THE MISANTHROPE.
Reading edition
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BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.
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Speak no more!
Thou canst not comfort me. I’d rather hear
The serpent’s hiss than speech from a false heart.
There was a time thy voice had power to calm,
And lay the fiend within me: Let me rest
Lonely and cursed amid my wretchedness;
I have ventured all and lost—’twas Destiny!
There are dark spirits moving through the world,
Casting a saddening influence over all
Within their vortex: Such perchance is mine;
With its wild, fitful struggles, and its gleams
Now good, now evil, stronger with my strength
The eclipse of Heaven’s brightness. Who can read
The unknown language of the human heart,
Though writ in fiery characters? Where the power
To judge an erring creature, when the thoughts,
Hidden even to himself, cannot be fathomed
Save by Omniscience? In thy hollow hand
Measure the waters of the depthless sea,
Or with far-seeing vision through the expanse
Of yonder firmament of Heaven, speak
Of that which is to be, though yet unseen
In its bright pages: Easier task for man
Than judge his brother justly. To myself
I am a mystery, why not to thee?
The waters of my heart are deeper far
Than plummet ever sounded. Oh, dark Future!
Thy veil once lifted, will the power be given
To note their secret depths. Why have I trusted
But to be deceived? and not by man alone!
Why have I ever loved, if but to love
Has been to bind myself upon the wheel
Of wretchedness? The punishment of gods!
Why should I ask for sunshine on my heart,
If with it, it must wither? ask thyself.
Reading thine own heart’s secret, thou may’st learn
How much I needed sympathy. My path,
Now filled with rankest weeds, might have been pure
Under thy smile and teaching. Now, too late!
To wrestle with the world for an existence,
Bowed, but not crushed by Fate, is of itself
Enough to turn the heart to bitter gall,
And make it curse, where, in its sunnier hours,
It might have shed a blessing. Fortune’s smile,
Unto the favored, clothes the earth with flowers;
Its frown, alas! will make the brightest spot
Black as a demon’s glance—its fruit as bitter
As the Dead Sea’s—and like it naught but ashes!
The meanest thing,
Infuriated in the hunter’s toils,
Turns at the last with fierce and vengeful cry
To battle with its foe; and some there are,
Lost to all hope, in their own quiv’ring flesh
Implant their poisonous venom, choosing thus
To be themselves their executioners,
Than fall upon the spear of might and wrong.
Such do I fear myself: That I have been,
In happier days, a lover of my kind—
Heart as capacious, hand as firm and true,
As ever graced the proudest in the land.
I have been thus—Answer! what am I now?
I have found coldness where I looked for love—
Ingrates ’mid friends—the half averted head,
With the neglectful glance, that seemed to say,
Thou art not of us now! Half-way to meet
And pay back scorn by scorn, keener than that
The eye of man e’er threw upon me—thus
Was I ever—thus will ever be:
Though it heap coals of fire upon my head,
And writhe me with its tortures, still my soul,
Strong in its desperate fury, asks no boon
But hate, to be repaid by darker hate—
Failing in that, to die unwept, unsung.
Madness is not my portion—I shall live!
And from the chaplet round the brow of Fame
Yet seize, perchance, a leaf. Love in my heart
Is not yet all extinct: what it has been,
Brighter and purer than the present hour,
Has fled forever! Yet I cannot live
Unloving and unloved. But hand in hand
With my ambition, upward must it rise,
Subordinate, yet true unto the truthful.
Into the channels where deceit has crept—
Into the hearts unfaithful—o’er the paths
Of those who have repaid my love with guile,
The blast of my sirocco hate shall sweep,
Sudden to rise and swift to overthrow.
Such are my thoughts.
Would they were written on my brow, that all
Might read the tale untold. My story’s brief.
’Tis the twin passions—they have mastery,
And sway my pulse of life.
There are brief moments
When passion lieth sleeping, and my mind
Reveling in its dominion, far removed
From petty cares and struggles, soars aloft
(Smiling amid its tortures, then forgotten,)
Through the dark Future; with untiring wing,
Restless as the young eaglet, seeks the sun
Of light, and truth, and wisdom: or retiring
Back to the brilliant, unforgotten past,
Where every foot of earth contains a portion
Of immortality, seeks out its mate,
That may have wrestled with the storms of Time
And won the victor’s crown: or, from the page
Of mighty spirits, who have left a deep
And never-failing well of giant thought,
Feeding my flickering lamp of life, nor dream
There is a world elsewhere, but in the visions
The arch-enchanters have raised up for Time!
God’s blessings on ye, noble-hearted men!
How often to this saddened soul of mine
Have ye brought strength and hope! Earth has not
Jewels so rare, as those ye thickly scatter
Upon the wind for your posterity.
To me your voices,
In the still midnight, in the garish day,
Have ever gently come: I trust in you—
And ye are faithful: Rest forever with me.
The prophet lore of Israel—the sound
Of swelling harps by Grecian wizards strung—
Promethean echoes!—the ever-burning page
Of England’s brighter days—the undying song
Of richest Shakspeare—and the noble strains
Of master-minds drinking their inspiration
From his pure fountain—all the mighty line—
Sweeps by this distant shallow generation,
The monody of Time!
Sweet friends!
My heart henceforth must nestle in your loves,
Or be forever lost. When forgotten,
For a brief period, ’mid the worldly strife
And emptiness of things, how sinks my spirit,
Imprisoned ’mid the iron bars of forms.
I have no hope of happiness in life,
That is not bound up with the mighty past.
The present is a Hell—the future, dark.
Earth’s comforters are for the happy few.
No denizen am I. I stand alone.
Alone, for judgment?
Stormy and wild my passions—full of sins,
Grievous and bitter. Who shall succor me?
I looked to love—I found it hollowness.
I looked to hate—I found it bitterness.
Unto ambition—and it smiled upon me
But to elude my grasp:—unto a future,
My stubborn heart refuses its belief.
I have not learned deceit, nor schooled myself
To be a hypocrite. What I am, I am!
The secret sin of man—Hypocrisy—
Can never mate with me: Would that it could.
Wer’t so, I would not suffer as I must.
Could I but veil myself thus from men’s eyes,
And seem the thing I am not, I might live
Happier in this world’s love. But let that pass.
I will not bend my knee, or lose one spark
Of Heaven’s heritage—my manhood’s truth—
But trample on the vampires of the world,
Who fatten on the blood of noble things.
What though the strife’s unequal? Let me fall,
Strong in my ruined hopes; the shrine profaned
Within the inner temple, is to me
Dearer than all now opened to my soul;
So let me die with prayer upon my lips,
And like old Israel’s stricken one, pull down
A glorious desolation in my fall!
Wild are my thoughts, oh God!
And wilder still the passionate heart that beats
With a fallen angel’s power. There liveth not
Among earth’s myriads, a more restless spirit,
So formed for good or ill!
I have been gentle,
Loving and kind to all. My curse has been
To feel the unkind thought—to doubt all truth—
Of woman and of man. Naught’s left me now
But shaken confidence and cheated hopes,
A long and drear account to be repaid
With interest manifold. The restless fire
That has preyed upon my brain, and blasted life—
Destroyed my peace, and made me stern and strong
As the avenging fury, must recoil
Upon the heads of those whose path has been
In triumph o’er my heart.
Shall I then spare?
Who spared me where I trusted most? Whose hand
Clasped firmly mine? Speak! whose kind word,
When sorrow was upon me, came unto me,
As it should come, in peace, and bid me hope?
The butterflies that thronged around my steps,
But to fly from me when the sun went down?
I think of them, not to give blow for blow,
But to tramp out their false hearts ’neath my heel.
They left a sting behind—but yet I live!
Ay! they shall feel I live.
Their loss was naught.
The serpent’s tooth was nearer to my heart
That tortured me to madness. I had loved;
Thou knowest it. Call it love—idolatry!
For it was my religion. All but that—
Power, wealth and friends—I could have lost,
Hadst thou but trustfully still kept thy vow,
Calming the raging fever of my brain!
Well! when these painted lizards crawled aside,
And I clung, like the wretched mariner,
Unto a straw, I deemed a plank, for life.
Whose voice came o’er the deep and angry sea,
Bidding me be of faith and hope? Speak, now!
What! art thou voiceless? Nearer, bend thine ear!
Nay, shudder not—there’s “method in my madness!”
I would not shriek it out aloud, for fear
The sound might create revelry in Hell!
Not the one I loved.
Not hers, whose every thought was mine—not hers,
Who should have searched my deep, unquiet heart,
And soothed it in its agony. Oh no!
Too hard a task to ask this boon of her,
Whose dearest thought seemed but to learn the way
To help to crush—not save.
Oh God! forgive me!
How much of sorrow, sin and shame, my life
Would have been guiltless of, had but the one—
The only one of earth—reached forth her hand,
And with that hand, her heart, to lift me up
And keep my manhood pure.
It was a dream!
I only deemed it but her duty here;
I may have asked too much! ’Tis over now.
The sharpest strife is o’er, and I must be
Sufficient to myself. The past can ne’er
Recall itself to me, but with my tears,
That have been tears of blood. Would that the fate
Of the Olympus-stricken Niobe
Had been mine also—that I had been marble.
Oh charity! oh love! how much we need
Thy softening power. Ye, whose hearts are bowed
Before a great Creator; ye, whose thoughts
Should be all purity—cannot ye feel
The power given you to soothe and calm
The troubled souls of weary-hearted men,
Who wrestle, like the Titan, ’gainst the power
Of the Omnipotent! Hurling ever back
Against the thunderer’s bolts, an avalanche,
Cleft from the cloud-topped hills of human pride,
The settlings of a world of hate and scorn.
So fades my life,
And with it, all the poetry of youth,
The summer of existence—lost forever.
As fleeting as the bubble, Reputation—
As false as social ties—delusive all—
The mirage of the world.
In this, my deep communing with myself,
New strength has come upon me. Oh, my soul!
Gird on thy armor of Indifference,
And forth into the world to toil and strive,
Bearing thy secret ever present to thee,
Lest weak Humanity should tamely yield
Unto its earlier promptings: Up and work!
There is a pathway left for Lucifer;
All portals are not closed. Up, up, the time
Is present now; fearless and bold press on;
Stay not for counsel or impediment,
But, like the Roman matron’s chariot,
Pass recklessly upon thy destined course,
Though Nature’s holiest ruin stops the way.