain,
Which brings up the grass and the heather!
Hark at the peal of the bridal bells,
How their musical chiming swells and swells
As they enter the church door together.

XIX.
Let us go hence now--'tis over--the twain
One will they be when they pass here again:
All my flowers in their pathway I scatter;
Though he forget me as yesterday's rose,
My heart with a sweet tender feeling o'erflows:
If I love him, to whom can it matter?

XX.
Yea, let us go now; the stile, love, is here:
Henceforth I live but for thee. What! a tear
Splashed on thy hand? Nay, a drop from the shower
That has passed over, for yon, on that dark
Ominous cloud, dearest brother, the arc
Of the Lord's bow now breaks into flower.

ACROSS the barren moors the wild, wild wind
Went sweeping on, and with his sobs and shrieks
Filled the still night, and tore the woof of clouds
Through which the moon did shed her cold clear light.
From age to age a houseless wanderer he--
Neither of heaven, nor yet of earth, but doomed
For evermore to waver 'twixt the two:--
Begging the moon with moans to take him up
Into her charmèd calm; now with a wail,
Piteous and low, beseeching that the earth
Might fold him to her bosom, but in vain!
A lonely outcast, frenzied does he storm
Wildly from land to land, from sea to sea,
Driving the clouds before him, ploughing up
The shaking sod, splitting the tow'ring masts,
And laying low the oaks of thousand years.
But I that night ne'er closed an eye in sleep,
For I did see him wand'ring o'er the moor--
A giant phantom lost in midnight gloom,
Flitting a restless shadow 'twixt the earth
And round orbed moon; loose tattered folds of clouds,
Ragged with ages, swept behind, as he
With Titan strides did bridge the rocky chasms;
Oh how he sobbed and shrieked, and howled and roared,
Torn with eternal hunger after home.
So roars the lion from Numidian peaks,
Swaying his manèd head from side to side,
As low, then loud and louder swell his tones,
Till big with horror thro' the forest lone
They roll towards the plain, curdling the blood
Of flocks and herds returning to the fold.
So howls the famished wolf across the waste
Siberian snows, with glare of restless eyes,
Making a hideous brilliance in the dark.
Now worn away, the wild wind's voice would die
Fainting with its excess; then draw a sigh--
Sounding far off, and then a soughing wail,
A roar, a shriek, to pierce the ears of night;
So on and on, through all the livelong night;
And all the livelong night I tossed about;
His stormy voice, it would not let me rest,
But woke an echo in me, rolling on
Over my boundless waste of soul, till all
The weary longings and the phantoms wild,
The cravings with their thirst unquenchable,
The doubts--dark looming in the nether mists,
Rose up in tumult, shrieking with one voice:
'Is there no goal? shall we for aye and aye
Be hurried restlessly through endless space?
Oh has the storm no nest? the soul no home?
And the foundation stone of all my being
Shook, and a flood, brackish with tears unshed,
Surged o'er and o'er me.--Tortured I arose,
Went to the open casement, and looked out.--
There was a lull.--Upon the gravelled talks
And smooth-cut sward, patches of moonlight lay;
The clouds were swept away; and sharp and clear
The trees did cast their shadows on the ground.
Weird-like and moonlit the wan brood of night
Did flit adown the ridges of the moors,
Up from the river, and from out the trees,
Gliding with noiseless movements in and out
The pale moonlight, making my flesh to creep;
And sick with fear I turned me to my rest--
But not to sleep, for he on dewèd wings
Had shyly fled before the moaning wind,
Who now arose again in all his strength,
And tore along, blasting the peace of night;
And the old clock did toll the weary hours,
As one by one night dropped them from her lap,
And weary, wearily I counted them,
With burning eyes and with a burning brain.
But, lo!
What golden touch falls on the curtain now?
Up from my bed I spring--I look, I see
A trembling light gleam faintly in the east,
A trembling light, while all around is dark;
It grows, it deepens into liquid gold
And glowing orange and vermilion bright;
It spreads along in billowy ripples, like
A glittering ocean when the tide rolls in.
Smiling, it greets the mist-enshrouded earth,
And draws her up with hill and tree and field,
Driving the host of pris'ning fogs to flight,
That brooding vengeance fly behind the hills,
And gath'ring force from night, swoop in one mass
Of densest black across the swooning earth.
Trees weep, and long drawn sighs float here and there;
Have shadows then wiped out the golden light?
See! see! the strangling cloud
Sinks back; pierced by the arrow of the dawn,
Her blood--it trickles on the grass, and all
The vague wan children of the night, they fly
In dire confusion westward. . . . Hark! oh hark!
The lovely morn now blows his silver horn,
And like a lavish prodigal he strews
Red roses, thick as sands on amber shores
Along heaven's eastern floor: for now the sun,
The radiant conqueror of the night, steps forth
Upon the gorgeous path, with dazzling shield,
Greeted by pealing chants as he begins
His grand triumphal march: hills, vales, and streams,
Laugh glowing up to him; the heavy tears
Wept through the night, now sparkle on the grass
Like orient pearls, well knowing that the sun
Will kiss them all away; the merry birds
Shake out their plumage wet with drops, and flit
In airy gambols twitt'ring to and fro;
The flowers smile again, and shyly play
With morning rays.
But in the west, a white mist like a dream
With languid rooks, floats o'er the winding stream,
And wearied out, the wind, a phantom, strides
On with the faded moon and flick'ring star,
Towards the hazy stretch of western moors;
His strong voice dying slowly as he goes.
But by my side a radiant spirit stood,
A sunbeam, whispering, with a smile, 'Behold!
After the darkness still there falls a light;
After the storm a trancèd calm there falls.
There is a light; yea, and there is a rest!'
And all the weary and the restless gusts
That had been shaking at my roots of being
Were lulled, a silence came, and dewy sleep
Fell on my burning eyes and burning brain.

I.
I WALK about in driving snow,
And drizzling rain, splashed o'er and o'er;
No sign that radiant spring e'en now
Stands at the threshold of the door.

No sign that fragrant violets burn
To burst the ground and quicken forth;
No sign that swallow flights return,
To gladden all the serious north.

But in my breast--what flutterings here!
What bursts of song! what twitt'rings blest!
Sure the first swallow of the year
Within my heart has built her nest.


II.
Oft on the gleaming April days,
When skies are soft, and winds are warm,
And in the air a subtle charm,
And on the hill a flight of rays;

When silver clouds slide through the blue,
Spreading a pure, transparent wing,
And all the budding branches ring
With blithesome birds, that warbling woo;

Beneath a pear tree's shade I lay,
Deep bedded in the long thick grass,
And heard the twitt'ring swallow pass,
And grasshoppers at endless play.

I knew, though flowers mine eyes did screen,
That butterflies danced in the light;
For, breaking sunbeams in their flight,
They flashed their shadows on the green.

And gazing up, in dreamful ease,
Where quiv'ring frail on shivery sprays,
The blossoms mix a milky maze,
What hum of golden-girted bees!

So lily-white, the tree, behold,
Seems set on fire by burnished lights,
And shoal on honeying shoal alights,
And turns the snowy boughs to gold.

Thus on my spirit--music-fraught,
Burst swarms of glimm'ring melodies,
And like the yellow-banded bees,
Make honey of my flutt'ring thought.


III.
Sometimes on my soul will throng
Such a blossom-burst of song,
That I cannot seize it all,
Letting sweetest measures fall.

Thus a child feels--sudden sunk
On a crowding violet bank,
And delighted and amazed,
Gathers in a flushèd haste.

Gathers them so fast and fleet,
Little fingers cannot meet
O'er the lot; and swifter still
Than they cull, the wealth they spill.

To that sweets o'erflooded nook,
Casting back one longing look,
At the last it takes away
But one little odorous spray.

Yet through many a day and night,
Flinging back the fragrant sight,
Cleaves to face, and hands, and feet,
All the woodland's violets sweet.


IV.
Fain would I sing of each sweet sight and sound,
Of fleeting odours wheeling round and round,
Of sunbeams dancing on the virgin grass,
Of flocks of fleecy clouds that glimmer as they pass.

Of larks, that lost in the blue ether float,
Of the weird blackbird's dream--enchanted note!
While the glad hedges palpitate with song,
That drops like murm'ring rain the dewy fields among.

Of blooming bushes and of budding trees,
Of flaming flowers, dotting the grassy leas,
Of glowing pools and of the babbling rills,
That flash through azure mists, slumb'ring on folded hills.

Fain would I sing, sweet April-time, of thee,
And mingle in thy wantonness of glee;
But thou such overwealth of sweets dost fling,
My heart is all too full, too full to speak or sing.


V.
There's somewhat in the loveliness of spring,
In the young light, and in the fragrant bloom,
In the sweet song that each soft breeze doth wing,
In the bright flowers that rise from earth's dark womb;

Which fills with sadness the presentient mind,
And for a far-off home awakes the sigh;
Which makes us gaze, with longings undefined,
On dim blue hills, and weep--we know not why.


VI.
Oh, birds, winged voices! children of the light!
Whose song is love, whose love is melody;
Shedding o'er hedge, and field, and bush, and tree,
Your tuneful joy and musical delight,

Making the air, the earth, the heavens bright;
Melodious, tender, sad and gay and free;
By all these gifts true poets born are ye;
Love circumscribes alone your restless flight.

Poets, I say? Ah, not like poets here,
That wander forth alone, companionless;
Whose lays are wrung from them by care and pain;
Who sing, while blinded by the hot salt tear.

Not such are ye; but free from all distress,
Ye, with the sunlight, range o'er land and main.


VII.
Oh, soft sweet air of early spring,
Again thou float'st on viewless wing,
Coax'st snowdrops their white bells to ring,
And wak'st the blackbird up to sing.

Again, upon the bright'ning lea,
Beneath the budding bursting tree,
The toddling baby-mites I see,
Skip, jump, and frisk in lamb-like glee.

But I am sad, I know not why;
My breast heaves with the long-drawn sigh;
The tear rounds slowly in mine eye;
I'd like to lay me down and die.


VIII.
The blooming hedge, the budding grove,
Resound with notes of joy and love;
The gleaming bush, the glimm'ring tree,
Live with a dewy melody.

Along the meadows, flashing bright,
Run trills of shrill and sweet delight;
E'en the small snowy clouds among,
Gush showers on showers of silver song.
But thou, my heart, oh, tell me why
Hast thou no language but a sigh?


IX.
Like a flower-fall of rain,
Like a snowy elfin train,
Like stray gleams of moonlight fair,
Do you shift upon the air,
Do you flutter on the breeze,
Do you fall upon the leas,
Blossoms of the apple-trees;
Then on earth's bosom slow ye fade away,
Like to a low and sweetly dying lay.


X.
With thousand gaps the earth is split,
By sunbeams wounded o'er and o'er,
My heart, it acheth bit by bit;
Life's heat and dust have made it sore.

When wilt thou fall from clouds above,
In silver showers, refreshing rain?
When wilt thou come, reviving love,
With dew, and make me whole again?

A little while, big drops will slake,
Oh, earth, thy thirst's hot agony;
But till my fevered heart doth break,
Will solace ever come to me?

I.
It is the night: across the starless waste
Of silent heaven the solitary moon
Flits like a frightened maid who flies in haste,
And wild with terror seems to reel and swoon,
As in her rear the multitudinous clouds
Follow like spectral huntsmen in their shrouds.


II.
And sometimes the wild rout o'ertakes its prey,
And holds her captive in the lowering sky,
But ever and anon she bursts away,
And her white orb floats lustrously on high,
And with its lambent flame transmutes the haze
Into a living halo for her face.


III.
And far o'er black morass and barren moor
The fitful splendour of the moonlight falls,
Its broken eddies sweep across the floor,
And dance in chequered silver on the walls,
And flood the chapel's grave-encircled site
With sudden flashes of unearthly light.


IV.
And as the unquiet moonlight comes and flies
Athwart the little roofless house of prayer,
Like some lost spirit strayed from Paradise
Or dæmon-angel of the realms of air,
A pallid shape flits through the open door
And flings itself, low wailing, on the floor;


V.
And wailing, wailing, lay there in its pain,
When suddenly it snatched from the out the sod
Some late-forgotten spade, while tears like rain
Poured from its eyes, enough to melt the clod,
And digging hard the small breach grew apace,
Till the soil lay like molehills round the place.


VI.
But through the silence suddenly there swells
Along the gusty breaths of midnight air
The mellow tinkling sound of magic bells,
Such as the pious brethren love to wear,
To keep the fiends and goblins off that prowl
For ever near to catch a tripping soul.


VII.
And as the monks, chanting a solemn hymn,
Draw nigh the chapel to perform their rite,
That wailing shape flies far into the dim
Recess behind the altar full of night;
While they with burning torches move in file
To consecrate afresh their sacred pile.


VIII.
Three days, three nights have fled since in that spot,
Where fiends and dæmons revelled unforbid,
They buried that false monk who was a blot
Upon their rule: but since the earth has hid
His bones accursed, God's sun has shone again,
Nor has fresh ill assailed their prospering fane


IX.
Which now they enter, singing hymns of praise,
Columba at their head--when lo, behold
The grave yawns open and a bloodless face,
The face of him they knew, rose from the mould:
Slowly he rose from the incumbent clay
Lifting the white shroud in the moonlight grey.


X.
Slowly his arm beneath the winding-sheet
He waved three times, as though to bid them hear;
Then in the moonlight rose he to his feet
Showing his shrunken body, and his sere
Discoloured hair, and smouldering eyes that lie
Sunk in their sockets, glaring hot and dry.


XI.
Slowly he raised his voice--once rich in tone
Like sweetest music, now a mournful knell
With dull sepulchral sounds, as of a stone
Cast down into a black unfathomed well--
And murmured, 'Lo, I come back from the grave,--
Behold, there is no God to smite or save.


XII.
'Poor fools! wild dreamers! No, there is no God;
Yon heaven is deaf and dumb to prayer and praise;
Lo, no almighty tyrant wields the rod
For evermore above our hapless race;
Nor fashioned us, frail creatures that we be,
To bear the burden of eternity.


XIII.
'Hear it, self-torturing monks, and cease to wage
Your mad, delirious, suicidal war;
There is no devil who from age to age
Waylays and tempts all souls of men that are;
For ever seeking whom he may devour,
And damn with wine and woman, gold and power.


XIV.
'Deluded priests, ye think the world a snare,
Denouncing every tender human tie!
Behold, your heaven is unsubstantial air,
Your future bliss a sick brain's phantasy;
There is no room amid the stars which gem
The firmament for your Jerusalem.


XV.
'Rejoice, poor sinners, for I come to tell
To you who hardly dare to live for fright;
There is no burning everlasting hell
Where souls shall be tormented day and night:
The fever ye call life ends with your breath;
All weary souls set in the night of death.


XVI.
'Then let your life on earth be life indeed!
Nor drop the substance, snatching at a shade!
Ye can have Eden here! ye bear the seed
Of all the hells and heavens and gods ye made
Within that mighty world-transforming thought
Which permeates the universe it wrought--


XVII.
'Wrought out of stones and plants and birds and beasts,
To flower in man, and know itself at last:
Around, about you, see what endless feasts
The spring and summer bountifully cast!
'A vale of tears,' ye cry--'if ye were wise,
The earth itself would change to Paradise.


XVIII.
'The earth itself--the old despisèd earth,
Would render back your love a thousandfold,
Nor yet afflict the sons of men with dearth,
Disease, and misery, and drought and cold;
If you would seek a blessing in her sod,
Instead of crying vainly on your God.


XIX.
'Cast down the crucifix, take up the plough!
Nor waste your breath which is the life in prayer!
Dare to be men, and break you impious vow,
Nor fly from woman as the devil's snare!
For if within, around, beneath, above
There is a living God, that God is Love.'


XX.
'The fool says in his heart, There is no God,'
Cried St. Columba, white with Christian ire
'Seize Oran, re-inter him in the sod
And may his soul awake in endless fire:
Earth on his mouth--the earth he would adore,
That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'


XXI.
Then like swart ravens swooping on their prey
These monks rushed upon Oran; when there came
One gliding towards them in wild disarray
With hair that streamed behind her like a flame
And face dazed with the moon, who shrilly cried,
'Let not death part the bridegroom from his bride.'


XXII.
But deeming her some fiend in female guise,
They drive her forth with threats, till, crazed with fear,
Across the stones and mounded graves she flies
Towards that lapping, moon-illumined mere;
And like a child seeking its mother's breast
She casts her life thereon, and is at rest.


XXIII.
And while the waves close gurgling o'er her head,
A grave is dug whence he may never stray,
Or come back prophesying from the dead,--
All shouting as they stifle him with clay:
'Earth on his mouth--the earth he would adore,
That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'

BEHOLD, unto myself I said,
This place how dull and desolate,
For lovely thoughts how all unmeet,
This drear and darksome London street.
Above, beneath, and all around,
Not one slight crumb is to be found;
Not one so slight poetic crumb
For sparrow-poet to feed upon.
For lo! above there is no sky!
No living blue to glad the eye!
No sun that shines, no flying cloud!
But fog, that in a huge dun shroud
Wraps all the London town about;
And with it comes the drizzling rain,
And dusky houses wets in vain--
It ne'er can wash them white again.
Those houses, yea, how cold and bare,
With self-same aspect stand they there,
With grimy windows two and two,
It makes me sick to look at you!
No tree, no shrub, to lend you grace,
With drooping branch to hide your face;
No solitary blossom e'en
To brighten you with flow'ry sheen;
Nor living things I here espy,
Save yon black cat, with sharp green eye,
Sliding along with stealthy pace:
The very spirit of the place.
And in the road hops here and there
A sparrow, searching scanty fare,
The pauper of the sons of air.
Nought! nought! but wall and iron spike,
Cold, cruel, as if fain 'twould like
To run some beggar through and through,
And guard the door from him and you.
And underfoot?--no flowers, no grass,
T' arrest the step before you pass,
To send up whispers low and sweet,
To smile, to beckon, and to greet;
No gurgling brook, no silent pool,
In whose pure waters, still and cool,
The flying bird, the flitting cloud,
The sunbeam peering in and out,
The star that slides through limpid air,
Are glassed in beauty wondrous fair.
None--none of these, but miry clay,
To cling tenaciously all day,
With heavy clutch to your poor heel,
And in the gutter you, the peel
Of some sweet golden orange fruit,
Though smothered now with dirt and soot
Still darting forth through dull decay,
The splendour of a by-gone day,
The ling'ring of a dying ray.
Oh, wondrous strange! I feel the deep
Hush of Italian nights slow creep
Around me, see the fuller light
Of southern stars strike through the night,
And hear the sweeter breathèd sighs
Of southern breezes swell and rise;
Rise, swell I hear the balm-fed breeze,
Through the dark grove of orange trees,
Where silver gleams of creamy bloom,
In fragrance flash along the gloom;
And the gold fruit through dark doth shine
A star! a mystery divine!
I hear the sweeter sighs of love,
By southern hearts breathed through the grove,
Like to the cooing of a dove;
Like to the soft falls of summer rain,
On hoary wood and parched plain;
Like to the drops of pale moonlight,
That sink upon the sea at night;
Heart melts with heart, and kiss with kiss,
In holy night, in holy bliss,
As in the wondrous sunset skies
Hues melt with hues, and dyes with dyes,
Till all in one vast glory lies.

But what a full and deep-set roar
Heaves, swells, and surges more and more,
Like billows on a stormy shore.
Yet here flows not the dark blue sea,
But street on street continually;
Here walls on walls press nigh and nigher,
And roofs on roofs rise high and higher,
And spire still greets the rising spire.
The clang, the clash, the row, the roar,
London, great London, 'tis once more,
With hurry, flurry, to and fro,
Time scarce to snarl a 'yes' or 'no;'
Time scarce t' evade your neighbour's toe.
But here's the market fair to see,
An island green within that sea
Of streets, a little flow'ry spot,
Reminding him who's long forgot,
Of country fields and waving trees,
Of hedges, birds and flowers and bees.
The snowdrop stands in moist brown ground,
And purifies the air around;
The violet scatters woodland smells,
And hyacinths ring their honeyed bells.
This man sells grapes from sunny Spain;
Lombardian almonds this again;
Pears, peaches, with the morning down,
All in that world-wide lap are thrown,
By all the nations, and they vie
In fruits, nursed by a southern sky.
The chaff'ring crowd, the bart'ring maid,
Here buy and sell, and choose and trade.
There sits a woman lean and old,
She shivers in the east wind's cold;
She knits; how fast her fingers fly!
Her fingers, oh! how worn and dry.
But still she knits, because she knows
Her crying grandchild's icy toes.
Her basket stands close by her side,
With orange heaps in golden pride;
Surely imprisoned sunbeams throw
Around them such a flush and glow,
That seeing them we seem to see
A glimpse of sun-loved Italy.
Oh, may they all be bought, and give
The old woman wherewithal to live!

Here in the garret, 'neath the leads,
Slowly spin out life's weary threads;
Slowly and slowly ebbs away
The breath of one poor child of clay.
The throbbing pulse, the great'ning eye,
The parchèd lips, the impatient sigh,
The mother marks 'twixt hope and fright,
From weary noon to weary night,
From midnight round to noon again:
Each hour crammed full with aching pain,
And anxious fluttering of hope,
As both alternately find scope.
And as she breathless notes each sound,
He whispers, turning round and round,
'Oh! mother, mother, give me drink.'
She's up, she's back scarce in a wink,
And to her darling's burning lips,
The luscious fruit she holds, he sips
With breaths long drawn, still on and on,
Till all the cooling juice is gone,
And only left of fragrant meal,
Is that still golden orange-peel.

The orange-peel! ah, where am I?
Beneath the deep Italian sky?
In Covent Garden's crowded fair?
Or 'neath the roof of pain and care?
Ah, still within the darksome street,
So all unlovely and unsweet!
The welt'ring fog, the drizzling rain,
The dirt, the dust upon each pane,
The iron rails so hard and bare,
The miry clay, they all are here!
What did befall? Then did I dream?
Was all but air? Did all but seem?
How caught I then this wondrous gleam?
Ah! here you bit of sunny gold,
Within the gutter I behold;
Across my mind its life it flashed,
The fragrance of the past it dashed,
Dying, it kindled life, and hurled
My soul through heights and depths of world.
In bud and blossom, fruit and tree,
Revealed life's perfect harmony!
Revealed the throbs of mutual love,
Ensphered by kindling stars above!
Revealed the stir of busy life,
The trade, the turmoil, and the strife!
Struggles of honest poverty;
A watching mother's agony!
Child-life that hangs upon a breath,
The tremblings betwixt life and death--
Revealed the mystic link, that thrills
Through joy and pain, through good and ills,
Wafts influences from afar,
Connects the worm still with the star,
And binds the earth, the skies, the main,
The worlds, with one electric chain!
Behold, unto myself I said,
There's nought on earth so desolate,
But if the eye is there to see
Will find a joy and mystery,
As under dark and mossy dells
The violet hides with spring-like smells!
No cell, no garret, and no tomb,
For which no flower of love doth bloom!
No place so waste, so dark, so drear,
But heavenly beauty lurketh there!
And from these two will ever spring,
As music from the harp's sweet string,
As from the nest the lark soars high,
As from the flame the live sparks fly,
The fountain of great poesy,
Will shine and flash, and flame and glow,
Like to the million coloured bow
Of hope and peace, a lovely sign,
Flinging around that world of thine
A glory that is all divine!

BRIGHT as a morn of spring,
That jubilates along the earth,
With clouds, and winds, and flowers rejoicing,
And all the creatures that on wing
Scarce dip the ground in their ethereal mirth.
Whilst the dew'd sunlight and the gold-flushed rain
Wed midway in the air;
And from the twain
Is ever born that fairy gossamer,
The iridescent bridge that spans the skies.
Yea, e'en in such wild glory dost thou glow
Soul-fresh exuberant child!
And drops of heavenly freshness gleam
On red, red lips, in dark-orbed eyes,
Like morning dews that glimmering show
On winter moss and heath'ry wild,
And soft-cropped grasses undefiled,
In all the shifting splendour of a dream.

Oh, thou, that in thy glee
Know'st of no ending yet, and no beginning,
Making the hours melodious with thy play,
Like grasshoppers, that through the livelong day
Hopping on the new-mown hay,
Sun-struck trill their roundelay;
Or the cricket, chirping cheerly
Late at night, at morning early,
With a little baby-singing
Like an echo faintly ringing
From the distant summer leas;
And with tremulous murmurs clinging
Round the hearth, like clustering bees
Humming round the linden trees.

And yet athwart thy soul,
At times, perchance, I seem to see
The hid existence of far off events,
Trailing their slumb'rous shadows silently.
For in the dusky deeps
Of thy large eyes
Sometime the veilèd outline of a still
And mute-born vision sleeps
As in the hollows of a hill,
With dim and darksome rents
The dreamful shadow of the morning lies,
And softly, slowly, ever down doth roll,
Till lost in mystic deeps it flees our watchful eyes.

Yet from that silent trance
Quick leap'st thou back into thy playfulness,
As waters darkened by the drifting cloud
Into the swift sweet sunlight crowd,
Where dashed with dewy gold they dance
In unbedimmèd sprightliness;
Till with their blithesome strain
They make the brooding mountains loud
And fling their merriment across the voiceless plain.
And buzzing lightly, here and there,
Thou, like a little curious fly
That fusses through the air,
Dost pry and spy
With thy keen inquisitive eye;
Poking fatly-dimpled fingers
Into corner, box, and closet,
Where, perchance, there hidden lingers
Some deposit,
To be carried off triumphantly.
And with many questions, ever
Rippling like a restless river,
Puzzling many an older brain,
Dost thou hour by hour increase thy store
Of marvellous lore.
Thus a squirrel darting deftly
Up and down autumnal trees,
Sees its hoard of chesnuts growing swiftly
In a heap upon the leaf-strewn leas.

Yea, open art thou to each influence
That strikes on thy soft spirit from without
Thy spirit not yet frozen, nor shut out
From nature's kindling breath
By selfish aims, nor dulled the sense
By hot desires; alas, too oft the death
Of man's spiritual vision. No, thy soul
Is yet all clear and bright
And lieth naked 'neath the eye of heaven
As a small mountain pool--
A pure and azure pool,
To whom its food is given
By dews, and rains, and snows all lily-white,
That softly fall
Through many a summer's day and winter's night;
And whose unspotted breast
Glasses each pageant of the outer world,
The cloud with pinions to the blast unfurled,
The mountains' haughty crest,
The slanting beam of twilight skies
That like a golden ladder lies
Stretching across perchance for angel hosts
To slide
Down to the earth with heavenly boon;
And glasses too the hurrying mists that glide
Like gliding ghosts,
And stars, and all the mildness of the moon.

As yet 'tis early January with thee!
Warm-cradled doth the summer leaf
Lie folded in the winter leaf
On the blank tree.
And folded in the earth the seed
The future mother of some glorious weed,
Or flower blowing gorgeously,
Or cedar branching wondrously,
Lies slumbering; its whole destiny
Of great or lowly, foul or fair,
In this minutest space surely foreshadowed there.
But let the west wind, ocean-born,
Floating towards the meads of morn,
But once spread out his wild and vasty wing
Setting the sap a-cantring; till new life
Works wonders: then thy being
Will strangely stir, as at the sound
Of sounding drum and fife
The war-horse paws the ground.
And through thy sweet pure veins
Life like a waterfall will grandly bound.

But now the Psyche of thy being
Still shyly doth essay her delicate wing,
Like to that airy nurseling of the sun
When first it breaketh through its dun
And hornèd shell, and tries
To move its pinions, powdered o'er and o'er
With rainbow dust of April skies,
That have as not yet learnt to soar,
And lie soft-folded in sweet mysteries.

Oh! looking on thee, I do speculate
On thy futurity!
What wilt thou be?
Some great and glorious lot I dream for thee,
Some starry fate!
For in thy nature meet
Such buoyant strength, and such a sweet
Half-veiled heart tenderness, that on thy being doth rest
Like soft dark bloom upon a pansy's breast;
And pity gushes o'er thee, like warm rain,
For everything in pain,
Or great or small; and such a shoal
Of thick-bred fancies ever swimmeth forth
From the deep sea
Of changeful fantasy,
Like golden fish that glitter in the sun;
And quick perception leading on and on,
Into a maze of thought, fresh'ning the soul
Of him who listens. Aye, what wilt thou be?
Perchance, one of that sacred band
That ever were the salt of earth,
Whom men call dowered with genius! They who stand
In grandeur and in glory like the Alps,
With silver-shining scalps,
Bathed in the ether; feeding all the land
With the pure skyey waters that descend
For ever from them; men who freed
From narrow bonds of hate and greed,
Fetters of custom, and blind circumstance,
Breathe the soul-quickening air of thought and love.
And struggling into freedom, sudden see
The solid shroud of sense
Consumèd by a heavenly flame,
As is the vapour dense and dun,
Which the earth-spirit fast doth breed
By the great sun.
And the large mind in native majesty
Doth catch that radiance evermore above,
Around us; finest effluence of being;
Illuminating with sharp sudden blaze
Nature's mysterious ways;
Until his spirit, feeling itself one
With all that is, and was, and is to be,
Vibrates into intenser life,
Which is creation!
Then makes he revelation
Of that one truth, that as a supreme ray
With new existence heavily fraught,
Lightened in awful loveliness
And empyrean holiness,
Upon his passive thought;
Till with long peals of explosive oracular thunder,
He bursts and cleaves and splinters asunder
The clinging clinking manacles of life,
That fall and curl in harsh black masses under
His wingèd feet: and through time's noisy strife
His infinite acts do strike like flame

Of a volcano seen across a sea,
On nights when with earthquake the labouring hills are rife;
And labouring, too, like heaving heights, doth he,
Girt round with turbulent whirls of praise and blame,
Breathe the hot spark of that which he did see,
As vital force that pulses strong and warm
In the mid-heart of creeds,
Or rolls itself along the epic's flood,
Or lives through ages in the marbled form,
Or leaps to life in the heroic deeds,
Watering with the heart's noble blood
The seed of future world-reforming good.

But stay, my soul;
Too far thou fliest, as a falcon flies,
Forgetful of the hand
Where he must perch, so trancèd with the grand
And boundless skies.
Oh come my song, and roll
Thy billows back, where on the swelling bank,
Mid flowers, and reeds, and grasses rank,
And feathered warblers, warbling wild,
Sporteth the unconscious child,
Safely roofed o'er by shielding mother's love,
Like wee lamb-clouds of morn by tender skies above.
Hark! now I hear thy low soft laughter falling
Upon my heart, like to the murmurous calling
Of brooding stock doves, now it sweet doth sound
Like rippling rills of rain, that make the ground
Harmonious on hot summer afternoons;
And now thy joyous croons
Blither and brighter tumble on my ear
All clarion clear,
Like songs of matin birds that in spring weather,
Hid in young woods, do jubilate together.
Yea, on the musing mind,
That wrapt in meditation's sober dress,
Looks inward in a half-forgetfulness
Of the world's outer show,
Thou breakest in, like a tumultuous wind
That teasing tosses
The foam of flickering fountain;
Or like the flashing flow
Of waves of light along the long green grasses;
Or waters bickering low
Down many a sloping mountain
That make themselves a nest mid ferns and shining mosses.
Of each free thing that in its joy
All chains, and bonds, and obstacles o'erpasses
In elemental gladsomenesses
And wonderful wild wantonesses--
Fire, water, wand'ring air,
Hast a past, exuberant boy,
Glorious, glad, and fresh, and fair,
And blowing in upon the tired brain
Nature's undying, spirit-stirring strain.