Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy: A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?—I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like I never thought before my death to see I love thee; though the world by no Will hide that love, from its unvalued shame. Would we two had been twins of the same mother! She met me, Stranger, upon life's And lured me towards sweet Death; as Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Led into light, life, peace. An ante- Or, that the name my heart lent to another not, as is due, How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, ness, Were less ethereally light: the brightness Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Burns, inextinguishably beautiful: Young Love should teach Time, in his And from her lips, as from a hyacinth own gray style, All that thou art. guile, full Art thou not void of Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, A lovely soul formed to be blest and bless? A well of sealed and secret happiness, are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Which moves not in the moving A smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone Amid rude voices? a beloved light? stops Of planetary music heard in trance. dance, The sunbeams of those wells which ever Under the lightnings of the soul-too For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. The glory of her being, issuing thence, A Lute, which those whom Love has Of unentangled intermixture, made taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest day By Love, of light and motion: one in tense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, And lull fond grief asleep? a buried Whose flowing outlines mingle in their A cradle of young thoughts of wingless Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing pleasure; With the unintermitted blood, which That Love makes all things equal: I there Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air The crimson pulse of living morning quiver), Continuously prolonged, and ending never, Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind; have heard By mine own heart this joyous truth averred: The spirit of the worm beneath the sod In love and worship, blends itself with God. Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Whose course has been so starless! Oh, too late Belovèd! Oh, too soon adored, by me! A divine presence in a place divine; A shadow of that substance, from its birth; And in the soul a wild odour is felt, melt Into the bosom of a frozen bud. See where she stands! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die; An image of some bright Eternity; Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love feel I love thee; yes, I That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. We are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar; Such difference without discord, as can make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake Under whose motions life's dull billows As trembling leaves in a continuous air? Shall I descend, and perish not? I To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road know Which those poor slaves with weary Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow Who travel to their home among the This truth is that deep well, whence The dreariest and the longest journey go. Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth True Love in this differs from gold The wilderness of this Elysian earth. Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy Imagination! which from earth and sky, The Universe with glorious beams, and Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps;-on an imagined shore, Under the gray beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, One object, and one form, and builds That I beheld her not. thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; In solitudes Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, And from the fountains, and the odours deep Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep The baser from the nobler; the impure Of the sweet kisses which had lulled And frail, from what is clear and must endure. them there, Breathed but of her to the enamoured air; If you divide suffering and dross, you And from the breezes whether low or Each part exceeds the whole; and we And from all sounds, all silence. In the words How much, while any yet remains un- Of antique verse and high romance,-in form, shared, Sound, colour-in whatever checks that Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; But neither prayer nor verse could dis Storm Makes this cold common hell, our life, a That world within this Chaos, mine and doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. me, Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her : Then, from the caverns of my dreamy And therefore I went forth, with hope youth and fear I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath, of fire, And towards the loadstar of my one desire, I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, Into the wintry forest of our life ; And stumbling in my weakness and my And half bewildered by new forms, I past Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, Past, like a God throned on a wingèd In which she might have masked herself planet, from me. Whose burning plumes to tenfold swift- There,-One, whose voice was venomed Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; Sate by a well, under blue nightshade And as a man with mighty loss dis mayed, I would have followed, though the grave between bowers; The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, Her touch was as electric poison,—flame Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are Out of her looks into my vitals came, unseen: When a voice said :- "O Thou of hearts the weakest, The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest." And from her living cheeks and bosom flew A killing air, which pierced like honeydew Into the core of my green heart, and lay Then I "Where?" the world's echo Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown And in that silence, and in my despair, O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown I questioned every tongueless wind that And murmured names and spells which And some were fair-but beauty dies : Others were wise-but honeyed words Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead :For at her silver voice came Death and Life, betray: And One was true- -oh! why not true to me? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, And through the cavern without wings they flew, Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. When, like a noonday dawn, there And cried " Away, he is not of our shone again crew." Deliverance. One stood on my path I wept, and though it be a dream, I who seemed me; weep. The moving billows of my being fell Into a death of ice, immovable; And then-what earthquakes made it The white Moon smiling all the while gape and split, These words conceal :-If not, each word on it, The would be key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me! At length, into the obscure Forest came The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, And from her presence life was radiated And there I lay, within a chaste cold Through the gray earth and branches bed: bare and dead; |