Nor bard, nor saint, emblazoned on the pane,
Canopied under marble in the aisle,
Whose shadowy memories haunt his heart, may help.
These are unsceptred; time trends otherwhere;
Their slumber is by channels long deserted!
His hoary towers, with melancholy eyes,
Dream in their own world, impotent for ours;
Or if he speak, who may interpret now?
He wakes in vain, who slept for centuries,
For he awakens in some alien world.
Doth Hope inhabit, then, the sister-pile,
Whose stately height hath grown to overshadow
That hoary minster? This in sooth avails.
And yet methinks more health is in the old,
Renewing youth from fountains of the new,
Than in rash overthrow of all men built,
With salt of insolence sown in holy places.
Therefore, O secular, and sacred towers,
Confound your glories by the river-shore,
And marry mighty tones in ordering time!
Cathedral organ, roll insurgent sound,
As though the archangel would arouse the dead!
Our firm foundations on the invisible,
Build we the ever ampler, loftier state,
Till unaware we walk the City of God!
Yea, for I deem the fathers we revere,
Shrined in cathedral glooms, embolden us
With eyes of silent counsel, and dumb power,
Approving backs turned on their empty tomb.
But who may slay the irrevocable Past?
The Past, our venerable Sire, that girds
Bright armour round us, like some grand old knight,
With benediction sending forth fair youth
To battle, crowning what himself began!
When England bathes in shadow, the tall tower
Of that great palace of the people shines,
Shines to the midnight like a midnight sun.
While crowned inherited incompetence,
And while law-making men laborious
Through long night-watches, in their golden chamber,
Wage wordy wars of faction, help the State,
The dreadful river rolls in darkness under,
Whirling our human lights to wild witch-gleam!
See yellow lamps in formidable gloom
Of both the shores, night-hearted haunts of men ;
Terrible water heaped about great piers
Of arches, gliding, gurgling, ominous!
But on the vasty parapet above
Those Titan tunnels, ghastlier for the glare
Of our electric mockery of moons,
Appears a moment a fate-hunted face-
Wan Desolation, plunging to the Void.
Then swirls a form dishonoured among gleams,
Which eddy as light-headed; what was man,
With other offal flotsam, flounders, rolls.
But now for one who mused upon the bridge,
Of pier and arch tremendous, the huge reek,
And sin-breathed exhalations of the city,
Transfigured by an alchemy of power,
Burned with all colour; the broad river rose
Aslant horizonward, and heavenward,
One calm aerial glory of still dream;
Thronged habitations on the shadowy shore
Blend solemn, disembodied to a bloom
Ethereal, bathed in evening; fair enchased,
Or diapered upon the delicate air,
Hull, mast, sail, tiny bark, or barge, or steamer,
Poised darkly in mid primrose of the tide,
Like carven fretwork on a golden shrine.
All monstrous hostels, with interminable
Glazed bulks that over-roof the clanging train,
And all our builded chaos doth repent,
Converting into beauty; while I muse,
The mild, and modulated cadences
Of lemon fruit, shy violet, dove-down,
Deepen to very pomp and festival
Of dyes magnificent; one diapason
Of hues resplendent, crimson, gold, and green,
And purple gorgeous, like robes of kings,
Or caves of sun-illumined sea-treasure,
Or glories blazoned in Cathedral aisle,
Heart of white lily, fruit of passion-flower,
Or fervid eagle-eyes; a parable,
One nuptial-feast of marrying glow and gloom,
A wondrous parable of life through death!
While yonder haughty heights of Westminster,
Where once fierce feuds of our illustrious dead
Sleep reconciled in monumental calm,
Mary reposing by Elizabeth,
And where with throes of living loud debate
Are brought to birth the still behests of Heaven;
With ancient consecrated privilege
Of lordly Lambeth on his stately sward;
These, and the grand dome, and the four grim towers, Haunted by phantoms of long-wandering crime, And harbours thronged with navies of the world, Glow fair a moment with supernal fire.
HE mage of music, deaf to outward sound,
Rehearsing mighty harmonies within,
Waved his light wand; the full aerial tides
Ebbed billowing to rear of him, o'erwhelmed
All listening auditors, engulphed, and swept
Upon the indomitable, imperial surge
To alien realms, and halls of ancient awe,
Which are the presence-chambers of dim Death:
The grand departed haunt this mountain-sound!
Cliffs, and ravines, and torrent-shadowing pines,
A pomp of winds, and waters, and wild cloud
The enchanter raises: then the solemn scene
Evanishing, lo! delicate soft calm
Of vernal airs, young leaflets, and blithe birds,
The cuckoo and the nightingale, with bloom
Of myriad flowers, and rills, and water-falls,
Or sunlit rains that twinkle through the leaves,
And odorous ruffled whirlpools of the rose.
Anon, some wondrous petal of a flower,
An ample velvet petal, slides along
A luminous air of summer, visibly
Mantling a vermeil glory in the blue;
And now thin ice films clearest water; now
Our youngest angel whispers out of heaven,
And all the choir of his companions
Let loose their rapture on swift sudden wings,
Sunshine released unhoped-for from a cloud!
Slant rays of opal through the clerestory;
Dawn over solemn heights of lonely snow,
Aerial dawn, that deepens into day;
A congregating of white seraph throngs,
Who hold the realms of ether with white plume,
And with a sweet compulsion lift to heaven!
Ye, Harmonies, expand immeasurably
The temple of our soul, and yet are more,
Than earth can bear; within the courts above
Ye may expatiate majestical,
Native, at home! poor mortals hide their tears,
With caught breath, nor may follow: mountain stairs,
Platform on platform, ye aspire to God!
His infinite Soul who bore you is immortal,
And ours, in whom reverberates your appeal!
O music-marvel! how your royal river
Mirrors our life; there breathes exhaled from it
Sorrow and joy, and triumph and despair;
Your eagle flight is through the infinite,
No barriers to prison from the immense.
Yours the large language of the heights of Heaven!
Now lonely prows, exploring realms unknown,
Unpiloted, beneath wan alien stars,
Your strain recalleth, keels of lonely thought,
Wandering in some sublime bewilderment,
To pioneer where all the world will go,
Now merry buoyancy, as of a boat,
That dips in billowy foam at morning tide.
Ye are alive with yearnings of young love,
Or sombre with immeasurable woe,
Sembre with all the terror of the world,
Wild with the awe and horror of the world,
Begloomed like seas empurpled under cloud,
Reeling and dark with horror of the wind,
Or pale, long heaving under a veiled moon.
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