ELEGIAC POEMS. THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY. [17] Go , for they call you, |
  ELEGIAC POEMS. THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY. [17] Go , for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropped grasses shoot another head; But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, And only the white sheep are sometimes seen Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green, Come, shepherd, and again renew the quest! Here, where the reaper was at work of late,-- In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, Then here at noon comes back his stores to use,-- Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the corn,-- All the live murmur of a summer's day. Screened is this nook o'er the high, half-reaped field, And here till sundown, shepherd! will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep; And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August-sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book. Come, let me read the oft-read tale again! The story of that Oxford scholar poor, Of shining parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, One summer-morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore, And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deemed, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more. But once, years after, in the country-lanes, Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, Met him, and of his way of life inquired; Whereat he answered, that the gypsy-crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. "And I," he said, "the secret of their art, When fully learned, will to the world impart; But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill." This said, he left them, and returned no more. But rumors hung about the country-side, That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, In hat of antique shape, and cloak of gray, The same the gypsies wore. Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors Had found him seated at their entering; But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly. And I myself seem half to know thy looks, And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace; And boys who in lone wheat-fields scare the rooks I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place; Or in my boat I lie Moored to the cool bank in the summer-heats, Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills, And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt's rope chops round; And leaning backward in a pensive dream, And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers Plucked in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. And then they land, and thou art seen no more! Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, Or cross a stile into the public way; Oft thou hast given them store Of flowers,--the frail-leafed, white anemone, Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves, And purple orchises with spotted leaves,-- But none hath words she can report of thee! And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass, Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandoned lasher pass, Have often passed thee near Sitting upon the river-bank o'ergrown; Marked thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air: But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone! At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills, Where at her open door the housewife darns, Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. Children, who early range these slopes and late For cresses from the rills, Have known thee eying, all an April-day, The springing pastures and the feeding kine; And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine, Through the long dewy grass move slow away. In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood,-- Where most the gypsies by the turf-edged way Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of gray, Above the forest ground called Thessaly,-- The blackbird picking food Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; So often has he known thee past him stray, Rapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray, And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall. And once, in winter, on the causeway chill Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge Wrapped in thy cloak and battling with the snow, Thy face toward Hinksey and its wintry ridge? And thou hast climbed the hill, And gained the white brow of the Cumner range; Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, The line of festal light in Christ-church hall: Then sought thy straw in some sequestered grange. A Monody, to commemorate the author’s friend,
Arthur Hugh Clough, who died at Florence, 1861. APRIL, 1850. Goethe in Weimar sleeps; and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come:
The last poetic voice is dumb,—
We stand to-day by Wordsworth’s tomb.
When Byron’s eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head, and held our breath.
He taught us little, but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder’s roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe’s death was told, we said,—
Sunk, then, is Europe’s sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said, Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe’s dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life:
He said, The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
And Wordsworth! Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us; and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen,—on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth:
Smiles broke from us, and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o’er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man’s prudence and man’s fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel:
Others will strengthen us to bear—
But who, ah! who will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly;
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hear thy voice right, now he is gone.
STANZAS. In Memory of Edward Quillinan. I saw him sensitive in frame,
I knew his spirits low;
And wished him health, success, and fame—
I do not wish it now.
For these are all their own reward,
And leave no good behind;
They try us, oftenest make us hard,
Less modest, pure, and kind.
Alas! yet to the suffering man,
In this his mortal state,
Friends could not give what fortune can,—
Health, ease, a heart elate.
But he is now by fortune foiled
No more; and we retain
The memory of a man unspoiled,
Sweet, generous, and humane;
With all the fortunate have not,
With gentle voice and brow.
—Alive, we would have changed his lot:
We would not change it now.
STANZAS FROM CARNAC. Far on its rocky knoll descried,
Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky.
I climbed; beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.
Bright in the sunset, weird and still,
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
As though the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charmed it from his forest-grave.
Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawled and gray,
The giant stones of Carnac sleep,
In the mild evening of the May.
No priestly stern procession now
Streams through their rows of pillars old;
No victims bleed, no Druids bow:
Sheep make the daisied aisles their fold.
From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,
The orchis red gleams everywhere;
Gold furze with broom in blossom vies,
The bluebells perfume all the air.
And o’er the glistening, lonely land,
Rise up, all round, the Christian spires;
The church of Carnac, by the strand,
Catches the westering sun’s last fires.
And there, across the watery way,
See, low above the tide at flood,
The sickle-sweep of Quiberon Bay,
Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!
And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!—
All round, no soul, no boat, no hail;
But, on the horizon’s verge descried,
Hangs, touched with light, one snowy sail.
Ah! where is he who should have come[20]
Where that far sail is passing now,
Past the Loire’s mouth, and by the foam
Of FinistÈre’s unquiet brow,—
Home, round into the English wave?—
He tarries where the Rock of Spain
Mediterranean waters lave;
He enters not the Atlantic main.
Oh, could he once have reached this air
Freshened by plunging tides, by showers!
Have felt this breath he loved, of fair
Cool Northern fields, and grass, and flowers!
He longed for it—pressed on. In vain!
At the Straits failed that spirit brave.
The South was parent of his pain,
The South is mistress of his grave.
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. The sandy spits, the shore-locked lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.
Dotting the fields of corn and vine,
Like ghosts, the huge gnarled olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain line!
While, by the strand,—
Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the light-house beacons bright
Far in the bay.
Ah! such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore[21]
Wander unquiet, and my own
Vexed heart deplore.
But now that trouble is forgot:
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,[22]
Possess me quite.
The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave,
There, where Gibraltar’s cannoned steep
O’erfrowns the wave.
For there, with bodily anguish keen,
With Indian heats at last foredone,
With public toil and private teen,—
Thou sank’st alone.
Slow to a stop, at morning gray,
I see the smoke-crowned vessel come;
Slow round her paddles dies away
The seething foam.
A boat is lowered from her side;
Ah, gently place him on the bench!
That spirit—if all have not yet died—
A breath might quench.
Is this the eye, the footstep fast,
The mien of youth, we used to see?
Poor, gallant boy! for such thou wast,
Still art, to me.
The limbs their wonted tasks refuse;
The eyes are glazed, thou canst not speak;
And whiter than thy white burnous
That wasted cheek!
Enough! The boat, with quiet shock,
Unto its haven coming nigh,
Touches, and on Gibraltar’s rock
Lands thee, to die.
Ah me! Gibraltar’s strand is far;
But farther yet across the brine
Thy dear wife’s ashes buried are,
Remote from thine.
For there, where morning’s sacred fount
Its golden rain on earth confers,
The snowy Himalayan Mount
O’ershadows hers.
Strange irony of fate, alas!
Which, for two jaded English, saves,
When from their dusty life they pass,
Such peaceful graves!
In cities should we English lie,
Where cries are rising ever new,
And men’s incessant stream goes by,—
We who pursue
Our business with unslackening stride,
Traverse in troops, with care-filled breast,
The soft Mediterranean side,
The Nile, the East,—
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance, and nod, and bustle by;
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
Not by those hoary Indian hills,
Not by this gracious Midland sea
Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills,
Should our graves be.
Some sage, to whom the world was dead,
And men were specks, and life a play;
Who made the roots of trees his bed,
And once a day
With staff and gourd his way did bend
To villages and homes of man,
For food to keep him till he end
His mortal span,—
And the pure goal of being reach;
Gray-headed, wrinkled, clad in white;
Without companion, without speech,
By day and night
Pondering God’s mysteries untold,
And tranquil as the glacier-snows,—
He by those Indian mountains old
Might well repose.
Some gray crusading knight austere,
Who bore Saint Louis company,
And came home hurt to death, and here
Landed to die;
Some youthful troubadour, whose tongue
Filled Europe once with his love-pain,
Who here outworn had sunk, and sung
His dying strain;
Some girl, who here from castle-bower,
With furtive step and cheek of flame,
’Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower
By moonlight came
To meet her pirate-lover’s ship,
And from the wave-kissed marble stair
Beckoned him on with quivering lip
And floating hair,
And lived some moons in happy trance,
Then learnt his death, and pined away,—
Such by these waters of romance
’Twas meet to lay.
But you—a grave for knight or sage,
Romantic, solitary, still,
O spent ones of a work-day age!
Befits you ill.
So sang I; but the midnight breeze,
Down to the brimmed, moon-charmÈd main,
Comes softly through the olive-trees,
And checks my strain.
I think of her whose gentle tongue
All plaint in her own cause controlled;
Of thee I think, my brother! young
In heart, high-souled;
That comely face, that clustered brow,
That cordial hand, that bearing free,—
I see them still, I see them now,
Shall always see!
And what but gentleness untired,
And what but noble feeling warm,
Wherever shown, howe’er inspired,
Is grace, is charm?
What else is all these waters are,
What else is steeped in lucid sheen,
What else is bright, what else is fair,
What else serene?
Mild o’er her grave, ye mountains, shine!
Gently by his, ye waters, glide!
To that in you which is divine
They were allied.
HAWORTH CHURCHYARD. APRIL, 1855. Where, under Loughrigg, the stream
Of Rotha sparkles through fields
Vested forever with green,
Four years since, in the house
Of a gentle spirit now dead,
Wordsworth’s son-in-law, friend,—
I saw the meeting of two
Gifted women.[23] The one,
Brilliant with recent renown,
Young, unpractised, had told
With a master’s accent her feigned
Story of passionate life;
The other, maturer in fame,
Earning, she too, her praise
First in fiction, had since
Widened her sweep, and surveyed
History, politics, mind.
The two held converse; they wrote
In a book which of world-famous souls
Kept the memorial: bard,
Warrior, statesman, had signed
Their names: chief glory of all,
Scott had bestowed there his last
Breathings of song, with a pen
Tottering, a death-stricken hand.
Hope at that meeting smiled fair.
Years in number, it seemed,
Lay before both, and a fame
Heightened, and multiplied power.—
Behold! The elder, to-day,
Lies expecting from death,
In mortal weakness, a last
Summons! the younger is dead!
First to the living we pay
Mournful homage: the Muse
Gains not an earth-deafened ear.
Hail to the steadfast soul,
Which, unflinching and keen,
Wrought to erase from its depth
Mist and illusion and fear!
Hail to the spirit which dared
Trust its own thoughts, before yet
Echoed her back by the crowd!
Hail to the courage which gave
Voice to its creed, ere the creed
Won consecration from time!
Turn we next to the dead.—
How shall we honor the young,
The ardent, the gifted? how mourn?
Console we cannot, her ear
Is deaf. Far northward from here,
In a churchyard high ’mid the moors
Of Yorkshire, a little earth
Stops it forever to praise.
Where behind Keighley the road
Up to the heart of the moors
Between heath-clad showery hills
Runs, and colliers’ carts
Poach the deep ways coming down,
And a rough, grimed race have their homes,—
There on its slope is built
The moorland town. But the church
Stands on the crest of the hill,
Lonely and bleak; at its side
The parsonage-house and the graves.
Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early-dying! Alas!
Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon; yet green
Laurels she had, and a course
Short, but redoubled by fame.
And not friendless, and not
Only with strangers to meet,
Faces ungreeting and cold,
Thou, O mourned one, to-day
Enterest the house of the grave!
Those of thy blood, whom thou lovedst,
Have preceded thee,—young,
Loving, a sisterly band;
Some in art, some in gift
Inferior—all in fame.
They, like friends, shall receive
This comer, greet her with joy;
Welcome the sister, the friend;
Hear with delight of thy fame!
Round thee they lie; the grass
Blows from their graves to thy own!
She whose genius, though not
Puissant like thine, was yet
Sweet and graceful; and she
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,—
The world-famed son of fire,—she who sank
Baffled, unknown, self-consumed;
Whose too bold dying song[24]
Shook, like a clarion-blast, my soul.
Of one, too, I have heard,
A brother: sleeps he here?
Of all that gifted race
Not the least gifted; young,
Unhappy, eloquent; the child
Of many hopes, of many tears.
O boy, if here thou sleep’st, sleep well!
On thee too did the Muse
Bright in thy cradle smile;
But some dark shadow came
(I know not what) and interposed.
Sleep, O cluster of friends,
Sleep! or only when May,
Brought by the west-wind, returns
Back to your native heaths,
And the plover is heard on the moors,
Yearly awake to behold
The opening summer, the sky,
The shining moorland; to hear
The drowsy bee, as of old,
Hum o’er the thyme, the grouse
Call from the heather in bloom!
Sleep, or only for this
Break your united repose!
EPILOGUE. So I sang; but the Muse,
Shaking her head, took the harp—
Stern interrupted my strain,
Angrily smote on the chords.
April showers
Rush o’er the Yorkshire moors.
Stormy, through driving mist,
Loom the blurred hills; the rain
Lashes the newly-made grave.
Unquiet souls!
—In the dark fermentation of earth,
In the never-idle workshop of nature,
In the eternal movement,
Ye shall find yourselves again!
RUGBY CHAPEL.
NOVEMBER, 1857. Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of withered leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent; hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the schoolroom windows; but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.
There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!
That word gloom to my mind
Brings thee back in the light
Of thy radiant vigor again.
In the gloom of November we passed
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impaired not the ray
Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear.
Such thou wast! and I stand
In the autumn evening, and think
Of bygone autumns with thee.
Fifteen years have gone round
Since thou arosest to tread,
In the summer-morning, the road
Of death, at a call unforeseen,
Sudden. For fifteen years,
We who till then in thy shade
Rested as under the boughs
Of a mighty oak, have endured
Sunshine and rain as we might,
Bare, unshaded, alone,
Lacking the shelter of thee.
O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!
Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labor-house vast
Of being, is practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!
Yes, in some far-shining sphere,
Conscious or not of the past,
Still thou performest the word
Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live,
Prompt, unwearied, as here.
Still thou upraisest with zeal
The humble good from the ground,
Sternly repressest the bad;
Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse
Those who with half-open eyes
Tread the border-land dim
’Twixt vice and virtue; reviv’st,
Succorest. This was thy work,
This was thy life upon earth.
What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?
Most men eddy about
Here and there, eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurled in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and then they die,—
Perish; and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves,
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost ocean, have swelled,
Foamed for a moment, and gone.
And there are some whom a thirst
Ardent, unquenchable, fires,
Not with the crowd to be spent,
Not without aim to go round
In an eddy of purposeless dust,
Effort unmeaning and vain.
Ah yes! some of us strive
Not without action to die
Fruitless, but something to snatch
From dull oblivion, nor all
Glut the devouring grave.
We, we have chosen our path,—
Path to a clear-purposed goal,
Path of advance; but it leads
A long, steep journey, through sunk
Gorges, o’er mountains in snow.
Cheerful, with friends, we set forth:
Then, on the height, comes the storm.
Thunder crashes from rock
To rock; the cataracts reply;
Lightnings dazzle our eyes;
Roaring torrents have breached
The track; the stream-bed descends
In the place where the wayfarer once
Planted his footstep; the spray
Boils o’er its borders; aloft,
The unseen snow-beds dislodge
Their hanging ruin. Alas!
Havoc is made in our train!
Friends who set forth at our side
Falter, are lost in the storm.
We, we only are left!
With frowning foreheads, with lips
Sternly compressed, we strain on,
On; and at nightfall at last
Come to the end of our way,
To the lonely inn ’mid the rocks;
Where the gaunt and taciturn host
Stands on the threshold, the wind
Shaking his thin white hairs,
Holds his lantern to scan
Our storm-beat figures, and asks,—
Whom in our party we bring?
Whom we have left in the snow?
Sadly we answer, We bring
Only ourselves! we lost
Sight of the rest in the storm.
Hardly ourselves we fought through,
Stripped, without friends, as we are.
Friends, companions, and train,
The avalanche swept from our side.
But thou wouldst not alone
Be saved, my father! alone
Conquer and come to thy goal,
Leaving the rest in the wild.
We were weary, and we
Fearful, and we in our march
Fain to drop down and to die.
Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckonedst the trembler, and still
Gavest the weary thy hand.
If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing: to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm!
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And, at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.
And through thee I believe
In the noble and great who are gone;
Pure souls honored and blest
By former ages, who else else—
Such, so soulless, so poor,
Is the race of men whom I see—
Seemed but a dream of the heart,
Seemed but a cry of desire.
Yes! I believe that there lived
Others like thee in the past,
Not like the men of the crowd
Who all round me to-day
Bluster or cringe, and make life
Hideous and arid and vile;
But souls tempered with fire,
Fervent, heroic, and good,
Helpers and friends of mankind.
Servants of God!—or sons
Shall I not call you? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father’s innermost mind,
His who unwillingly sees
One of his little ones lost,—
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted and fallen and died.
See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending? A God
Marshalled them, gave them their goal.
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild:
Sore thirst plagues them; the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe;
Factions divide them; their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.
Ah! keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray; on the rocks
Batter forever in vain,
Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye like angels appear,
Radiant with ardor divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van! at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave.
Order, courage, return;
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God.
HEINE’S GRAVE. November, 1849. In front the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
Close o’er it, in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths[27]
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths,
The mists are on the Rhone,—
The white mists rolling like a sea;
I hear the torrents roar.
—Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
I feel thee near once more.
I turn thy leaves; I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o’er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe’er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine,—
Yet through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
Some secrets may the poet tell,
For the world loves new ways:
To tell too deep ones is not well,—
It knows not what he says.
Yet, of the spirits who have reigned
In this our troubled day,
I know but two who have attained,
Save thee, to see their way.
By England’s lakes, in gray old age,
His quiet home one keeps;
And one, the strong much-toiling sage,
In German Weimar sleeps.
But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken
From half of human fate;
And Goethe’s course few sons of men
May think to emulate.
For he pursued a lonely road,
His eyes on Nature’s plan;
Neither made man too much a god,
Nor God too much a man.
Strong was he, with a spirit free
From mists, and sane and clear;
Clearer, how much! than ours—yet we
Have a worse course to steer.
For, though his manhood bore the blast
Of a tremendous time,
Yet in a tranquil world was passed
His tenderer youthful prime.
But we, brought forth and reared in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise,—
What shelter to grow ripe is ours?
What leisure to grow wise?
Like children bathing on the shore,
Buried a wave beneath,
The second wave succeeds before
We have had time to breathe.
Too fast we live, too much are tried,
Too harassed, to attain
Wordsworth’s sweet calm, or Goethe’s wide
And luminous view to gain.
And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
—The hopeless tangle of our age,
Thou too hast scanned it well.
Immovable thou sittest, still
As death, composed to bear;
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.
Yes, as the son of Thetis said,
I hear thee saying now:
Greater by far than thou are dead;
Strive not! die also thou!
Ah! two desires toss about
The poet’s feverish blood;
One drives him to the world without,
And one to solitude.
The glow, he cries, the thrill of life,
Where, where do these abound?
Not in the world, not in the strife
Of men, shall they be found.
He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone:
He only lives with the world’s life,
Who hath renounced his own.
To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
Where thou, O seer! art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold—
The world is colder yet.
And thou hast pleasures, too, to share
With those who come to thee,—
Balms floating on thy mountain air,
And healing sights to see.
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet-door, and seen
The summer day grow late;
And darkness steal o’er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starred,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,—
Lake Leman’s waters, far below;
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play,—
Listened, and felt thyself grow young!
Listened, and wept— Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad guide, adieu!
I go, fate drives me; but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power’s employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live; but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou canst see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The children of the second birth,
Whom the world could not tame;
And with that small transfigured band,
Whom many a different way
Conducted to their common land,
Thou learn’st to think as they
Christian and Pagan, king and slave,
Soldier and anchorite,
Distinctions we esteem so grave,
Are nothing in their sight.
They do not ask, who pined unseen,
Who was on action hurled,
Whose one bond is, that all have been
Unspotted by the world.
There without anger thou wilt see
Him who obeys thy spell
No more, so he but rest, like thee,
Unsoiled; and so, farewell!
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,—
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger’s face,—
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,—
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
The Capital of Pleasure sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave,—
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. (COMPOSED MANY YEARS AFTER THE PRECEDING.) Savez-vous quelque bien qui console du regret d’un monde?
Obermann.
Glion? Ah! twenty years, it cuts[28]
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts;
Glion, but not the same!
And yet I know not! All unchanged
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged;
The lake, with Chillon by;
And ’neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff
And stony mounts the way,
The crackling husk-heaps burn, as if
I left them yesterday.
Across the valley, on that slope,
The huts of Avant shine;
Its pines, under their branches, ope
Ways for the pasturing kine.
Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass,—
The gentian-flowered pass, its crown[29]
With yellow spires aflame;
Whence drops the path to AlliÈre down,
And walls where Byron came;[30]
By their green river, who doth change
His birth-name just below,
Orchard and croft and full-stored grange
Nursed by his pastoral flow.
But stop! to fetch back thoughts that stray
Beyond this gracious bound,
The cone of Jaman, pale and gray,
See, in the blue profound!
Ah, Jaman! delicately tall
Above his sun-warmed firs,—
What thoughts to me his rocks recall,
What memories he stirs!
And who but thou must be, in truth,
Obermann! with me here?
Thou master of my wandering youth,
But left this many a year!
Yes, I forget the world’s work wrought,
Its warfare waged with pain:
An eremite with thee, in thought
Once more I slip my chain,—
And to thy mountain chalet come,
And lie beside its door,
And hear the wild bee’s Alpine hum,
And thy sad, tranquil lore.
Again I feel the words inspire
Their mournful calm; serene,
Yet tinged with infinite desire
For all that might have been,—
The harmony from which man swerved
Made his life’s rule once more;
The universal order served,
Earth happier than before.
—While thus I mused, night gently ran
Down over hill and wood.
Then, still and sudden, Obermann
On the grass near me stood.
Those pensive features well I knew,—
On my mind, years before,
Imaged so oft, imaged so true!
—A shepherd’s garb he wore;
A mountain flower was in his hand,
A book was in his breast.
Bent on my face, with gaze which scanned
My soul, his eyes did rest.
“And is it thou,” he cried, “so long
Held by the world which we
Loved not, who turnest from the throng
Back to thy youth and me?
“And from thy world, with heart opprest,
Choosest thou now to turn?
Ah me! we anchorites read things best,
Clearest their course discern!
“Thou fled’st me when the ungenial earth,
Man’s work-place, lay in gloom:
Return’st thou in her hour of birth,
Of hopes and hearts in bloom?
“Perceiv’st thou not the change of day?
Ah! Carry back thy ken,
What, some two thousand years! Survey
The world as it was then.
“Like ours it looked in outward air.
Its head was clear and true,
Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,
No pause its action knew;
“Stout was its arm, each thew and bone
Seemed puissant and alive:
But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone,
And so it could not thrive!
“On that hard Pagan world, disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
“In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian Way.
“He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers;
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.
“The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swelled and swelled,
And on her head was hurled.
“The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.
“So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit gray;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And filled her life with day.
“‘Poor world!’ she cried, ‘so deep accurst,
That runn’st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst.—
Go, seek it in thy soul!’
“She heard it, the victorious West,
In crown and sword arrayed;
She felt the void which mined her breast,
She shivered and obeyed.
“She vailed her eagles, snapped her sword,
And laid her sceptre down;
Her stately purple she abhorred,
And her imperial crown.
“She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,
Her artists could not please.
She tore her books, she shut her courts,
She fled her palaces.
“Lust of the eye, and pride of life,
She left it all behind,
And hurried, torn with inward strife,
The wilderness to find.
“Tears washed the trouble from her face;
She changed into a child;
’Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,—a place
Of ruin,—but she smiled!
“Oh, had I lived in that great day,
How had its glory new
Filled earth and heaven, and caught away
My ravished spirit too!
“No thoughts that to the world belong
Had stood against the wave
Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ’s then open grave.
“No cloister-floor of humid stone
Had been too cold for me;
For me no Eastern desert lone
Had been too far to flee.
“No lonely life had passed too slow,
When I could hourly scan
Upon his cross, with head sunk low,
That nailed, thorn-crownÈd Man;
“Could see the Mother with the Child
Whose tender winning arts
Have to his little arms beguiled
So many wounded hearts!
“And centuries came, and ran their course;
And, unspent all that time,
Still, still went forth that Child’s dear force,
And still was at its prime.
“Ay, ages long endured his span
Of life,—’tis true received,—
That gracious Child, that thorn-crowned Man!
—He lived while we believed.
“While we believed, on earth he went,
And open stood his grave;
Men called from chamber, church, and tent,
And Christ was by to save.
“Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town;
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.
“In vain men still, with hoping new,
Regard his death-place dumb,
And say the stone is not yet to,
And wait for words to come.
“Ah! from that silent sacred land
Of sun, and arid stone,
And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,
Comes now one word alone!
“From David’s lips that word did roll;
’Tis true and living yet,—
No man can save his brother’s soul,
Nor pay his brother’s debt.
“Alone, self-poised, henceforward man
Must labor; must resign
His all too human creeds, and scan
Simply the way divine;
“But slow that tide of common thought,
Which bathed our life, retired;
Slow, slow the old world wore to naught,
And pulse by pulse expired.
“Its frame yet stood without a breach,
When blood and warmth were fled;
And still it spake its wonted speech,
But every word was dead.
“And oh! we cried, that on this corse
Might fall a freshening storm!
Rive its dry bones, and with new force
A new-sprung world inform!
“—Down came the storm! O’er France it passed
In sheets of scathing fire.
All Europe felt that fiery blast,
And shook as it rushed by her.
“Down came the storm! In ruins fell
The worn-out world we knew.
It passed, that elemental swell:
Again appeared the blue;
“The sun shone in the new-washed sky.
—And what from heaven saw he?
Blocks of the past, like icebergs high,
Float on a rolling sea!
“Upon them plies the race of man
All it before endeavored:
‘Ye live,’ I cried, ‘ye work and plan,
And know not ye are severed!
“‘Poor fragments of a broken world,
Whereon men pitch their tent!
Why were ye too to death not hurled
When your world’s day was spent?
“‘That glow of central fire is done
Which with its fusing flame
Knit all your parts, and kept you one;
But ye, ye are the same!
“‘The past, its mask of union on,
Had ceased to live and thrive:
The past, its mask of union gone,
Say, is it more alive?
“‘Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,
Your social order too.
Where tarries he, the Power who said,—
See, I make all things new?
“‘The millions suffer still, and grieve.
And what can helpers heal
With old-world cures men half believe
For woes they wholly feel?
“‘And yet men have such need of joy!
But joy whose grounds are true,
And joy that should all hearts employ
As when the past was new.
“‘Ah! not the emotion of that past,
Its common hope, were vain!
Some new such hope must dawn at last,
Or man must toss in pain.
“‘But now the old is out of date,
The new is not yet born.
And who can be alone elate,
While the world lies forlorn?’
“Then to the wilderness I fled.
There among Alpine snows
And pastoral huts I hid my head,
And sought and found repose.
“It was not yet the appointed hour.
Sad, patient, and resigned,
I watched the crocus fade and flower,
I felt the sun and wind.
“The day I lived in was not mine:
Man gets no second day.
In dreams I saw the future shine,
But ah! I could not stay!
“Action I had not, followers, fame.
I passed obscure, alone.
The after-world forgets my name,
Nor do I wish it known.
“Composed to bear, I lived and died,
And knew my life was vain.
With fate I murmur not, nor chide.
At SÈvres by the Seine
“(If Paris that brief flight allow)
My humble tomb explore!
It bears: Eternity, be thou
My refuge! and no more.
“But thou, whom fellowship of mood
Did make from haunts of strife
Come to my mountain solitude,
And learn my frustrate life;
“O thou, who, ere thy flying span
Was past of cheerful youth,
Didst find the solitary man,
And love his cheerless truth,—
“Despair not thou as I despaired,
Nor be cold gloom thy prison!
Forward the gracious hours have fared,
And see! the sun is risen!
“He breaks the winter of the past;
A green, new earth appears.
Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,
Have thoughts and smiles and tears.
“What though there still need effort, strife?
Though much be still unwon?
Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life;
Death’s frozen hour is done.
“The world’s great order dawns in sheen
After long darkness rude,
Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,
With happier zeal pursued.
“With hope extinct, and brow composed,
I marked the present die;
Its term of life was nearly closed,
Yet it had more than I.
“But thou, though to the world’s new hour
Thou come with aspect marred,
Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power,
Which best befits its bard;
“Though more than half thy years be past,
And spent thy youthful prime;
Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,
Hang weeds of our sad time
“Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,
And traversed all the shade,—
Though late, though dimmed, though weak, yet tell
Hope to a world new-made!
“Help it to fill that deep desire,
The want which crazed our brain,
Consumed our soul with thirst like fire,
Immedicable pain;
“Which to the wilderness drove out
Our life, to Alpine snow,
And palsied all our word with doubt,
And all our work with woe.
“What still of strength is left, employ,
This end to help attain:
One common wave of thought and joy
Lifting mankind again!”
—The vision ended. I awoke
As out of sleep, and no
Voice moved: only the torrent broke
The silence, far below.
Soft darkness on the turf did lie;
Solemn, o’er hut and wood,
In the yet star-sown nightly sky,
The peak of Jaman stood.
Still in my soul the voice I heard
Of Obermann! Away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirred,
Along the rocks of Naye,—
Past Sonchaud’s piny flanks I gaze,
And the blanched summit bare
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,
And the domed Velan, with his snows,
Behind the upcrowding hills,
Doth all the heavenly opening close
Which the Rhone’s murmur fills;
And glorious there, without a sound,
Across the glimmering lake,
High in the Valais-depth profound,
I saw the morning break.
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