Seas, mountains, and the horizon's verge | Are all thy dealings, but in this they pass for bars, The limits of man's common malice, for All that a citizen could be I was; Raised by thy will,all thine in peace or war, And for this thou hast warr'd with me."T'is done : I may not overleap the eternal bar Built up between us, and will die alone, Beholding, with the dark eye of a seer, The evil days to gifted souls foreshown, Foretelling them to those who will not hear, As in the old time, till the hour be come When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear, And make them own the Prophet in his tomb. THE DREAM. Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own | But a most living landscape, and the wave world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality; And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts They take a weight from off our waking toils, Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Like sibyls of the future; they have power-Had far outgrown his years, and to his eyc The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; They make us what we were not-what they will, And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanish'd shadows_Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creation of the mind?-The mind can make Substance, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recal a vision which I dream'd Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour. There was but one beloved face on earth, For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers, ceased I saw two beings in the hues of youth Unknowing of its cause of agony. Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, But she in these fond feelings had no share: Green and of mild declivity, the last Her sighs were not for him; to her he was As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, Even as a brother but no more; 'twas much, Save that there was no sca to lave its base,For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant-friendship had bestow'd on him; | Reposing from the noon-tide sultriness, Herself the solitary scion left Of a time-honour'd race.-It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not-and why? when Time taught him a deep answer A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparison'd: Within an antique Oratory stood The Boy of whom I spake ;- he was alone And pale, and pacing to and fro; anon He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he lean'd His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere With a convulsion-then arose again, What he had written, but he shed no tears, For quickly comes such knowledge, that From out the massy gate of that old Hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more. Couch'd among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruin'd walls that had survived the names Of those who rear'd them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fasten'd near a fountain; and a man Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumber'd around: And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in Heaven. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The Lady of his love was wed with One Who did not love her better:-in her home A thousand leagues from his,— her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy, And he who had so loved her was not there Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd Upon her mind—a spectre of the past. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The Wanderer was return'd. I saw him stand Before an Altar-with a gentle bride; The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood And all things recl'd around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been -But the old mansion,and the accustom'd hall, And the remember'd chambers,and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back | The beings which surrounded him were gone, And thrust themselves between him and the Or were at war with him; he was a mark many men, And made him friends of mountains: with the stars And the quick Spirit of the Universe My dream was past; it had no further change. It was of a strange order, that the doom DARKNESS. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. | Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came, and went and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings-the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed, And men were gathered round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twined themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food: And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again; a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All carth was but one thought--and that was death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails; men Died, and their bones were tombless as their | Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died— flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, But with a piteous and perpetual moan For an unholy usage; they raked up, leton-hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless,treeless, manless,lifeless, A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirred within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal; & they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surgeThe waves were dead; the tides were in their grave The moon their mistress had expired before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them --She was the universe. PROMETHEUS. TITAN! to whose immortal eyes Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless. Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, And the inexorable Heaven, Which for its pleasure doth create Was thine and thou hast borne it well. And in thy Silence was his Sentence, Thy godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source, His wretchedness, and his resistance, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Its own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory. CHURCHILL'S GRAVE, A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED. I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed The comet of a season, and I saw Through the thick deaths of half a century; know Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrimsso; I know not what of honour and of light MONODY ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN. SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE. WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day | A holy concord—and a bright regret, In summer's twilight weeps itself away, A glorious sympathy with suns that set? Who hath not felt the softness of the hour Tis not harsh sorrow-but a tenderer woe, Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower? With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes While Nature makes that melancholy pause, Her breathing-moment on the bridge where Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below, Shed without shame-and secret without Even as the tenderness that hour instils When Summer's day declines along the hills, So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes When all of Genius which can perish dies. |