Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Love took up the glass of time, and

turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, past in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships. And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.

) my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary, moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy? having known me-to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Tet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will

have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, omething better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine. o to him, it is thy duty; kiss him, take his hand in thine.

may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought; Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy

things to understand

Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

Well-'t is well that I should bluster !—

Hadst thou less unworthy provedWould to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root.

Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?

Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish'd; sweetly did she speak and move; Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?

No-she never loved me truly; love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the " Never, never,"

whisper'd by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry. 'T is a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.

Half is thine and half is his; it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not exemptTruly, she herself had suffer'd "-Perish in thy self-contempt !

Overlive it-lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?

I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,

When the ranks are roll'd in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.

Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see.

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilot of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer,

and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lappedin universal law.

So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint. Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point;

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one in

creasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not har

vest of his youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn.

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's painNature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain.

[blocks in formation]

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage-what to me were sun or clime!

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,

Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range, Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day; Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age,-for mine I knew not,

help me as when life begun ; Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun.

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now

for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

GODIVA

1842.

I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,

To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped

The city's ancient legend into this :-

Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel

Cry down the past, not only we, that prate

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,

And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she

Did more, and underwent, and overcame,

The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled

In Coventry: for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

Their children, clamoring, "If we pay. we starve!"

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode

About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax they starve."

Whereat he

amazed,

stared, replying, half

"You would not let your little finger

ache

For such as these?"-" But I would die," said she.

He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul,

Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear: "O, ay, ay, ay, you talk!"—" Alas!" she said,

"But prove me what it is I would not do."

And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,

He answer'd, “ Ride you naked thro' the town,

And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field

Gleam thro' the Gothic archway in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity.

And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,

The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had
their will,

Were shrivell'd into darkness in his
head,
[who wait
And dropped before him. So the Powers,
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense mis-
[at once,

used;

And she, that knew not, pass'd; and all

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon [dred towers, Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hunOne after one; but even then she gain'd Her bower, whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name. 1842.

SIR GALAHAD

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel;

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,

And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers,

That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favors fall!
For them I battle till the end.

To save from shame and thrall;
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and
shrine;

I never felt the kiss of love,

Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier transports move and
thrill;

So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns.
Then by some secret shrine I ride;
I hear a voice, but none are there;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,

The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chants resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I find a magic bark.

I leap on board; no helmsman steers; I float till all is dark.

A gentle sound, an awful light!

Three angels bear the Holy Grail;

« AnteriorContinuar »