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Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven
And they say (the starry choir
And all the listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings -
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
" And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lut, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's
creatures. - KORAN.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty -
Where Love's a grown up God -
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
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Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassion'd song:
To thee the laurels belong
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The extacies above
With thy burning measures suit -
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
1836.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
TO - -
1
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see
The wantonest singing birds
Are lips - and all thy melody
Of lip-begotten words -
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2
Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrin'd
Then desolately fall,
O! God! on my funereal mind
Like starlight on a pall -
3
Thy heart - _thy_ heart! - I wake and sigh,
And sleep to dream till day
Of truth that gold can never buy -
Of the trifles that it may.
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
TO ---
I HEED not that my earthly lot
Hath-little of Earth in it--
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:--
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer-by.
1829.
TO THE RIVER ----
FAIR river! in thy bright, clear flow
Of crystal, wandering water,
Thou art an emblem of the glow
Of beauty - the unhidden heart -
The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter;
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But when within thy wave she looks -
Which glistens then, and trembles -
Why, then, the prettiest of brooks
Her worshipper resembles;
For in my heart, as in thy stream,
Her image deeply lies -
His heart which trembles at the beam
Of her soul-searching eyes.
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
SONG
I SAW thee on thy bridal day -
When a burning blush came o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee:
And in thine eye a kindling light
(Whatever it might be)
Was all on Earth my aching sight
Of Loveliness could see.
That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame -
As such it well may pass -
Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame
In the breast of him, alas!
Who saw thee on that bridal day,
When that deep blush _would_ come o'er thee,
Though happiness around thee lay,
The world all love before thee.
1827.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
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1
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone -
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:
2
Be silent in that solitude
Which is not loneliness - for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee - and their will
Shall then overshadow thee: be still.
3
For the night - tho' clear - shall frown -
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given -
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever :
4
Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish -
Now are visions ne'er to vanish -
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more - like dew-drop from the grass:
5
The breeze - the breath of God - is still -
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy - shadowy - yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token -
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries! -
1827.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
A DREAM
In visions of the dark night
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I have dreamed of joy departed --
But a waking dreams of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream -- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afarWhat
could there be more purely bright
In Truths day-star ?
1827.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
ROMANCE
ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been - a most familiar bird -
Taught me my alphabet to say -
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child - with a most knowing eye.
Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon thy spirit flings -
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away - forbidden things!
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My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.
1829.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
FAIRY-LAND
DIM vales - and shadowy floods -
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over
Huge moons there wax and wane -
Again - again - again -
Every moment of the night -
Forever changing places -
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial
One, more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down - still down - and down
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be -
O'er the strange woods - o'er the sea -
Over spirits on the wing -
Over every drowsy thing -
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light -
And then, how deep! - O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like -- almost any thing -
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before -
Videlicet a tent -
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies,
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
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(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.
1831.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
THE LAKE -- TO ----
IN spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less --
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that tower'd around.
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody --
Then -- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight --
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define --
Nor Love -- although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining --
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.
1827.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
EVENING STAR
'TWAS noontide of summer,
And midtime of night,
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, through the light
Of the brighter, cold moon.
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'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold-too cold for me-- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]