Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one;
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun :
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee, I have found that, whatever it lost me, It could not deprive me of thee.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
EPISTLE TO AUGUSTA.
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,-
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness ;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,— He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.
If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen,
My errors with defensive paradox ;
I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.
Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift,—a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.
Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away;
Something I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.
Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,-
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,
(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.
I feel almost at times as I have felt
In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I think I could see
Some living thing to love-but none like thee.
Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation ;-to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date:
But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
Here to be lonely is not desolate,
For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a lake I can behold
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.
Oh that thou wert but with me!-but I grow
The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret ;
There may be others which I less may show ;—
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
And the tide rising in my alter'd eye.
I did remind thee of our own dear Lake, By the old Hall which may be mine no more. Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore: Sad havoc Time must with my memory make Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before; Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.
The world is all before me; but I ask
Of Nature that with which she will comply-
It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.
She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister till I look again on thee.
I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not ;-for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.
The earliest-even the only paths for me-
Had I but sooner learnt the crown to shun,
I had been better than I now can be ;
The passions which have torn me would have slept ; I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.
With false Ambition what had I to do?
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame ;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make-a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over-I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.
And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day;
Having survived so many things that were ;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have fill'd a century,
Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.
And for the remnant which may be to come
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless,-for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings further.-Nor shall I conceal
That with all this I still can look around,
And worship Nature with a thought profound.
For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are-I am, even as thou art—
Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
It is the same, together or apart,
From life's commencement to its slow decline
We are entwined-let death come slow or fast,
The tie which bound the first endures the last!
I.
Our life is two-fold: Sleep hath its own 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,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past, they speak
Like Sibyls of the future: they have power—
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 dream of vanish'd shadows-Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?-What are they?
Creations 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 recall 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.
II.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity, the last
As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such,
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