ON A CATARACT FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE.
Thou leapest from forth
The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one;
Never mortal heard
The gathering of his voices;
The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock, That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain. There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;
It embosoms the roses of dawn,
It entangles the shafts of the noon,
And into the bed of its stillness
The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,
That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven May be born in a holy twilight!
The wild goat in awe
Looks up and beholds
Above thee the cliff inaccessible;
Thou at once full-born
Madd'nest in thy joyance,
Whirlest, shatter'st, splitt'st,
Life invulnerable
LOVES APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT.
LIKE a lone Arab, old and blind
Some caravan had left behind
Who sits behind a ruin'd well,
Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell;
And now he hangs his aged head aslant,
And listens for a human sound-in vain!
And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant,
Upturns his eyeless face from Heaven to gain;—
Even thus, in vacant mood, one sultry hour,
Resting my eye upon a drooping plant,
With brow low bent, within my garden bower,
I sate upon the couch of camomile;
And-whether 'twas a transient sleep, perchance,
Flitted across the idle brain, the while
I watched the sickly calm with aimless scope,
In my own heart; or that, indeed a trance,
Turn'd my eye inward-thee, O genial Hope,
Love's elder sister! thee did I behold,
Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold,
With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim
Lie lifeless at my feet!
And then came Love, a sylph in bridal trim,
And stood beside my seat;
She bent, and kiss'd her sister's lips,
As she was wont to do;-
Alas! 'twas but a chilling breath
Woke just enough of life in death
To make Hope die anew.
In vain we supplicate the Powers above;
There is no resurrection for the Love
That, nurst in tenderest care, yet fades
In the chilled heart by gradual self-decay.
RESEMBLES life what once was deemed of light,
Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute self-an element ungrounded-
All that we see, all colours of all shade
By encroach of darkness made?—
Is very life by consciousness unbounded?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?
INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE.
Now! it is gone.-Our brief hours travel post,
Each with its thought or deed, its Why or How:-
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee-an eternal Now!
LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION.
O'ER wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces;
Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
For as old Atlas on his broad neck places
Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it,—so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of Education,-Patience, Love, and Hope.
Methinks, I see them grouped, in seemly show,
The straightened arms upraised, the palms aslope,
And robes that, touching as adown they flow,
Distinctly blend, like snow embossed in snow.
O part them never! If Hope prostrate lie,
Love too will sink and die.
But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive
From her own life that Hope is yet alive;
And bending o'er with soul-transfusing eyes,
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,
Woos back the fleeting spirit and half-supplies;
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love, Yet haply there will come a weary day,
When overtasked at length
Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth,
And both supporting does the work of both.
Beareth all things-2 COR. xiii., 7.
GENTLY I took that which ungently came,*
And without scorn forgave:-Do thou the same.
A wrong done to thee think a cat's eye spark
Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark.
Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin,
Fear that the spark self-kindled from within,
Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare,
Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air.
Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds,
And soon the ventilated spirit finds
Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd,
Or worse than foe, an alienated friend,
A rib of dry rot in thy ship's stout side,
Think it God's message, and in humble pride
With heart of oak replace it;-thine the gains-
Give him the rotten timber for his pains!
-Ε colo descendit γνῶθι σεαυτὸν.-JUVENAL.
Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν !—and is this the prime
And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time!—
Say, cans't thou make thyself?-Learn first that trade;-
Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made.
What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine own?—
What is there in thee, Man, that can be known?-
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought,
A phantom dim of past and future wrought,
Vain sister of the worm,-life, death, soul, clod-
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God!
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