He grew old in an age he condemn'd. He look'd on the rushing decay
Of the times which had shelter'd his youth,
Felt the dissolving throes
Of a social order he loved; Outlived his brethren, his peers; And, like the Theban seer, Died in his enemies' day.
Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa, Copais lay bright in the moon, Helicon glass'd in the lake Its firs, and afar rose the peaks Of Parnassus, snowily clear; Thebes was behind him in flames, And the clang of arms in his ear, When his awe-struck captors led The Theban seer to the spring. Tiresias drank and died. Nor did reviving Thebes See such a prophet again.
Well may we mourn, when the head Of a sacred poet lies low
In an age which can rear them no more! The complaining millions of men Darken in labor and pain;
But he was a priest to us all
Of the wonder and bloom of the world, Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.
He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day Of his race is past on the earth ; And darkness returns to our eyes. For, oh is it you, is it you, Moonlight, and shadow, and lake, And mountains, that fill us with joy, Or the poet who sings you so well? Is it you, O beauty, O grace,
O charm, O romance, that we feel, Or the voice which reveals what you are? Are ye, like daylight and sun, Shared and rejoiced in by all? Or are ye immersed in the mass Of matter, and hard to extract, Or sunk at the core of the world Too deep for the most to discern? Like stars in the deep of the sky, Which arise on the glass of the sage, But are lost when their watcher is gone.
"They are here "--I heard, as men heard In Mysian Ida the voice
Of the Mighty Mother, or Crete,
The murmur of Nature reply
Loveliness, magic, and grace,
They are here! they are set in the world, They abide; and the finest of souls
Ye know not yourselves; and your bards-
The clearest, the best, who have read Most in themselves-have beheld Less than they left unreveal'd. Ye express not yourselves;—can you make
With marble, with color, with word, What charm'd you in others re-live? Can thy pencil, O artist! restore The figure, the bloom of thy love, As she was in her morning of spring? Canst thou paint the ineffable smile Of her eyes as they rested on thine? Can the image of life have the glow, The motion of life itself?
And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden. brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow Heaved dazzlingly between ;
Houses, with long white sweep, Girdled the glistening bay; Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away,
The night was far more fair
But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say: Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast, Which neither deadens into rest, Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away, But fluctuates to and fro,
Never by passion quite possess'd
And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway?
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield and be Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year.
Fresh products of their barren labor fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast;
And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are pressed, Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still un-
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
THE BURIED LIFE
LIGHT flows our war of mocking words,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll, Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there's a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest. And thy gay smiles no anodyne. Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves-and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
But we, my love!-doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?-must we too be dumb?
But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves
Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well-but 'tis not true! And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth up
As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and con-
A melancholy into all our day.
Only-but this is rare-
When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-A bolt is shot back somewhere in our
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye. Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine- trees stand!
Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city's hum. How green under the boughs it is! How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade To take his nurse his broken toy; Sometimes a thrush flit overhead Deep in her unknown day's employ. Here at my feet what wonders pass, What endless, active life is here! What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.
Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod, Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.
In the huge world, which roars hard by, Be others happy if they can! But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan.
I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, Think often, as I hear them rave, That peace has left the upper world And now keeps only in the grave.
Yet here is peace for ever new! When I who watch them am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day.
Then to their happy rest they pass! The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the grass, The child sleeps warmly in his bed. Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar.
The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live.
A WANDERER is man from his birth. He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes
Where the snowy mountainous pass, Echoing the screams of the eagles, Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream; Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings Sluggishly winds through the plain : Whether in sound of the swallowing sea-- As is the world on the banks, So is the mind of the man.
Vainly does each, as he glides, Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast. Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails He wots of; only the thoughts, Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time? Who imagines her fields as they lay In the sunshine, unworn by the plough? Who thinks as they thought, [breast, The tribes who then roam'd on her Her vigorous, primitive sons?
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