Inspirational

Scene: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT

Persons: A LADY AND A POET


    THE POET

    Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
    Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
    And when you whisper, you but stir the air
    With a soft hush like summer's own despair.


    THE LADY (aloud)

    O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
    Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
    Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
    Let her no more endure the shame of day.


    THE POET

    A thousand ages have not made less bright
    The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
    Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
    That every son of man desires in dream.


 ...

Here’s the criminal’s friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolf’s loping:
slowly the sky’s vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.

Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: ‘Today
we’ve worked!’ – It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gas-lights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant-heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy pl...

'Tis a land where no hurricane falls,
But the infinite azure regards
Its waters for ever, its walls
Of granite, its limitless swards;
Where the fens to their innermost pool
With the chorus of May are aring,
And the glades are wind-winnowed and cool
With perpetual spring;

Where folded and half withdrawn
The delicate wind-flowers blow,
And the bloodroot kindles at dawn
Her spiritual taper of snow;
Where the limits are met and spanned
By a waste that no husbandman tills,
And the earth-old pine forests stand
In the hollows of hills.

'Tis the land that our babies behold,
Deep gazing when none are aware;
And the great-hearted seers of old
And the poets have known it, and there
Made halt by the well-heads of truth
On their difficu...

Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep!
Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devour'd what the earth gave me;
Long I roam'd the woods of the north long I watch'd Niagara pouring;
I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on their breast I cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to sea;
I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm;
I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves;
I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curling over;
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!)
Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the lightning;
Noted the slender and ja...

From gold to gray
Our mild sweet day
Of Indian Summer fades too soon;
But tenderly
Above the sea
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon.
In its pale fire,
The village spire
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance;
The painted walls
Whereon it falls
Transfigured stand in marble trance!
O'er fallen leaves
The west-wind grieves,
Yet comes a seed-time round again;
And morn shall see
The State sown free
With baleful tares or healthful grain.
Along the street
The shadows meet
Of Destiny, whose hands conceal
The moulds of fate
That shape the State,
And make or mar the common weal.
Around I see
The powers that be;
I stand by Empire's primal springs;
And princes meet,
In every street,
And hear the tread ...

Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From day's first golden cup.



In swift devouring ecstacy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!
Stern Art--what sons escape her?
Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose
On scraps of blotting paper.



Then on--to play one-fingered tunes
Upon my aunt's piano.
In short, I have a headlong soul,
I much resemble Hanno.

(Forgive the entrance of the not
Too cogent Carthaginian.
It may have been to make a rhyme;

I push on through the shaggy wood,
I round the hill: 't is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door.

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage, where he shines,
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness....

Poet:

"Why this fever why this sighing?
Why this restless longing dying
For a something dreamy something,
Undefined, and yet defying
All the pride and power of manhood?

"O these years of sin and sorrow!
Smiling while the iron harrow
Of a keen and biting longing
Tears and quivers in the marrow
Of my being every moment
Of my very inmost being.

"What to me the mad ambition
For men's praise and proud position
Struggling, fighting to the summit
Of its vain and earthly mission,
To lie down on bed of ashes
Bed of barren, bitter ashes?

"Cure this fever? I have tried it;
Smothered, drenched it and defied it
With a will of brass and iron;
Every smile and look denied it;
Yet it heeded not denying,
And it m...

I.

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the free-men,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II.

W...

As a pale phantom with a lamp
    Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
    Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
    As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
    And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
    In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
    Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
    Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
    Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed.    One mass of shade,
    The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
    I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground b...

High on a point of rugged ground
Among the wastes of Rylstone Fell
Above the loftiest ridge or mound
Where foresters or shepherds dwell,
An edifice of warlike frame
Stands single Norton Tower its name
It fronts all quarters, and looks round
O'er path and road, and plain and dell,
Dark moor, and gleam of pool and stream,
Upon a prospect without bound.
The summit of this bold ascent
Though bleak and bare, and seldom free
As Pendle-hill or Pennygent
From wind, or frost, or vapours wet
Had often heard the sound of glee
When there the youthful Nortons met,
To practise games and archery:
How proud and happy they! the crowd
Of Lookers-on how pleased and proud!
And from the scorching noon-tide sun,
From showers, or when the prize was won,
They...

    Like a maid on her bridal morn I rise,
With the smile on her lip and the tear in her eyes;
Whilst the breeze my crimson banner unfurls,
I wreathe my locks with the purest pearls;
Brighter diamonds never were seen
Encircling the neck of an Indian queen!
I traverse the east on my glittering wing,
And my smiles awake every living thing;
And the twilight hour like a pilgrim gray,
Follows the night on her weeping way.
I raise the veil from the saffron bed,
Where the young sun pillows his golden head;
He lifts from the ocean his burning eye,
And his glory lights up the earth and sky.

    Ah, I am like that dewy prime,
Ere youth hath shaken hands with time;
Ere the fresh tide of life has wasted low,
And discovered the hidden rocks of woe:
When lik...

Now is the time for mirth,
Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with the flow'ry earth
The golden pomp is come.

The golden pomp is come;
For now each tree does wear,
Made of her pap and gum,
Rich beads of amber here.

Now reigns the rose, and now
Th' Arabian dew besmears
My uncontrolled brow
And my retorted hairs.

Homer, this health to thee,
In sack of such a kind
That it would make thee see
Though thou wert ne'er so blind.

Next, Virgil I'll call forth
To pledge this second health
In wine, whose each cup's worth
An Indian commonwealth.

A goblet next I'll drink
To Ovid, and suppose,
Made he the pledge, he'd think
The world had all one nose.

Then this immensive cup
Of aromatic wine,

The sky is ruddy in the east,
The earth is gray below,
And, spectral in the river-mist,
The ship’s white timbers show.
Then let the sounds of measured stroke
And grating saw begin;
The broad-axe to the gnarlèd oak,
The mallet to the pin!

Hark! roars the bellows, blast on blast,
The sooty smithy jars,
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,
Are fading with the stars.
All day for us the smith shall stand
Beside that flashing forge;
All day for us his heavy hand
The groaning anvil scourge.

From far-off hills, the panting team
For us is toiling near;
For us the raftsmen down the stream
Their island barges steer.
Rings out for us the axe-man’s stroke
In forests old and still,
For us the century-circled oak
Falls crashing...

Tu semper amoris
Sis memor, et cari comitis ne abscedat imago.

VAL. FLAC. 'Argonaut', iv. 36.


1.

Friend of my youth! when young we rov'd,
Like striplings, mutually belov'd,
With Friendship's purest glow;
The bliss, which wing'd those rosy hours,
Was such as Pleasure seldom showers
On mortals here below.


2.

The recollection seems, alone,
Dearer than all the joys I've known,
When distant far from you:
Though pain, 'tis still a pleasing pain,
To trace those days and hours again,
And sigh again, adieu!


3.

My pensive mem'ry lingers o'er,
Those scenes to be enjoy'd no more,
Those scenes regretted ever;
The measure of our youth is full,
Life's evening dream is dark and dull,

    I dreamt (no "dream" awake-a dream indeed)
    A wrathful man was talking in the park:
    "Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need
                        And leave us in the dark?

    "There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
    In God, no love"-his oratory here,
    Taking the paupers’ and the cripples’ part,
                        Was broken by a tear.

    And then it seemed that One who did create
    Compassion, who alone invented pity,
    Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,
                        Out from the muttering city;

    Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
    Bent o’er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
    And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
                        In tho...

"I deem that God is not disquieted" -
This in a mighty poet's rhymes I read;
And blazoned so forever doth abide
Within my soul the legend glorified.

Though awful tempests thunder overhead,
I deem that God is not disquieted, -
The faith that trembles somewhat yet is sure
Through storm and darkness of a way secure.

Bleak winters, when the naked spirit hears
The break of hearts, through stinging sleet of tears,
I deem that God is not disquieted;
Against all stresses am I clothed and fed.

Nay, even with fixed eyes and broken breath,
My feet dip down into the tides of death,
Nor any friend be left, nor prayer be said,
I deem that God is not disquieted.

I.

I sit at evening's scented close,
In fulness of the summer-tide;
All dewy fair the lily glows,
No single petal of the row;
Has fallen to dim the rose's pride.

Sweet airs, sweet harmonies of hue,
Surround, caress me everywhere;
The spells of dusk, the spells of dew,
My senses steal, my reason woo,
And sing a lullaby to tare,

But vainly do the warm airs sing,
All vain the roses' rapturous breath;
A chill blast, as from wintry wing,
Smites on my heart, and, shuddering,
I see the beauty changed to death.

Afar I see it loom and rise,
That pitiless and icy shape.
It blots the blue, it dims the skies;
Amid the summer land it cries,
"I come, and there is no escape!"

O, bitter drop in bloom and sweet!
O, ca...