He walked along the pathway of a field Her eyes were black and lustreless and Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, But to the west was open to the sky. wan: Her eyelashes were worn away with tears, There now the sun had sunk, but lines Her lips and cheeks were like things of gold dead-so pale; Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the Her hands were thin, and through their points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers On the brown massy woods—and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering overhead. "Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, "I never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me. Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were That night the youth and lady mingled This was the only moan she ever made. lay In love and sleep-but when the morn ing came HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL The lady found her lover dead and cold. But year by year lived on-in truth I Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, BEAUTY awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats tho' unseen amongst us, visiting This various world with as inconstant wing And that she did not die, but lived to As summer winds that creep from flower Her agèd father, were a kind of mad- Like moonbeams that behind some piny ness, If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. Dissolve away in wisdom working mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance ance; Like hues and harmonies of evening,— Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Why aught should fail and fade that While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom,-why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope? III No voice from some sublimer world hath ever sped Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; I was not heard-I saw them not- Tosage or poet these responses given Of life, at the sweet time when winds Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endea vour, are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; Frail spells—whose uttered charm might I shrieked, and clasped my hands in not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, Thy light alone-like mist o'er moun tains driven, Or music by the night wind sent, Thro' strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. IV Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart I ecstasy! VI vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night They know that never joy illumed my This world from its dark slavery, In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river That thou-O awful LOVELINESS, Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and Wouldst give whate'er these words can not express. VII The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past-there is a har mony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not Thus let thy power, which like the Of nature on my passive youth And every form containing thee, bind To fear himself, and love all human kind. MONT BLANC LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI I THE everlasting universe of things raves. To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Flows through the mind, and rolls its Wraps all in its own deep eternity; rapid waves, Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloom- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's com motion, A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee To muse on my own separate phantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange And wind among the accumulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there - how hideously With the clear universe of things around; Its shapes are heaped around! rude, One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! III Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep,-that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.-I look on high; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly to steep bare, and high, Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake - dæmon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea Of fire, envelope once this silent snow? None can reply-all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with nature reconciled; Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. IV The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, That vanishes among the viewless gales! serene dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Its subject mountains their unearthly Holds every future leaf and flower; Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales With which from that detested trance All things that move and breathe with Which from those secret chasms in toil and sound tumult welling Are born and die; revolve, subside, and Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, Of man, flies far in dread; his work and dwelling Which governs thought, and to the inthings finite dome Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves BLANC THERE is a voice, not understood by all, Shine in the rushing torrents' restless Sent from these desert-caves. It is the |
