Thou messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lovers' eyes, Thou that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame! Depart not as thy shadow came : Depart not, lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality. From 'The Revolt of Islam.' She saw me not-she heard me not-alone Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood; She spake not, breathed not, moved not-there was thrown Over her look the shadow of a mood Which only clothes the heart in solitude, A thought of voiceless death.-She stood alone. Above, the heavens were spread ;-below, the flood And on the shattered vapours which, defying On either side by the cloud's cleft was made; Of her bright image floated on the river Of liquid light, which then did end and fadeHer radiant shape upon its verge did shiver; Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver. I stood beside her, but she saw me notShe looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth. Rapture and love and admiration wrought A passion deeper far than tears or mirth, Or speech or gesture, or whate'er has birth From common joy; which with the speechless feeling That led her there united, and shot forth From her far eyes a light of deep revealing, All but her dearest self from my regard concealing. From 'Prometheus Unbound.' Ha ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains, They cry aloud as I do :- Sceptred Curse, Who all our green and azure universe Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones, And splinter and knead down my children's bones, All I bring forth to one void mass battering and blending 'Until each crag-like tower and storied column, Palace and obelisk and temple solemn, My imperial mountains crowned with cloud and snow and fire, My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire 'How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all! And from beneath, around, within, above, Filling thy void annihilation, Love Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball!' The Moon. The snow upon my lifeless mountains My solid oceans flow and sing and shine : My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine Gazing on thee, I feel, I know, Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, And living shapes upon my bosom move : Music is in the sea and air, Winged clouds soar here and there, Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: 'Tis Love, all Love! The Earth. It interpenetrates my granite mass; Upon the winds, among the clouds, 'tis spread; Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror Which could distort to many a shape of error This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love; Which over all his kind-as the sun's heaven Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even— Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move :Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft Of rocks through which the might of healing springs is poured, Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored. Man,-oh! not men! a chain of linkèd thought, Of Planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness. Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,- All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual Orphic song Which rules with dædal harmony a throng Of thoughts and forms which else senseless and shapeless were. The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on. The tempest is his steed; he strides the air, And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.' From 'Peter Bell the Third.' He was a mighty poet and A subtle-souled psychologist; This was a man who might have turned Trusted, and damned himself to madness. He spoke of poetry, and how Divine it was-' a light-a love A spirit which like wind doth blow As it listeth, to and fro; A dew rained down from God above; 'A power which comes and goes like dream, Ode to the West Wind. I. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill; Wild spirit which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! 2. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear ! 3. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay, Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, 4. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed ! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee-tameless, and swift, and proud. 5. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! 1 H Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind; Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, From 'Adonais.' Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. He has outsoared the shadow of our night. Can touch him not and torture not again. A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, in vain- He lives, he wakes-'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.-Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone! Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains! and, thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! He is made one with Nature. There is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a presence to be felt and known, In darkness and in light, from herb and stone; Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own, Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world; compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing the unwilling dross, that checks its flight, To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light. The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; And love and life contend in it for what The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought Far in the unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought, And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, And many more, whose names on earth are dark, Swung blind in unascended majesty, Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright, Even to a point within our day and night; Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, What Adonais is why fear we to become? The One remains, the many change and pass; Until Death tramples it to fragments.-Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled !-Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, --words are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart? The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near : 'Tis Adonais calls! O, hasten thither. No more let life divide what death can join together. That light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which, through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. The breath whose might I have evoked in song I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. From 'Hellas.' Chorus. In the great morning of the world, And all its banded anarchs fled, Before an earthquake's tread.-- Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. From the West swift Freedom came, Against the course of heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame, To burn, to kindle, to illume. In the mountain-cedar's hair, Of her wings through the wild air, And in the naked lightenings Let the beautiful and the brave And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go: New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws, receive: Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. A power from the unknown God, The thorns of death and shame. Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light. Like bloodhounds mild and tame, While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on. Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep From one whose dreams are paradise Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem : Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, From 'The Triumph of Life.' Swift as a spirit hastening to his task Of darkness fell from the awakened earth. The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth Of light the ocean's orison arose, To which the birds tempered their matin lay; All flowers in field or forest which unclose Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, With orient incense lit by the new ray Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent, Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear Their portion of the toil which he of old Took as his own, and then imposed on them. But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine. Before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep Was at my feet, and heaven above my head ;When a strange trance over my fancy grew, Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread Was so transparent that the scene came through As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. And then a vision on my brain was rolled. As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream. Methought I sate beside a public way Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear : Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear. And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Poured on the trodden worms that crawled beneath; And others mournfully within the gloom Of their own shadow walked, and called it death; But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noonday ether lost, Upon that path where flowers never grew,— And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew Out of their mossy cells for ever burst, With overarching elms, and caverns cold, Pursued their serious folly as of old. And, as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day; |