PART TWO (continued 3)

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face! What, may it be that e'en in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries! Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case, I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace, To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. Then, e'en of fellowship, O Moon, tell me, Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? Are beauties there as proud as here they be? Do they above love to be loved, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess? Do they call virtue, there, ungratefulness?

I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought In time's great periods shall return to naught; That fairest states have fatal nights and days. I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays, With toil of spirit which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; And that naught lighter is than airy praise. I know frail beauty like the purple flower, To which one morn oft birth and death affords; That love a jarring is of minds' accords, Where sense and will invassall reason's power. Know what I list, this all can not me move, But that, O me! I both must write and love.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men do with thee go— Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery. Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide,— Doth God exact day-labor, light denied? I fondly ask:—But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest:— They also serve who only stand and wait.

"He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave The notes to Glory."

"The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!"

Deem not devoid of elegance the sage, By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled, Of painful pedantry the poring child, Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page, Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage. Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiled On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage His thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styled, Intent. While cloistered Piety displays Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days, Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores. Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence (Lulling to sad repose the weary sense) The faint pang stealest, unperceived, away; On thee I rest my only hope at last, And think when thou hast dried the bitter tear That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, I may look back on every sorrow past, And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile. As some lone bird, at day's departing hour, Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while: Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

"My heart has thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strains Whose sadness soothes me."

Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from Heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things, That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honor due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings. But thou hast little need. There is a book By Seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look, A chronicle of actions just and bright: There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells. In truth the prison unto which we doom Ourselves no prison is; and hence to me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground, Pleased if some souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakspere unlocked his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blew Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

The World is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers, For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,— So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

I met a traveler from an antique land, Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the Grasshopper's; he takes the lead In summer luxury; he has never done With his delights, for, when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know, With the first sight of thee didst make our race Forever stare! O flat and shocking face, Grimly divided from the breast below! Thou that on dry land horribly dost go With a split body and most ridiculous pace, Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace, Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow! O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air, How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry And dreary sloth! What particle canst thou share Of the only blessed life, the watery? I sometimes see of ye an actual pair Go by, linked fin by fin! most odiously.

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, When I look up, to drop on a new range Of walls and floors,—another home than this? Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is Fill'd by dead eyes, too tender to know change? That's hardest! If to conquer love, has tried, To conquer grief tries more, as all things prove: For grief indeed is love, and grief beside. Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love— Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

A Sonnet is a moment's monument,— Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fulness reverent: Carve it in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see Its flowering crest impearled and orient. A sonnet is a coin: its face reveals The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due:— Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

When do I see thee most, beloved one? When in the light the spirits of mine eyes Before thy face, their altar, solemnize The worship of that Love through thee made known? Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone), Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, And my soul only sees thy soul its own? O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,— How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

They rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and through the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.

'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his window seen In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. I met a preacher there I knew, and said: 'Ill and o'er-worked, how fare you in this scene?' 'Bravely!' said he, 'for I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread!' O human soul! so long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam, Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do, All that I am now, all I hope to be,— Whence comes it save from fortune setting free Body and soul the purpose to pursue, God traced for both? If fetters, not a few, Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, These shall I bid men—each in his degree Also God-guided—bear, and gayly too? But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty. Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus— His fellow shall continue bound? Not I. Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."

One saith: the whole world is a Comedy Played for the mirth of God upon his throne, Whereof the hidden meanings will be known When Michael's trumpet thrills through earth and sea. Fate is the dramaturge; Necessity Allots the parts; the scenes, by Nature shown, Embrace each element and every zone, Ordered with infinite variety.Another saith: no calm-eyed Sophocles Indites the tragedy of human doom, But some cold scornful Aristophanes, Whose zanies gape and gibber in thick gloom, While nightingales, shrill 'mid the shivering trees, Jar on the silence of the neighboring tomb.

Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, As, through the billowy voices yearning here, Great Nature strives to find a human speech. A sonnet is a wave of melody: From heaving waters of the impassioned soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows in the octave; then, returning free, Its ebbing surges in the sestet roll Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea.

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his Paternoster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar. So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait.

Caliph, I did thee wrong. I hailed thee late "Abdul the Damned," and would recall my word. It merged thee with the unillustrious herd Who crowd the approaches to the infernal gate— Spirits gregarious, equal in their state As is the innumerable ocean bird, Gannet or gull, whose wandering plaint is heard On Ailsa or Iona desolate. For, in a world where cruel deeds abound, The merely damned are legion: with such souls Is not each hollow and cranny of Tophet crammed? Thou with the brightest of Hell's aureoles Dost shine supreme, incomparably crowned, Immortally, beyond all mortals, damned.

From Tuskane came my Ladies worthy race: Faire Florence was sometyme her auncient seate: The Western yle, whose pleasaunt shore dothe face Wilde Cambers clifs, did geve her lively heate: Fostered she was with milke of Irishe brest: Her sire, an Erle; her dame, of princes blood. From tender yeres, in Britain she doth rest, With kinges childe, where she tasteth costly food. Honsdon did first present her to mine yien: Bright is her hewe, and Geraldine she hight. Hampton me taught to wishe her first for mine: And Windsor, alas, dothe chase me from her sight. Her beauty of kind, her vertues from above. Happy is he that can obtaine her love.

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low; With shield of proof shield me from out the press Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw. O make me in those civil wars to cease; I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light, A rosy garland and a weary head: And if these things, as being thine in right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish, and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of to-morrow; Never let rising Sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow: Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,— Nay I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free; Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes, —Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!

One day I wrote her name upon the strand; But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man! said she, that dost in vain essay A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quoth I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name,— Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate; Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee—and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang: In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest: In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by: —This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, The sound of glory ringing in our ears; Without, our shame; within, our consciences; Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire; The birds in vain their amorous descant join, Or cheerful fields resume their green attire. These ears, alas! for other notes repine, A different object do these eyes require; My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine, And in my breast the imperfect joys expire. Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, And new-born pleasure brings to happier men; The fields to all their wonted tribute bear; To warm their little loves the birds complain; I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, And weep the more because I weep in vain.

Oh it is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily-persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold 'Twixt crimson bank; and then, a traveler, go From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or listening to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard who, on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Darkly, as by some gloomed mirror glassed, Herein at times the brooding eye beholds The great scarred visage of the pompous Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled regality of his rent robe, Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties And cumber with their trailing pride the globe, And sweep the dusty ages in our eyes; Till the world seems a world of husks and bones Where sightless Seers and Immortals dead, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Invincible armies long since vanquished, And powerless potentates and foolish sages Lie 'mid the crumbling of the mossy ages.

III.¹ The Strophe, or Turn It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear: A lily of a day Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant of flower and light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be. III.² The Antistrophe, or Counter-turn Call, noble Lucius, then for wine, And let thy looks with gladness shine; Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead. He leap'd the present age, Possess'd with holy rage, To see that bright eternal day; Of which we priests and poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men: And there he lives with memory, and Ben. III.³ The Epode, or Stand Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went, Himself, to rest, Or taste a part of that full joy he meant To have express'd, In this bright asterism!— Where it were friendship's schism, Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry, To separate these twi- Lights, the Dioscuri; And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine.

I¹ Daughter of Memory, immortal Muse, Calliope, what poet wilt thou choose, Of Anna's name to sing? To whom wilt thou thy fire impart, Thy lyre, thy voice, and tuneful art, Whom raise sublime on thy ethereal wing, And consecrate with dews of thy Castalian spring? I² Without thy aid, the most aspiring mind Must flag beneath, to narrow flights confin'd, Striving to rise in vain; Nor e'er can hope with equal lays To celebrate bright Virtue's praise. Thine aid obtain'd, even I, the humblest swain, May climb Pierian heights, and quit the lowly plain. I³ High in the starry orb is hung, And next Alcides' guardian arm, That harp to which thy Orpheus sung, Who woods and rocks and winds could charm; That harp which on Cyllene's shady hill, When first the vocal shell was found, With more than mortal skill Inventor Hermes taught to sound: Hermes on bright Latona's son, By sweet persuasion won, The wondrous work bestow'd; Latona's son, to thine Indulgent, gave the gift divine: A god the gift, a god th' invention show'd.

Who shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life The youths whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, Applauding Freedom lov'd of old to view? What new Alcæus, fancy-blest, Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest, At Wisdom's shrine awhile its flame concealing (What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?), Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing, It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound? O goddess, in that feeling hour, When most its sounds would court thy ears, Let not my shell's misguided power E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears. No, Freedom, no, I will not tell How Rome before thy weeping face, With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell, Push'd by a wild and artless race From off its wide ambitious base, When Time his Northern sons of spoil awoke, And all the blended work of strength and grace, With many a rude repeated stroke, And many a barb'rous yell, to thousand fragments broke.... Beyond the measure vast of thought, The works the wizard Time has wrought! The Gaul, 'tis held of antique story, Saw Britain link'd to his now adverse strand; No sea between, nor cliff sublime and hoary, He pass'd with unwet feet thro' all our land. To the blown Baltic then, they say, The wild waves found another way, Where Orcas howls, his wolfish mountains rounding; Till all the banded West at once 'gan rise, A wide wild storm ev'n Nature's self confounding, With'ring her giant sons with strange uncouth surprise. This pillar'd earth so firm and wide, By winds and inward labors torn, In thunders dread was push'd aside, And down the should'ring billows borne. And see, like gems, her laughing train, The little isles on every side! Mona, once hid from those who search the main, Where thousand elfin shapes abide, And Wight, who checks the west'ring tide; For thee consenting Heaven has each bestowed, A fair attendant on her sovereign pride. To thee this blest divorce she ow'd, For thou hast made her vales thy lov'd, thy last abode!

III¹ Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon strayed, To him the mighty Mother did unveil Her awful face. The dauntless Child Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled. This pencil take (she said) whose colors clear Richly paint the vernal year; Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy, Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears. III² Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' Abyss to spy, He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time; The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where Angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Clos'd his eyes in endless night. Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace. III³ Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more— Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban Eagle bear Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air; Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun; Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far—but far above the great.

Whom thunder's dismal noise, And all that Prophets and Apostles louder spake, And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice, Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake, This mightier sound shall make When dead t' arise, And open tombs, and open eyes, To the long sluggards of five thousand years. This mightier sound shall wake its hearers' ears. Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come Back to their ancient home. Some from birds, from fishes some, Some from earth, and some from seas, Some from beasts, and some from trees. Some descend from clouds on high, Some from metals upwards fly, And where th' attending soul naked and shivering stands, Meet, salute, and join their hands, As dispers'd soldiers at the trumpet's call Haste to their colors all. Unhappy most, like tortur'd men, Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again, To mountains they for shelter pray; The mountains shake, and run about no less confus'd than they. Stop, stop, my Muse! allay thy vig'rous heat, Kindled at a hint so great. Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in, Which does to rage begin, And this steep hill would gallop up with violent course; 'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse, Fierce, and unbroken yet, Impatient of the spur or bit; Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place; Disdains the servile law of any settled pace; Conscious and proud of his own natural force, 'Twill no unskilful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound, To raise the nations under ground; When in the valley of Jehoshaphat The judging God shall close the book of Fate, And there the last assizes keep For those who wake and those who sleep; When rattling bones together fly From the four corners of the sky; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, Those cloth'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead; The sacred poets first shall hear the sound, And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are covered with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigor, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learn'd below.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial. He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addrest; But soon he saw the brisk awak'ning viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best. They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids, Amidst the festal sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing, While, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings, Love fram'd with Mirth a gay fantastic round; Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound, And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

I marked Ambition in his war-array! I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry— "Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay! Groans not her chariot on its onward way?" Fly, mailed Monarch, fly! Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace, No more on murder's lurid face The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye! Manes of the unnumbered slain! Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain! Ye that erst at Ismail's tower, When human ruin choked the streams, Fell in conquest's glutted hour, Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams! Spirits of the uncoffined slain, Sudden blasts of triumph swelling, Oft, at night, in misty train, Rush around her narrow dwelling! The exterminating fiend is fled— (Foul her life, and dark her doom)— Mighty armies of the dead Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb! Then with prophetic song relate Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.... O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then gentle winds arose With many a mingled close Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odor keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with airlike motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves Even as the ever stormless atmosphere Floats o'er the Elysian realm, It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air No storm can overwhelm; I sailed, where ever flows Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion From the unknown graves Of the dead kings of Melody. Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm The horizontal ether; heaven stripped bare Its depths over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow; From that Typhæan mount, Inarime, There streamed a sunlight vapor, like the standard Of some ethereal host; Whilst from the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea Prophesyings which grew articulate— They seize me—I must speak them—be they fate!

Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation, Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? Here, in streaming London's central roar. Let the sound of those he wrought for, And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bones for evermore. Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.... ... We revere, and while we hear The tides of Music's golden sea Setting toward eternity, Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, Until we doubt not that for one so true There must be other nobler work to do Than when he fought at Waterloo, And Victor he must ever be. For though the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will; Though world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears: The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears: The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears; Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; He is gone who seemed so great.— Gone; but nothing can bereave him Of the force he made his own Being here, and we believe him Something far advanced in state, And that he wears a truer crown Than any wreath that man can weave him. Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him.

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release! Thy God, in these distempered days, Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways, And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace! Bow down in prayer and praise! No poorest in thy borders but may now Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow. O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more, Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it, Among the Nations bright beyond compare? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee? We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee. But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

In the Year of the great Crime, When the false English nobles and their Jew, By God demented, slew The Trust they stood thrice pledged to keep from wrong, One said, Take up thy Song, That breathes the mild and almost mythic time Of England's prime! But I, Ah, me, The freedom of the few That, in our free Land, were indeed the free, Can song renew? Ill singing 'tis with blotting prison-bars, How high soe'er, betwixt us and the stars; Ill singing 'tis when there are none to hear; And days are near When England shall forget The fading glow which, for a little while, Illumes her yet, The lovely smile That grows so faint and wan, Her people shouting in her dying ear: Are not jays twain worth two of any swan! Harsh words and brief asks the dishonor'd Year.

On the shores of a Continent cast, She won the inviolate soil By loss of heirdom of all the Past, And faith in the royal right of Toil! She planted homes on the savage sod: Into the wilderness lone She walked with fearless feet, In her hand the divining-rod, Till the veins of the mountains beat With fire of metal and force of stone! She set the speed of the river-head To turn the mills of her bread; She drove her ploughshare deep Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep. To the South, and West, and North, She called Pathfinder forth, Her faithful and sole companion Where the flushed Sierra, snow-starred, Her way to the sunset barred, And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam Channeled the terrible canyon! Nor paused, till her uttermost home Was built, in the smile of a softer sky And the glory of beauty yet to be, Where the haunted waves of Asia die On the strand of the world-wide sea.

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose Go honking northward over Tennessee; West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, With restless violent hands and casual tongue Moulding her mighty fates, The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; And like a larger sea, the vital green Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung Over Dakota and the prairie states. By desert people immemorial On Arizonan mesas shall be done Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice More splendid, when the white Sierras call Unto the Rockies straightway to arise And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, Unrolling rivers clear For flutter of broad phylacteries; While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, And Mariposa through the purple calms Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms Where East and West are met,— A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set To say that East and West are twain, With different loss and gain: The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.... ... Ah no! We have not fallen so, We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry Came up the tropic wind, 'Now help us, for we die!' Then Alabama heard, And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho Shouted a burning word. Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, East, west, and south, and north, Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young, Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, By the unforgotten names of eager boys Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung With the old mystic joys And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, But that the heart of youth is generous,— We charge you, ye who lead us, Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! Turn not their new-world victories to gain! One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays Of their dear praise, One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, The implacable republic will require.

Chorus. O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious! Living or dying thou hast fulfilled The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel, and now liest victorious Among thy slain self-killed; Not willingly, but tangled in the fold Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more Than all thy life had slain before. Semi-chorus. While their hearts were jocund and sublime, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine And fat regorged of bulls and goats, Chaunting their idol, and preferring Before our living Dread, who dwells In Silo, his bright sanctuary, Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent, Who hurt their minds, And urged them on with mad desire To call in haste for their destroyer. They, only set on sport and play, Unweetingly importuned Their own destruction to come speedy upon them. So fond are mortal men, Fallen into wrath divine, As their own ruin on themselves to invite, Insensate left, or to sense reprobate, And with blindness internal struck. Semi-chorus. But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird In the Arabian woods embost, That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed; And, though her body die, her fame survives, A secular bird, ages of lives.

The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere; In the court of gods, in the city of men, And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen, In the still mountain air. Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,— To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown, Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone, To embed them in the sea. Wherefore dost thou groan so loud? Wherefore do thy nostrils flash, Through the dark night, suddenly, Typho, such red jets of flame? Is thy tortured heart still proud? Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash? Still alert thy stone-crushed frame? Doth thy fierce soul still deplore Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills, And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore? Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep The fight which crowned thine ills, Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep? Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair, Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down, Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest, Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair? That thy groans, like thunder prest, Begin to roll, and almost drown The sweet notes whose lulling spell Gods and the race of mortals love so well, When through thy caves thou hearest music swell? But an awful pleasure bland Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face, When the sound climbs near his seat, The Olympian council sees; As he lets his lax right hand, Which the lightnings doth embrace, Sink upon his mighty knees. And the eagle, at the beck Of the appeasing, gracious harmony, Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck, Nestling nearer to Jove's feet; While o'er his sovran eye The curtains of the blue films slowly meet. And the white Olympus-peaks Rosily brighten, and the soothed gods smile At one another from their golden chairs, And no one round the charmed circle speaks. Only the loved Hebe bears The cup about, whose draughts beguile Pain and care, with a dark store Of fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o'er; And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.

Wherefore to me, this fear— Groundedly stationed here Fronting my heart, the portent-watcher—flits she? Wherefore should prophet-play The uncalled and unpaid lay, Nor—having spat forth fear, like bad dreams—sits she On the mind's throne beloved—well-suasive Boldness? For time, since, by a throw of all the hands, The boat's stern-cables touched the sands, Has passed from youth to oldness,— When under Ilion rushed the ship-borne bands. And from my eyes I learn— Being myself my witness—their return. Yet, all the same, without a lyre, my soul, Itself its teacher too, chants from within Erinus' dirge, not having now the whole Of Hope's dear boldness: nor my inwards sin— The heart that's rolled in whirls against the mind Justly presageful of a fate behind. But I pray—things false, from my hope, may fall Into the fate that's not-fulfilled-at-all! Especially at least, of health that's great The term's insatiable: for, its weight —A neighbor, with a common wall between— Ever will sickness lean; And destiny, her course pursuing straight, Has struck man's ship against a reef unseen. Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure, It has not sunk—the universal freight, (With misery freighted over-full,) Nor has fear whelmed the hull. Then too the gift of Zeus, Two-handedly profuse, Even from the furrows' yield for yearly use Has done away with famine, the disease; But blood of man to earth once falling,—deadly, black,— In times ere these,— Who may, by singing spells, call back? Zeus had not else stopped one who rightly knew The way to bring the dead again. But, did not an appointed Fate constrain The Fate from gods, to bear no more than due, My heart, outstripping what tongue utters, Would have all out: which now, in darkness, mutters Moodily grieved, nor ever hopes to find How she a word in season may unwind From out the enkindling mind.

Reason, tell me thy mind, if here be reason In this strange violence, to make resistance Where sweet graces erect the stately banner Of Virtue's regiment, shining in harness Of Fortune's diadems, by Beauty mustered: Say, then, Reason, I say, what is thy counsel?

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! O how much I do like your solitariness! Where man's mind hath a freed consideration Of goodness to receive lovely direction. Where senses do behold the order of heavenly host, And wise thoughts do behold what the Creator is.

My Muse, what ails this ardor To blaze my only secrets? Alas, it is no glory To sing my own decay'd state. Alas, it is no comfort To speak without an answer; Alas, it is no wisdom To show the wound without cure.

"See yee the blindfoulded pretie god, that feathered archer, Of lovers miseries which maketh his bloodie game? Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coovered his face? Trust me, least he my loove happely chaunce to beholde."

O ye Nymphes most fine who resort to this brooke, For to bathe there your pretty breasts at all times: Leave the watrish bowres, hyther and to me come at my request nowe. And ye Virgins trymme who resort to Parnass, Whence the learned well Helicon beginneth: Helpe to blase her worthy deserts, that all els mounteth above farre.

Greatest in thy wars, Greater in thy peace, Dread Elizabeth; Our muse only truth, Figments cannot use, Thy ritch name to deck That itselfe adorns: But should now this age Let all poesye fayne, Fayning poesy could Nothing faine at all Worthy halfe thy fame.

Rose-cheekt Lawra come Sing thou smoothly with thy beawtie's Silent musick, either other Sweetely gracing. Lovely formes do flowe From concent devinely framed, Heav'n is musick, and thy beawtie's Birth is heavenly.

"Goe numbers boldly passe, stay not for ayde Of shifting rime, that easie flatterer, Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile".

Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order— Bleak blows the blast;—your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches! Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike- road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, "Knives and Scissors to grind O!"

"Cold was the night wind, drifting fast the snow fell, Wide were the downs and shelterless and naked, When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey, Weary and way-sore."

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset.

O you chorus of indolent reviewers, Irresponsible, indolent reviewers, Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem All composed in a metre of Catullus, All in quantity, careful of my motion, Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Waking laughter in indolent reviewers. Should I flounder awhile without a tumble Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome, All that chorus of indolent reviewers. Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble, So fantastical is the dainty metre. Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.

"All men alike hate slops, particularly gruel;"

"Faded ev'ry violet, all the roses; Gone the glorious promise; and the victim, Broken in this anger of Aphrodite, Yields to the victor."

God, on verdurous Helicon Dweller, child of Urania, Thou that draw'st to the man the fair Maiden, O Hymenæus, O Hymen, O Hymenæus!

"When awoke the sun, the golden, that his eyes heaven-orient Scann'd lustrous air, the rude seas, earth's massy solidity, When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime, Then arous'd was Attis; o'er him sleep hastily fled away To Pasithea's arms immortal with a tremulous hovering."

"At the coming up of Phœbus, the all-luminous charioteer, Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes, And with shadows dappled, men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent; For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black." —Saw the white implacable Aphrodite, Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled Shine as fire of sunset on western waters; Saw the reluctant Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her, Looking always, looking with necks reverted, Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder Shone Mitylene.

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love? What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above? What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave, Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

Lady, reserved by the heavens to do pastors' company honor, Joining your sweet voice to the rural Muse of a desert, Here you fully do find this strange operation of love, How to the woods Love runs, as well as rides to the palace, Neither he bears reverence to a prince nor pity to beggar, But (like a point in midst of a circle) is still of a nearness, All to a lesson he draws, neither hills nor caves can avoid him.