"Thou trumpet made for Shakespeare's lips to blow!"


No more for thee the music and the lights,
Thy magic may no more win smile nor frown;
For thee, 0 dear interpreter of dreams,
The curtain hath rung down.

No more the sea of faces, turned to thine,
Swayed by impassioned word and breathless pause;
No more the triumph of thine art - no more
The thunder of applause.

No more for thee the maddening, mystic bells,
The haunting horror - and the falling snow;
No more of Shylock's fury, and no more
The Prince of Denmark's woe.

Not once again the fret of heart and soul,
The loneliness and passion of King Lear;
No more bewilderment and broken words
Of wild despair and fear.

And never wilt thou conjure from the past
The dread ...

    Of whispering trees the tongues to hear,
    And sermons of the silent stone;
    To read in brooks the print so clear
    Of motion, shadowy light, and tone--
    That man hath neither eye nor ear
    Who careth not for human moan.

    Yea, he who draws, in shrinking haste,
    From sin that passeth helpless by;
    The weak antennae of whose taste
    From touch of alien grossness fly--
    Shall, banished to the outer waste,
    Never in Nature's bosom lie.

    But he whose heart is full of grace
    To his own kindred all about,
    Shall find in lowest human face,
    Blasted with wrong and dull with doubt,
    More than in Nature's holiest place
    Where mountains dwell and streams run out.

    Coarse cries of strife assa...

If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go, --
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
'T is sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

To break one's word is pleasure-fraught,

To do one's duty gives a smart;
While man, alas! will promise nought,

That is repugnant to his heart.

Using some magic strains of yore,

Thou lurest him, when scarcely calm,
On to sweet folly's fragile bark once more,

Renewing, doubling chance of harm.

Why seek to hide thyself from me?

Fly not my sight be open then!
Known late or early it must be,

And here thou hast thy word again.

My duty is fulfill'd to-day,

No longer will I guard thee from surprise;
But, oh, forgive the friend who from thee turns away,

And to himself for refuge flies!

PROEM.

Tho' soldiers are the true supports,
The natural allies of Courts,
Woe to the Monarch, who depends
Too much on his red-coated friends;
For even soldiers sometimes think--
    Nay, Colonels have been known to reason,--

And reasoners, whether clad in pink
Or red or blue, are on the brink
    (Nine cases out of ten) of treason

Not many soldiers, I believe, are
    As fond of liberty as Mina;
Else--woe to Kings! when Freedom's fever
    Once turns into a Scarletina!
For then--but hold--'tis best to veil
My meaning in the following tale:--

FABLE.

A Lord of Persia, rich and great,
Just come into a large estate,
Was shockt to find he had, for neighbors,
Close to his gate, some rascal...

That no man schemed it is my hope -
Yea, that it fell by will and scope
Of That Which some enthrone,
And for whose meaning myriads grope.

For I would not that of my kind
There should, of his unbiassed mind,
Have been one known
Who such a stroke could have designed;

Since it would augur works and ways
Below the lowest that man assays
To have hurled that stone
Into the sunshine of our days!

And if it prove that no man did,
And that the Inscrutable, the Hid,
Was cause alone
Of this foul crash our lives amid,

I'll go in due time, and forget
In some deep graveyard's oubliette
The thing whereof I groan,
And cease from troubling; thankful yet

Time's finger should have stretched to show
No aimful author's was the ...

(Written for THE PORTFOLIO SOCIETY, January, 1862.

Subject given - "Light and Shade.")


She stepped upon Sicilian grass,
Demeter's daughter fresh and fair,
A child of light, a radiant lass,
And gamesome as the morning air.
The daffodils were fair to see,
They nodded lightly on the lea,
Persephone - Persephone!

Lo! one she marked of rarer growth
Than orchis or anemone;
For it the maiden left them both,
And parted from her company.
Drawn nigh she deemed it fairer still,
And stooped to gather by the rill
The daffodil, the daffodil.

What ailed the meadow that it shook?
What ailed the air of Sicily?
She wondered by the brattling brook,
And trembled with the trembling lea.
"The coal-black horses rise - they rise:

Though Fate, my girl, may bid us part,
    Our souls it cannot, shall not sever;
The heart will seek its kindred heart,
    And cling to it as close as ever.

But must we, must we part indeed?
    Is all our dream of rapture over?
And does not Julia's bosom bleed
    To leave so dear, so fond a lover?

Does she, too, mourn?--Perhaps she may;
    Perhaps she mourns our bliss so fleeting;
But why is Julia's eye so gay,
    If Julia's heart like mine is beating?

I oft have loved that sunny glow
    Of gladness in her blue eye beaming--
But can the bosom bleed with woe
    While joy is in the glances beaming?

No, no!--Yet, love, I will not chide;
    Although your heart were fond of roving,
Nor that, nor all the world ...

See you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along a gloomy bark?
Her sails are full,--though the wind is still,
And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tost.

Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast;

I.

THE NEW RESOLVE.

Last night, as I sat in my study,
    And thought o'er my lonely life,
I was seized with a passionate longing
    To escape from the weary strife;

To flee far away from my fellows,
    And far from the city's roar,
And seek on the boundless prairie
    A balm for my burning sore--

The sore of the weary spirit,
    The burn of the aching heart
Of him who has known true friendship--
    Has known it--but only to part.

And I said in that hour of anguish:
    "I will fly from the haunts of men,
And seek, in the bosom of Nature,
    Relief from my ceaseless pain."

As lonely I sat, and thus pondered,
    A voice seemed to speak in my ear;
And the sound of that voice was like music,
    ...

Sorrows divided amongst many, less
Discruciate a man in deep distress.

O fond anxiety of mortal men!
How vain and inconclusive arguments
Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below
For statues one, and one for aphorisms
Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that
By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule;
To rob another, and another sought
By civil business wealth; one moiling lay
Tangled in net of sensual delight,
And one to witless indolence resign'd;
What time from all these empty things escap'd,
With Beatrice, I thus gloriously
Was rais'd aloft, and made the guest of heav'n.

They of the circle to that point, each one.
Where erst it was, had turn'd; and steady glow'd,
As candle in his socket. Then within
The lustre, that erewhile bespake me, smiling
With merer gladness, heard I thus begin:

"E'en as hi...

When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat,
As full of Champagne as an egg's full of meat,
He waked in the boat, and to Charon he said,
He would be row'd back, for he was not yet dead.
Trim the boat and sit quiet, stern Charon replied,
You may have forgot, you were drunk when you died.

The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
Of the old, unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours -
O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
Into the ghostliness,
The infinite and abounding solitudes,
Beyond - O, beyond! - beyond . . .

Here in the porch
Upon the multitudinous silences
Of the kingdoms of the grave,
We twain are you and I - two ghosts Omnipotence
Can touch no more . . . no more!

I.
Night and morning were at meeting
Over Waterloo;
Cocks had sung their earliest greeting;
Faint and low they crew,
For no paly beam yet shone
On the heights of Mount Saint John;
Tempest-clouds prolonged the sway
Of timeless darkness over day;
Whirlwind, thunder-clap, and shower
Marked it a predestined hour.
Broad and frequent through the night
Flashed the sheets of levin-light:
Muskets, glancing lightnings back,
Showed the dreary bivouac
Where the soldier lay,
Chill and stiff, and drenched with rain,
Wishing dawn of morn again,
Though death should come with day.

II.
'Tis at such a tide and hour
Wizard, witch, and fiend have power,
And ghastly forms through mist and shower
Gleam on the gifted ken;
And then the aff...

The angry wind
That cursed at me
Was nothing but an evil sprite
Vexed with any man's delight.

And strange it seemed
That a dark wind
Should run down from a mountain steep
And shout as though the world were asleep.

But when he ceased
And silence was--
Who could but fear what evil sprite
Crept through the tunnels of the night?

How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures, to make room for more
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking:
Throw them earthward where they grew.
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
From the paths they sprang beneath,
Now perhaps divinely holden,
Swing against him in a wreath
We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

Vision unto vision calleth,
While the young child dreameth on.
Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth
With the glory thou hast won!
Darker wert thou in the ...

Upon time's surging, billowy sea
A ship now slowly disappears,
With freight no human eye can see,
But weighing just one hundred years.

Their sighs, their tears, their weary moans,
Their joy and pleasure, pomp and pride,
Their angry and their gentle tones,
Beneath its waves forever hide.

Yes, sunk within oblivion's waves,
They'll partly live in memory;
To youth, who will their secrets crave,
Mostly exist in history.

Ah, what a truth steps in this strain
They are not lost within time's sea;
Their words and actions live again,
And blight or light eternity!

A new ship comes within our view,
Laden with dreams both sad and blest;
To youth they're tinged with roseate hue;
To weary ones bring longed-for rest.

And still...