LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POEMS. SWITZERLAND. I. MEETING. Again I see

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Matthew Arnold
LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POEMS. SWITZERLAND. I. MEETING. Again I see my bliss at hand, The town, the lake, are here; My Marguerite smiles upon the strand, [12] Unaltered with the year. I know that graceful figure fair, That cheek of languid hue; I know that soft, enkerchiefed hair, And those sweet eyes of blue. Again I spring to make my choice; Again in tones of ire I hear a God's tremendous voice,-- "Be counselled, and retire." Ye guiding Powers who join and part, What would ye have with me? Ah, warn some more ambitious heart, And let the peaceful be!

II. PARTING.

Ye storm-winds of autumn!
 Who rush by, who shake
 The window, and ruffle
 The gleam-lighted lake;
 Who cross to the hillside
 Thin-sprinkled with farms,
 Where the high woods strip sadly
 Their yellowing arms,—
 Ye are bound for the mountains!
 Ah! with you let me go
 Where your cold, distant barrier,
 The vast range of snow,
 Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
 Its white peaks in air.
 How deep is their stillness!
 Ah! would I were there!
But on the stairs what voice is this I hear,
 Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear?
 Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
 Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
 Or was it from some sun-flecked mountain brook
 That the sweet voice its upland clearness took?
 Ah! it comes nearer—
 Sweet notes, this way!
Hark! fast by the window
 The rushing winds go,
 To the ice-cumbered gorges,
 The vast seas of snow!
 There the torrents drive upward
 Their rock-strangled hum;
 There the avalanche thunders
 The hoarse torrent dumb.
 —I come, O ye mountains!
 Ye torrents, I come!
But who is this, by the half-opened door,
 Whose figure casts a shadow on the floor?
 The sweet blue eyes—the soft, ash-colored hair—
 The cheeks that still their gentle paleness wear—
 The lovely lips, with their arched smile that tells
 The unconquered joy in which her spirit dwells—
 Ah! they bend nearer—
 Sweet lips, this way!
Hark! the wind rushes past us!
 Ah! with that let me go
 To the clear, waning hill-side,
 Unspotted by snow,
 There to watch, o’er the sunk vale,
 The frore mountain wall,
 Where the niched snow-bed sprays down
 Its powdery fall.
 There its dusky blue clusters
 The aconite spreads;
 There the pines slope, the cloud-strips
 Hung soft in their heads.
 No life but, at moments,
 The mountain bee’s hum.
 —I come, O ye mountains!
 Ye pine-woods, I come!
Forgive me! forgive me!
 Ah, Marguerite, fain
 Would these arms reach to clasp thee!
 But see! ’tis in vain.
In the void air, towards thee,
 My stretched arms are cast;
 But a sea rolls between us,—
 Our different past!
To the lips, ah! of others
 Those lips have been prest,
 And others, ere I was,
 Were strained to that breast.
Far, far from each other
 Our spirits have grown.
 And what heart knows another?
 Ah! who knows his own?
Blow, ye winds! lift me with you!
 I come to the wild.
 Fold closely, O Nature!
 Thine arms round thy child.
To thee only God granted
 A heart ever new,—
 To all always open,
 To all always true.
Ah! calm me, restore me;
 And dry up my tears
 On thy high mountain platforms,
 Where morn first appears;
Where the white mists, forever,
 Are spread and upfurled,—
 In the stir of the forces
 Whence issued the world.

III. A FAREWELL.

My horse’s feet beside the lake,
 Where sweet the unbroken moonbeams lay,
 Sent echoes through the night to wake
 Each glistening strand, each heath-fringed bay.
The poplar avenue was passed,
 And the roofed bridge that spans the stream;
 Up the steep street I hurried fast,
 Led by thy taper’s starlike beam.
I came! I saw thee rise! the blood
 Poured flushing to thy languid cheek.
 Locked in each other’s arms we stood,
 In tears, with hearts too full to speak.
Days flew; ah, soon I could discern
 A trouble in thine altered air!
 Thy hand lay languidly in mine,
 Thy cheek was grave, thy speech grew rare.
I blame thee not! This heart, I know,
 To be long loved was never framed;
 For something in its depths doth glow
 Too strange, too restless, too untamed.
And women,—things that live and move
 Mined by the fever of the soul,—
 They seek to find in those they love
 Stern strength, and promise of control.
They ask not kindness, gentle ways;
 These they themselves have tried and known:
 They ask a soul which never sways
 With the blind gusts that shake their own.
I too have felt the load I bore
 In a too strong emotion’s sway;
 I too have wished, no woman more,
 This starting, feverish heart away.
I too have longed for trenchant force,
 And will like a dividing spear;
 Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course,
 Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.
But in the world I learnt, what there
 Thou too wilt surely one day prove,—
 That will, that energy, though rare,
 Are yet far, far less rare than love.
Go, then! till time and fate impress
 This truth on thee, be mine no more!
 They will! for thou, I feel, not less
 Than I, wast destined to this lore.
We school our manners, act our parts;
 But He, who sees us through and through,
 Knows that the bent of both our hearts
 Was to be gentle, tranquil, true.
And though we wear out life, alas!
 Distracted as a homeless wind,
 In beating where we must not pass,
 In seeking what we shall not find;
Yet we shall one day gain, life past,
 Clear prospect o’er our being’s whole;
 Shall see ourselves, and learn at last
 Our true affinities of soul.
We shall not then deny a course
 To every thought the mass ignore;
 We shall not then call hardness force,
 Nor lightness wisdom any more.
Then, in the eternal Father’s smile,
 Our soothed, encouraged souls will dare
 To seem as free from pride and guile,
 As good, as generous, as they are.
Then we shall know our friends! Though much
 Will have been lost,—the help in strife,
 The thousand sweet, still joys of such
 As hand in hand face earthly life,—
Though these be lost, there will be yet
 A sympathy august and pure;
 Ennobled by a vast regret,
 And by contrition sealed thrice sure.
And we, whose ways were unlike here,
 May then more neighboring courses ply;
 May to each other be brought near,
 And greet across infinity.
How sweet, unreached by earthly jars,
 My sister! to maintain with thee
 The hush among the shining stars,
 The calm upon the moonlit sea!
How sweet to feel, on the boon air,
 All our unquiet pulses cease!
 To feel that nothing can impair
 The gentleness, the thirst for peace,—
The gentleness too rudely hurled
 On this wild earth of hate and fear;
 The thirst for peace, a raving world
 Would never let us satiate here.

IV. ISOLATION. TO MARGUERITE.

We were apart: yet, day by day,
 I bade my heart more constant be.
 I bade it keep the world away,
 And grow a home for only thee;
 Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
 Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
 What far too soon, alas! I learned,—
 The heart can bind itself alone,
 And faith may oft be unreturned.
 Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell.
 Thou lov’st no more. Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell!—And thou, thou lonely heart,
 Which never yet without remorse
 Even for a moment didst depart
 From thy remote and spherÈd course
 To haunt the place where passions reign,—
 Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
 Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
 Flash through her pure immortal frame,
 When she forsook the starry height
 To hang o’er Endymion’s sleep
 Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
 How vain a thing is mortal love,
 Wandering in heaven, far removed;
 But thou hast long had place to prove
 This truth,—to prove, and make thine own:
 “Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.”
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
 Which touch thee are unmating things,—
 Ocean and clouds and night and day;
 Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
 And life, and others’ joy and pain,
 And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men; for they, at least,
 Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
 In one, and were through faith released
 From isolation without end
 Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
 Alone than thou, their loneliness.

V. TO MARGUERITE. CONTINUED.

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
 With echoing straits between us thrown,
 Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
 We mortal millions live alone.
 The islands feel the enclasping flow,
 And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,
 And they are swept by balms of spring,
 And in their glens, on starry nights,
 The nightingales divinely sing;
 And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
 Across the sounds and channels pour,—
Oh! then a longing like despair
 Is to their farthest caverns sent;
 For surely once, they feel, we were
 Parts of a single continent!
 Now round us spreads the watery plain:
 Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing’s fire
 Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
 Who renders vain their deep desire?—
 A God, a God their severance ruled!
 And bade betwixt their shores to be
 The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

VI. ABSENCE.

In this fair stranger’s eyes of gray,
 Thine eyes, my love! I see.
 I shiver; for the passing day
 Had borne me far from thee.
This is the curse of life! that not
 A nobler, calmer train
 Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot
 Our passions from our brain;
But each day brings its petty dust,
 Our soon-choked souls to fill;
 And we forget because we must,
 And not because we will.
I struggle towards the light; and ye,
 Once-longed-for storms of love!
 If with the light ye cannot be,
 I bear that ye remove.
I struggle towards the light; but oh,
 While yet the night is chill,
 Upon time’s barren, stormy flow,
 Stay with me, Marguerite, still!

VII. THE TERRACE AT BERNE.

(COMPOSED TEN YEARS AFTER THE PRECEDING.)

Ten years! and to my waking eye
 Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
 The rocky banks, the terrace high,
 The stream! and do I linger here?
The clouds are on the Oberland,
 The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
 But bright are those green fields at hand,
 And through those fields comes down the Aar,
And from the blue twin-lakes it comes,
 Flows by the town, the churchyard fair;
 And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,
 The house! and is my Marguerite there
Ah! shall I see thee, while a flush
 Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
 Quick through the oleanders brush,
 And clap thy hands, and cry, ’Tis thou!
Or hast thou long since wandered back,
 Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
 And flitted down the flowery track
 Where feet like thine too lightly come?
Doth riotous laughter now replace
 Thy smile, and rouge, with stony glare,
 Thy cheek’s soft hue, and fluttering lace
 The kerchief that inwound thy hair?
Or is it over? art thou dead?—
 Dead!—and no warning shiver ran
 Across my heart, to say thy thread
 Of life was cut, and closed thy span!
Could from earth’s ways that figure slight
 Be lost, and I not feel ’twas so?
 Of that fresh voice the gay delight
 Fail from earth’s air, and I not know?
Or shall I find thee still, but changed,
 But not the Marguerite of thy prime?
 With all thy being re-arranged,—
 Passed through the crucible of time;
With spirit vanished, beauty waned,
 And hardly yet a glance, a tone,
 A gesture—any thing—retained
 Of all that was my Marguerite’s own?
I will not know! For wherefore try,
 To things by mortal course that live,
 A shadowy durability,
 For which they were not meant, to give?
Like driftwood spars, which meet and pass
 Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
 So on the sea of life, alas!
 Man meets man,—meets, and quits again.
I knew it when my life was young;
 I feel it still now youth is o’er.
 —The mists are on the mountain hung,
 And Marguerite I shall see no more.

THE STRAYED REVELLER.

THE PORTICO OF CIRCE’S PALACE. EVENING.
A Youth. Circe.

THE YOUTH.
Faster, faster,
 O Circe, goddess,
 Let the wild, thronging train,
 The bright procession
 Of eddying forms,
 Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
 Down on me! thy right arm,
 Leaned up against the column there,
 Props thy soft cheek;
 Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
 The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
 I held but now.
Is it then evening
 So soon? I see, the night-dews,
 Clustered in thick beads, dim
 The agate brooch-stones
 On thy white shoulder;
 The cool night-wind, too,
 Blows through the portico,
 Stirs thy hair, goddess,
 Waves thy white robe!
CIRCE.
Whence art thou, sleeper?
THE YOUTH.
When the white dawn first
 Through the rough fir-planks
 Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
 Up at the valley-head,
 Came breaking, goddess!
 I sprang up, I threw round me
 My dappled fawn-skin;
 Passing out, from the wet turf,
 Where they lay, by the hut door,
 I snatched up my vine-crown, my fir-staff,
 All drenched in dew,—
 Came swift down to join
 The rout early gathered
 In the town, round the temple,
 Iacchus’ white fane
 On yonder hill.
Quick I passed, following
 The woodcutters’ cart-track
 Down the dark valley. I saw
 On my left, through the beeches,
 Thy palace, goddess,
 Smokeless, empty!
 Trembling, I entered; beheld
 The court all silent,
 The lions sleeping,
 On the altar this bowl.
 I drank, goddess!
 And sank down here, sleeping,
 On the steps of thy portico.
CIRCE.
Foolish boy! Why tremblest thou?
 Thou lovest it, then, my wine?
 Wouldst more of it? See how glows,
 Through the delicate, flushed marble,
 The red creaming liquor,
 Strewn with dark seeds!
 Drink, then! I chide thee not,
 Deny thee not my bowl.
 Come, stretch forth thy hand, then—so!
 Drink—drink again!
THE YOUTH.
Thanks, gracious one!
 Ah, the sweet fumes again!
 More soft, ah me!
 More subtle-winding,
 Than Pan’s flute-music!
 Faint—faint! Ah me,
 Again the sweet sleep!
CIRCE.
Hist! Thou—within there!
 Come forth, Ulysses!
 Art tired with hunting?
 While we range the woodland,
 See what the day brings.
ULYSSES.
Ever new magic!
 Hast thou then lured hither,
 Wonderful goddess, by thy art,
 The young, languid-eyed Ampelus,
 Iacchus’ darling,
 Or some youth beloved of Pan,
 Of Pan and the nymphs;
 That he sits, bending downward
 His white, delicate neck
 To the ivy-wreathed marge
 Of thy cup; the bright, glancing vine-leaves
 That crown his hair,
 Falling forward, mingling
 With the dark ivy-plants;
 His fawn-skin, half untied,
 Smeared with red wine-stains? Who is he,
 That he sits, overweighed
 By fumes of wine and sleep,
 So late, in thy portico?
 What youth, goddess,—what guest
 Of gods or mortals?
CIRCE.
Hist! he wakes!
 I lured him not hither, Ulysses.
 Nay, ask him!
THE YOUTH.
Who speaks? Ah! who comes forth
 To thy side, goddess, from within?
 How shall I name him,—
 This spare, dark-featured,
 Quick-eyed stranger?
 Ah! and I see too
 His sailor’s bonnet,
 His short coat, travel-tarnished,
 With one arm bare!—
 Art thou not he, whom fame
 This long time rumors
 The favored guest of Circe, brought by the waves?
 Art thou he, stranger,—
 The wise Ulysses,
 Laertes’ son?
ULYSSES.
I am Ulysses.
 And thou too, sleeper?
 Thy voice is sweet.
 It may be thou hast followed
 Through the islands some divine bard,
 By age taught many things,—
 Age, and the Muses;
 And heard him delighting
 The chiefs and people
 In the banquet, and learned his songs,
 Of gods and heroes,
 Of war and arts,
 And peopled cities,
 Inland, or built
 By the gray sea. If so, then hail!
 I honor and welcome thee.
THE YOUTH.
The gods are happy.
 They turn on all sides
 Their shining eyes,
 And see below them
 The earth and men.
They see Tiresias
 Sitting, staff in hand,
 On the warm, grassy
 Asopus bank,
 His robe drawn over
 His old sightless head,
 Revolving inly
 The doom of Thebes.
They see the centaurs
 In the upper glens
 Of Pelion, in the streams
 Where red-berried ashes fringe
 The clear-brown shallow pools,
 With streaming flanks, and heads
 Reared proudly, snuffing
 The mountain wind.
They see the Indian
 Drifting, knife in hand,
 His frail boat moored to
 A floating isle thick-matted
 With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants,
 And the dark cucumber.
 He reaps and stows them,
 Drifting—drifting; round him,
 Round his green harvest-plot,
 Flow the cool lake-waves,
 The mountains ring them.
They see the Scythian
 On the wide steppe, unharnessing
 His wheeled house at noon.
 He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal,—
 Mares’ milk, and bread
 Baked on the embers. All around,
 The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starred
 With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
 And flag-leaved iris-flowers.
 Sitting in his cart
 He makes his meal; before him, for long miles,
 Alive with bright green lizards,
 And the springing bustard-fowl,
 The track, a straight black line,
 Furrows the rich soil; here and there
 Clusters of lonely mounds
 Topped with rough-hewn,
 Gray, rain-bleared statues, overpeer
 The sunny waste.
They see the ferry
 On the broad, clay-laden
 Lone Chorasmian stream; thereon,
 With snort and strain,
 Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
 The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
 To either bow
 Firm-harnessed by the mane; a chief,
 With shout and shaken spear,
 Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
 The cowering merchants in long robes
 Sit pale beside their wealth
 Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
 Of gold and ivory,
 Of turquoise-earth, and amethyst,
 Jasper and chalcedony,
 And milk-barred onyx-stones.
 The loaded boat swings groaning
 In the yellow eddies;
 The gods behold them.
They see the heroes
 Sitting in the dark ship
 On the foamless, long-heaving,
 Violet sea,
 At sunset nearing
 The Happy Islands.
These things, Ulysses,
 The wise bards also
 Behold, and sing.
 But oh, what labor!
 O prince, what pain!
They too can see
 Tiresias; but the gods,
 Who gave them vision,
 Added this law:
 That they should bear too
 His groping blindness,
 His dark foreboding,
 His scorned white hairs;
 Bear Hera’s anger
 Through a life lengthened
 To seven ages.
They see the centaurs
 On Pelion: then they feel,
 They too, the maddening wine
 Swell their large veins to bursting; in wild pain
 They feel the biting spears
 Of the grim LapithÆ, and Theseus, drive,
 Drive crashing through their bones; they feel,
 High on a jutting rock in the red stream,
 Alcmena’s dreadful son
 Ply his bow. Such a price
 The gods exact for song:
 To become what we sing.
They see the Indian
 On his mountain lake; but squalls
 Make their skiff reel, and worms
 In the unkind spring have gnawn
 Their melon-harvest to the heart. They see
 The Scythian; but long frosts
 Parch them in winter-time on the bare steppe,
 Till they too fade like grass; they crawl
 Like shadows forth in spring.
They see the merchants
 On the Oxus-stream; but care
 Must visit first them too, and make them pale:
 Whether, through whirling sand,
 A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
 Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
 In the walled cities the way passes through,
 Crushed them with tolls; or fever-airs,
 On some great river’s marge,
 Mown them down, far from home.
They see the heroes
 Near harbor; but they share
 Their lives, and former violent toil in Thebes,—
 Seven-gated Thebes, or Troy;
 Or where the echoing oars
 Of Argo first
 Startled the unknown sea.
The old Silenus
 Came, lolling in the sunshine,
 From the dewy forest-coverts,
 This way, at noon.
 Sitting by me, while his fauns
 Down at the water-side
 Sprinkled and smoothed
 His drooping garland,
 He told me these things.
But I, Ulysses,
 Sitting on the warm steps,
 Looking over the valley,
 All day long, have seen,
 Without pain, without labor,
 Sometimes a wild-haired mÆnad,
 Sometimes a faun with torches,
 And sometimes, for a moment,
 Passing through the dark stems
 Flowing-robed, the beloved,
 The desired, the divine,
 Beloved Iacchus.
Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!
 Ah, glimmering water,
 Fitful earth-murmur,
 Dreaming woods!
 Ah, golden-haired, strangely smiling goddess,
 And thou, proved, much-enduring,
 Wave-tossed wanderer!
 Who can stand still?
 Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me—
 The cup again!
Faster, faster,
 O Circe, goddess,
 Let the wild, thronging train,
 The bright procession
 Of eddying forms,
 Sweep through my soul!

FRAGMENT OF AN “ANTIGONE.”

THE CHORUS.

FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A “DEJANEIRA.”

O frivolous mind of man,
 Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts!
 Though man bewails you not,
 How I bewail you!
Little in your prosperity
 Do you seek counsel of the gods.
 Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
 In profound silence stern,
 Among their savage gorges and cold springs,
 Unvisited remain
 The great oracular shrines.
Thither in your adversity
 Do you betake yourselves for light,
 But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
 For you will not put on
 New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
 And purged, considerate minds.
And him on whom, at the end
 Of toil and dolour untold,
 The gods have said that repose
 At last shall descend undisturbed,—
 Him you expect to behold
 In an easy old age, in a happy home:
 No end but this you praise.
But him on whom, in the prime
 Of life, with vigor undimmed,
 With unspent mind, and a soul
 Unworn, undebased, undecayed,
 Mournfully grating, the gates
 Of the city of death have forever closed,—
 Him, I count him, well-starred.

EARLY DEATH AND FAME.

For him who must see many years,
 I praise the life which slips away
 Out of the light, and mutely; which avoids
 Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife,
 Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal,
 Insincere praises; which descends
 The quiet mossy track to age.
But when immature death
 Beckons too early the guest
 From the half-tried banquet of life,
 Young, in the bloom of his days;
 Leaves no leisure to press,
 Slow and surely, the sweets
 Of a tranquil life in the shade,—
 Fuller for him be the hours!
 Give him emotion, though pain!
 Let him live, let him feel, I have lived.
 Heap up his moments with life!
 Triple his pulses with fame!

PHILOMELA.

Hark! ah, the nightingale—
 The tawny-throated!
 Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
 What triumph! hark! what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
 Still, after many years, in distant lands,
 Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
 That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain,
 Say, will it never heal?
 And can this fragrant lawn
 With its cool trees, and night,
 And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
 And moonshine, and the dew,
 To thy racked heart and brain
 Afford no balm?
Dost thou to-night behold,
 Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
 The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
 Dost thou again peruse
 With hot cheeks and seared eyes
 The too clear web, and thy dumb sister’s shame?
 Dost thou once more assay
 Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
 Poor fugitive, the feathery change.
 Once more, and once more seem to make resound
 With love and hate, triumph and agony,
 Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?
 Listen, Eugenia,—
 How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
 Again—thou hearest?
 Eternal passion!
 Eternal pain!

URANIA.

She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,
 While we for hopeless passion die;
 Yet she could love, those eyes declare,
 Were but men nobler than they are.
Eagerly once her gracious ken
 Was turned upon the sons of men;
 But light the serious visage grew grew—
 She looked, and smiled, and saw them through.
Our petty souls, our strutting wits,
 Our labored, puny passion-fits,—
 Ah, may she scorn them still, till we
 Scorn them as bitterly as she!
Yet show her once, ye heavenly Powers,
 One of some worthier race than ours!
 One for whose sake she once might prove
 How deeply she who scorns can love.
His eyes be like the starry lights,
 His voice like sounds of summer nights;
 In all his lovely mien let pierce
 The magic of the universe!
And she to him will reach her hand,
 And gazing in his eyes will stand,
 And know her friend, and weep for glee,
 And cry, Long, long I’ve looked for thee.
Then will she weep: with smiles, till then,
 Coldly she mocks the sons of men;
 Till then, her lovely eyes maintain
 Their pure, unwavering, deep disdain.

EUPHROSYNE.

I must not say that she was true,
 Yet let me say that she was fair;
 And they, that lovely face who view,
 They should not ask if truth be there.
Truth—what is truth? Two bleeding hearts,
 Wounded by men, by fortune tried,
 Outwearied with their lonely parts,
 Vow to beat henceforth side by side.
The world to them was stern and drear,
 Their lot was but to weep and moan;
 Ah! let them keep their faith sincere,
 For neither could subsist alone.
But souls whom some benignant breath
 Hath charmed at birth from gloom and care,—
 These ask no love, these plight no faith,
 For they are happy as they are.
The world to them may homage make,
 And garlands for their forehead weave;
 And what the world can give, they take—
 But they bring more than they receive.
They shine upon the world; their ears
 To one demand alone are coy:
 They will not give us love and tears,
 They bring us light and warmth and joy.
On one she smiled, and he was blest;
 She smiles elsewhere—we make a din!
 But ’twas not love which heaved her breast,
 Fair child! it was the bliss within.

CALAIS SANDS.

A thousand knights have reined their steeds
 To watch this line of sand-hills run,
 Along the never-silent strait,
 To Calais glittering in the sun;
To look toward Ardres’ Golden Field
 Across this wide aËrial plain,
 Which glows as if the Middle Age
 Were gorgeous upon earth again.
Oh, that to share this famous scene,
 I saw, upon the open sand,
 Thy lovely presence at my side,—
 Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!
How exquisite thy voice would come,
 My darling, on this lonely air!
 How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
 Shake loose some band of soft brown hair!
Yet now my glance but once hath roved
 O’er Calais and its famous plain;
 To England’s cliffs my gaze is turned,
 O’er the blue strait mine eyes I strain.
Thou comest! Yes! the vessel’s cloud
 Hangs dark upon the rolling sea.
 Oh that yon sea-bird’s wings were mine,
 To win one instant’s glimpse of thee!
I must not spring to grasp thy hand,
 To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye;
 But I may stand far off, and gaze,
 And watch thee pass unconscious by,—
And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
 Mixed with the idlers on the pier.
 Ah! might I always rest unseen,
 So I might have thee always near!
To-morrow hurry through the fields
 Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
 To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
 Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine.

FADED LEAVES.

I. THE RIVER.

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
 Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
 Silent the swans beside us float:
 None speaks, none heeds; ah, turn thy head!
Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
 That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland;
 Ah! let them rest, those eyes, on mine!
 On mine let rest that lovely hand!
My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
 My heart is swoln with love unsaid.
 Ah! let me weep, and tell my pain,
 And on thy shoulder rest my head!
Before I die,—before the soul,
 Which now is mine, must re-attain
 Immunity from my control,
 And wander round the world again;
 Before this teased, o’er-labored heart
 Forever leaves its vain employ,
 Dead to its deep habitual smart,
 And dead to hopes of future joy.

II. TOO LATE

Each on his own strict line we move,
 And some find death ere they find love;
 So far apart their lives are thrown
 From the twin soul that halves their own.
And sometimes, by still harder fate,
 The lovers meet, but meet too late.
 —Thy heart is mine! True, true! ah, true!
 —Then, love, thy hand! Ah, no! adieu!

III. SEPARATION.

Stop! not to me, at this bitter departing,
 Speak of the sure consolations of time!
 Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
 So but thy image endure in its prime!
But if the steadfast commandment of Nature
 Wills that remembrance should always decay;
 If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature
 Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away,—
Me let no half-effaced memories cumber;
 Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
 Deep be the darkness, and still be the slumber;
 Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!
Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me,
 Scanning my face and the changes wrought there;
 Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,
 With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

IV. ON THE RHINE.

Vain is the effort to forget.
 Some day I shall be cold, I know,
 As is the eternal moon-lit snow
 Of the high Alps, to which I go;
 But ah! not yet, not yet!
Vain is the agony of grief.
 ’Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
 Ties straitly up from mine thy lot;
 And, were it snapped—thou lov’st me not!
 But is despair relief?
A while let me with thought have done.
 And as this brimmed unwrinkled Rhine,
 And that far purple mountain line,
 Lie sweetly in the look divine
 Of the slow-sinking sun;
So let me lie, and, calm as they,
 Let beam upon my inward view
 Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,—
 Eyes too expressive to be blue,
 Too lovely to be gray.
Ah, quiet, all things feel thy balm!
 Those blue hills too, this river’s flow,
 Were restless once, but long ago.
 Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow;
 Their joy is in their calm.

V. LONGING.

Come to me in my dreams, and then
 By day I shall be well again!
 For then the night will more than pay
 The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
 A messenger from radiant climes,
 And smile on thy new world, and be
 As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
 Come now, and let me dream it truth;
 And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
 And say, My love! why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
 By day I shall be well again!
 For then the night will more than pay
 The hopeless longing of the day.

DESPONDENCY.

The thoughts that rain their steady glow
 Like stars on life’s cold sea,
 Which others know, or say they know,—
 They never shone for me.
Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky,
 But they will not remain.
 They light me once, they hurry by,
 And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION.

Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
 Of possessing powers not our share?
 —Since man woke on earth, he knows his story;
 But, before we woke on earth, we were.
Long, long since, undowered yet, our spirit
 Roamed, ere birth, the treasuries of God;
 Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,
 Asked an outfit for its earthly road.
Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being
 Strained and longed, and grasped each gift it saw;
 Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing
 Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.
Ah! whose hand that day through heaven guided
 Man’s new spirit, since it was not we?
 Ah! who swayed our choice, and who decided
 What our gifts and what our wants should be?
For, alas! he left us each retaining
 Shreds of gifts which he refused in full;
 Still these waste us with their hopeless straining,
 Still the attempt to use them proves them null.
And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;
 Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.
 Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling,
 Failed to place that master-feeling clear.
We but dream we have our wished-for powers;
 Ends we seek, we never shall attain.
 Ah! some power exists there, which is ours?
 Some end is there, we indeed may gain?

DOVER BEACH.

The sea is calm to-night.
 The tide is full, the moon lies fair
 Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
 Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
 Only, from the long line of spray
 Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
 Listen! you hear the grating roar
 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
 At their return, up the high strand,
 Begin and cease, and then again begin,
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
 The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
 Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
 Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
 Of human misery: we
 Find also in the sound a thought,
 Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
 But now I only hear
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
 Retreating, to the breath
 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
 And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
 To one another! for the world, which seems
 To lie before us like a land of dreams,
 So various, so beautiful, so new,
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
 And we are here as on a darkling plain
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
 Where ignorant armies clash by night.

GROWING OLD.

What is it to grow old?
 Is it to lose the glory of the form,
 The lustre of the eye?
 Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
 —Yes, but not this alone.
Is it to feel our strength—
 Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
 Is it to feel each limb
 Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
 Each nerve more loosely strung?
Yes, this, and more; but not,
 Ah! ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be.
 ’Tis not to have our life
 Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,—
 A golden day’s decline.
’Tis not to see the world
 As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
 And heart profoundly stirred;
 And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
 The years that are no more.
It is to spend long days,
 And not once feel that we were ever young;
 It is to add, immured
 In the hot prison of the present, month
 To month with weary pain.
It is to suffer this,
 And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
 Deep in our hidden heart
 Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
 But no emotion,—none.
It is—last stage of all—
 When we are frozen up within, and quite
 The phantom of ourselves,
 To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,
 Which blamed the living man.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.
A VARIATION.

Youth rambles on life’s arid mount,
 And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
 And brings the water from the fount,—
 The fount which shall not flow again.
The man mature with labor chops
 For the bright stream a channel grand,
 And sees not that the sacred drops
 Ran off and vanished out of hand.
And then the old man totters nigh,
 And feebly rakes among the stones.
 The mount is mute, the channel dry;
 And down he lays his weary bones.

PIS ALLER.

“Man is blind because of sin;
 Revelation makes him sure:
 Without that, who looks within
 Looks in vain, for all’s obscure.”
Nay, look closer into man!
 Tell me, can you find indeed
 Nothing sure, no moral plan
 Clear prescribed, without your creed?
“No, I nothing can perceive!
 Without that, all’s dark for men.
 That, or nothing, I believe.”—
 For God’s sake, believe it, then!

THE LAST WORD.

Creep into thy narrow bed,—
 Creep, and let no more be said.
 Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
 Thou thyself must break at last.
Let the long contention cease!
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
 Let them have it how they will!
 Thou art tired: best be still.
They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
 Better men fared thus before thee;
 Fired their ringing shot, and passed,
 Hotly charged—and sank at last.
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
 Let the victors, when they come,
 When the forts of folly fall,
 Find thy body by the wall!

A NAMELESS EPITAPH.

Ask not my name, O friend!
 That Being only, which hath known each man
 From the beginning, can
 Remember each unto the end.

EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA.
A DRAMATIC POEM.

PERSONS.

Empedocles.
 Pausanias, a Physician.
 Callicles, a young Harp-player.

The Scene of the Poem is on Mount Etna; at first in the forest region, afterwards on the summit of the mountain.

ACT I.

Scene I.—Morning. A Pass in the forest region of Etna.

CALLICLES (alone, resting on a rock by the path).
The mules, I think, will not be here this hour:
 They feel the cool wet turf under their feet
 By the stream-side, after the dusty lanes
 In which they have toiled all night from Catana,
 And scarcely will they budge a yard. O Pan,
 How gracious is the mountain at this hour!
 A thousand times have I been here alone,
 Or with the revellers from the mountain towns,
 But never on so fair a morn. The sun
 Is shining on the brilliant mountain crests,
 And on the highest pines; but farther down,
 Here in the valley, is in shade; the sward
 Is dark, and on the stream the mist still hangs;
 One sees one’s footprints crushed in the wet grass,
 One’s breath curls in the air; and on these pines
 That climb from the stream’s edge, the long gray tufts,
 Which the goats love, are jewelled thick with dew.
 Here will I stay till the slow litter comes.
 I have my harp too: that is well.—Apollo!
 What mortal could be sick or sorry here?
 I know not in what mind Empedocles,
 Whose mules I followed, may be coming up;
 But if, as most men say, he is half mad
 With exile, and with brooding on his wrongs,
 Pausanias, his sage friend, who mounts with him,
 Could scarce have lighted on a lovelier cure.
 The mules must be below, far down. I hear
 Their tinkling bells, mixed with the song of birds,
 Rise faintly to me: now it stops!—Who’s here?
 Pausanias! and on foot? alone?
PAUSANIAS.
And thou, then?
 I left thee supping with Peisianax,
 With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crowned,
 Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee,
 And praised and spoiled by master and by guests
 Almost as much as the new dancing-girl.
 Why hast thou followed us?
CALLICLES.
The night was hot,
 And the feast past its prime: so we slipped out,
 Some of us, to the portico to breathe,—
 Peisianax, thou know’st, drinks late,—and then,
 As I was lifting my soiled garland off,
 I saw the mules and litter in the court,
 And in the litter sate Empedocles;
 Thou too wast with him. Straightway I sped home;
 I saddled my white mule, and all night long
 Through the cool lovely country followed you,
 Passed you a little since as morning dawned,
 And have this hour sate by the torrent here,
 Till the slow mules should climb in sight again.
 And now?
PAUSANIAS.
And now, back to the town with speed!
 Crouch in the wood first, till the mules have passed;
 They do but halt, they will be here anon.
 Thou must be viewless to Empedocles;
 Save mine, he must not meet a human eye.
 One of his moods is on him that thou know’st;
 I think, thou wouldst not vex him.
CALLICLES.
No; and yet
 I would fain stay, and help thee tend him. Once
 He knew me well, and would oft notice me;
 And still, I know not how, he draws me to him,
 And I could watch him with his proud sad face,
 His flowing locks and gold-encircled brow
 And kingly gait, forever; such a spell
 In his severe looks, such a majesty
 As drew of old the people after him,
 In Agrigentum and Olympia,
 When his star reigned, before his banishment,
 Is potent still on me in his decline.
 But, O Pausanias, he is changed of late:
 There is a settled trouble in his air
 Admits no momentary brightening now;
 And when he comes among his friends at feasts,
 ’Tis as an orphan among prosperous boys.
 Thou know’st of old he loved this harp of mine,
 When first he sojourned with Peisianax;
 He is now always moody, and I fear him;
 But I would serve him, soothe him, if I could,
 Dared one but try.
PAUSANIAS.
Thou wast a kind child ever.
 He loves thee, but he must not see thee now.
 Thou hast indeed a rare touch on thy harp;
 He loves that in thee, too; there was a time
 (But that is past), he would have paid thy strain
 With music to have drawn the stars from heaven.
 He has his harp and laurel with him still;
 But he has laid the use of music by,
 And all which might relax his settled gloom.
 Yet thou may’st try thy playing, if thou wilt,
 But thou must keep unseen: follow us on,
 But at a distance! in these solitudes,
 In this clear mountain air, a voice will rise,
 Though from afar, distinctly; it may soothe him.
 Play when we halt; and when the evening comes,
 And I must leave him (for his pleasure is
 To be left musing these soft nights alone
 In the high unfrequented mountain spots),
 Then watch him, for he ranges swift and far,
 Sometimes to Etna’s top, and to the cone;
 But hide thee in the rocks a great way down,
 And try thy noblest strains, my Callicles,
 With the sweet night to help thy harmony!
 Thou wilt earn my thanks sure, and perhaps his.
CALLICLES.
More than a day and night, Pausanias,
 Of this fair summer-weather, on these hills,
 Would I bestow to help Empedocles.
 That needs no thanks: one is far better here
 Than in the broiling city in these heats.
 But tell me, how hast thou persuaded him
 In this his present fierce, man-hating mood,
 To bring thee out with him alone on Etna?
PAUSANIAS.
Thou hast heard all men speaking of Pantheia,
 The woman who at Agrigentum lay
 Thirty long days in a cold trance of death,
 And whom Empedocles called back to life.
 Thou art too young to note it, but his power
 Swells with the swelling evil of this time,
 And holds men mute to see where it will rise.
 He could stay swift diseases in old days,
 Chain madmen by the music of his lyre,
 Cleanse to sweet airs the breath of poisonous streams,
 And in the mountain chinks inter the winds.
 This he could do of old; but now, since all
 Clouds and grows daily worse in Sicily,
 Since broils tear us in twain, since this new swarm
 Of sophists has got empire in our schools
 Where he was paramount, since he is banished,
 And lives a lonely man in triple gloom,—
 He grasps the very reins of life and death.
 I asked him of Pantheia yesterday,
 When we were gathered with Peisianax;
 And he made answer, I should come at night
 On Etna here, and be alone with him,
 And he would tell me, as his old, tried friend,
 Who still was faithful, what might profit me,—
 That is, the secret of this miracle.
CALLICLES.
Bah! Thou a doctor! Thou art superstitious.
 Simple Pausanias, ’twas no miracle!
 Pantheia, for I know her kinsmen well,
 Was subject to these trances from a girl.
 Empedocles would say so, did he deign;
 But he still lets the people, whom he scorns,
 Gape and cry wizard at him, if they list.
 But thou, thou art no company for him:
 Thou art as cross, as soured as himself.
 Thou hast some wrong from thine own citizens,
 And then thy friend is banished; and on that,
 Straightway thou fallest to arraign the times,
 As if the sky was impious not to fall.
 The sophists are no enemies of his;
 I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him,
 As of his gifted master, and once friend.
 He is too scornful, too high-wrought, too bitter.
 ’Tis not the times, ’tis not the sophists, vex him:
 There is some root of suffering in himself,
 Some secret and unfollowed vein of woe,
 Which makes the time look black and sad to him.
 Pester him not, in this his sombre mood,
 With questionings about an idle tale,
 But lead him through the lovely mountain paths,
 And keep his mind from preying on itself,
 And talk to him of things at hand and common,
 Not miracles! thou art a learned man,
 But credulous of fables as a girl.
PAUSANIAS.
And thou, a boy whose tongue outruns his knowledge,
 And on whose lightness blame is thrown away.
 Enough of this! I see the litter wind
 Up by the torrent-side, under the pines.
 I must rejoin Empedocles. Do thou
 Crouch in the brushwood till the mules have passed;
 Then play thy kind part well. Farewell till night!

Scene II.—Noon. A Glen on the highest skirts of the woody region of Etna.

EMPEDOCLES. PAUSANIAS.

[A harp-note below is heard.

EMPEDOCLES.
Hark! what sound was that
 Rose from below? If it were possible,
 And we were not so far from human haunt,
 I should have said that some one touched a harp.
 Hark! there again!
PAUSANIAS.
’Tis the boy Callicles,
 The sweetest harp-player in Catana.
 He is forever coming on these hills,
 In summer, to all country-festivals,
 With a gay revelling band; he breaks from them
 Sometimes, and wanders far among the glens.
 But heed him not, he will not mount to us;
 I spoke with him this morning. Once more, therefore,
 Instruct me of Pantheia’s story, master,
 As I have prayed thee.
EMPEDOCLES.
That? and to what end?
PAUSANIAS.
It is enough that all men speak of it.
 But I will also say, that when the gods
 Visit us as they do with sign and plague,
 To know those spells of thine which stay their hand
 Were to live free from terror.
EMPEDOCLES.
Spells? Mistrust them!
 Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven;
 Man has a mind with which to plan his safety,—
 Know that, and help thyself!
PAUSANIAS.
But thine own words?
 “The wit and counsel of man was never clear;
 Troubles confound the little wit he has.”
 Mind is a light which the gods mock us with,
 To lead those false who trust it.

[The harp sounds again.

EMPEDOCLES.
Hist! once more!
 Listen, Pausanias!—Ay, ’tis Callicles;
 I know those notes among a thousand. Hark!
CALLICLES (sings unseen, from below).
The track winds down to the clear stream,
 To cross the sparkling shallows; there
 The cattle love to gather, on their way
 To the high mountain pastures, and to stay,
 Till the rough cow-herds drive them past,
 Knee-deep in the cool ford; for ’tis the last
 Of all the woody, high, well-watered dells
 On Etna; and the beam
 Of noon is broken there by chestnut-boughs
 Down its steep verdant sides; the air
 Is freshened by the leaping stream, which throws
 Eternal showers of spray on the mossed roots
 Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots
 Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells
 Of hyacinths, and on late anemones,
 That muffle its wet banks; but glade,
 And stream, and sward, and chestnut-trees,
 End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare
 Of the hot noon, without a shade,
 Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare,—
 The peak, round which the white clouds play.
In such a glen, on such a day,
 On Pelion, on the grassy ground
 Chiron, the aged Centaur, lay,
 The young Achilles standing by.
 The Centaur taught him to explore
 The mountains; where the glens are dry,
 And the tired Centaurs come to rest,
 And where the soaking springs abound,
 And the straight ashes grow for spears,
 And where the hill-goats come to feed,
 And the sea-eagles build their nest.
 He showed him Phthia far away,
 And said, “O boy, I taught this lore
 To Peleus, in long-distant years!”
 He told him of the gods, the stars,
 The tides; and then of mortal wars,
 And of the life which heroes lead
 Before they reach the Elysian place,
 And rest in the immortal mead;
 And all the wisdom of his race.

The music below ceases, and Empedocles speaks, accompanying
himself in a solemn manner on his harp.

The out-spread world to span,
 A cord the gods first slung,
 And then the soul of man
 There, like a mirror, hung,
 And bade the winds through space impel the gusty toy.
Hither and thither spins
 The wind-borne, mirroring soul;
 A thousand glimpses wins,
 And never sees a whole;
 Looks once, and drives elsewhere, and leaves its last employ.
The gods laugh in their sleeve
 To watch man doubt and fear,
 Who knows not what to believe
 Since he sees nothing clear,
 And dares stamp nothing false where he finds nothing sure.
Is this, Pausanias, so?
 And can our souls not strive,
 But with the winds must go,
 And hurry where they drive?
 Is Fate indeed so strong, man’s strength indeed so poor?
I will not judge. That man,
 Howbeit, I judge as lost,
 Whose mind allows a plan,
 Which would degrade it most;
 And he treats doubt the best who tries to see least ill.
Be not, then, fear’s blind slave!
 Thou art my friend; to thee,
 All knowledge that I have,
 All skill I wield, are free.
 Ask not the latest news of the last miracle,—
Ask not what days and nights
 In trance Pantheia lay,
 But ask how thou such sights
 May’st see without dismay;
 Ask what most helps when known, thou son of Anchitus!
What! hate, and awe, and shame
 Fill thee to see our time;
 Thou feelest thy soul’s frame
 Shaken and out of chime?
 What! life and chance go hard with thee too, as with us;
Thy citizens, ’tis said,
 Envy thee and oppress,
 Thy goodness no men aid,
 All strive to make it less;
 Tyranny, pride, and lust fill Sicily’s abodes;
Heaven is with earth at strife;
 Signs make thy soul afraid,—
 The dead return to life,
 Rivers are dried, winds stayed;
 Scarce can one think in calm, so threatening are the gods;
 And we feel, day and night,
 The burden of ourselves:
 Well, then, the wiser wight
 In his own bosom delves,
 And asks what ails him so, and gets what cure he can.
The sophist sneers, “Fool, take
 Thy pleasure, right or wrong.”
 The pious wail, “Forsake
 A world these sophists throng.”
 Be neither saint-nor sophist-led, but be a man!
These hundred doctors try
 To preach thee to their school.
 “We have the truth!” they cry;
 And yet their oracle,
 Trumpet it as they will, is but the same as thine.
Once read thy own breast right,
 And thou hast done with fears;
 Man gets no other light,
 Search he a thousand years.
 Sink in thyself! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine.
What makes thee struggle and rave?
 Why are men ill at ease?
 ’Tis that the lot they have
 Fails their own will to please;
 For man would make no murmuring, were his will obeyed.
And why is it, that still
 Man with his lot thus fights?
 ’Tis that he makes this will
 The measure of his rights,
 And believes nature outraged if his will’s gainsaid.
Couldst thou, Pausanias, learn
 How deep a fault is this;
 Couldst thou but once discern
 Thou hast no right to bliss,
 No title from the gods to welfare and repose,—
Then thou wouldst look less mazed
 Whene’er of bliss debarred,
 Nor think the gods were crazed
 When thy own lot went hard.
 But we are all the same,—the fools of our own woes!
For, from the first faint morn
 Of life, the thirst for bliss
 Deep in man’s heart is born;
 And, sceptic as he is,
 He fails not to judge clear if this be quenched or no.
Nor is that thirst to blame.
 Man errs not that he deems
 His welfare his true aim:
 He errs because he dreams
 The world does but exist that welfare to bestow.
We mortals are no kings
 For each of whom to sway
 A new-made world upsprings,
 Meant merely for his play:
 No, we are strangers here; the world is from of old.
In vain our pent wills fret,
 And would the world subdue.
 Limits we did not set
 Condition all we do;
 Born into life we are, and life must be our mould.
Born into life! man grows
 Forth from his parents’ stem,
 And blends their bloods, as those
 Of theirs are blent in them;
 So each new man strikes root into a far fore-time.
Born into life! we bring
 A bias with us here,
 And, when here, each new thing
 Affects us we come near;
 To tunes we did not call, our being must keep chime.
Born into life! in vain,
 Opinions, those or these,
 Unaltered to retain,
 The obstinate mind decrees:
 Experience, like a sea, soaks all-effacing in.
Born into life! who lists
 May what is false hold dear,
 And for himself make mists
 Through which to see less clear:
 The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.
Born into life! ’tis we,
 And not the world, are new;
 Our cry for bliss, our plea,
 Others have urged it too:
 Our wants have all been felt, our errors made before.
No eye could be too sound
 To observe a world so vast,
 No patience too profound
 To sort what’s here amassed;
 How man may here best live, no care too great to explore.
But we,—as some rude guest
 Would change, where’er he roam,
 The manners there professed
 To those he brings from home,—
 We mark not the world’s course, but would have it take ours.
The world’s course proves the terms
 On which man wins content;
 Reason the proof confirms:
 We spurn it, and invent
 A false course for the world, and for ourselves false powers.
Riches we wish to get,
 Yet remain spendthrifts still;
 We would have health, and yet
 Still use our bodies ill;
 Bafflers of our own prayers, from youth to life’s last scenes.
We would have inward peace,
 Yet will not look within;
 We would have misery cease,
 Yet will not cease from sin;
 We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh means;
We do not what we ought;
 What we ought not, we do;
 And lean upon the thought
 That chance will bring us through:
 But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.
Yet even when man forsakes
 All sin,—is just, is pure,
 Abandons all which makes
 His welfare insecure,—
 Other existences there are, that clash with ours.
Like us, the lightning-fires
 Love to have scope and play;
 The stream, like us, desires
 An unimpeded way;
 Like us, the Libyan wind delights to roam at large.
Streams will not curb their pride
 The just man not to entomb,
 Nor lightnings go aside
 To give his virtues room;
 Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man’s barge.
Nature, with equal mind,
 Sees all her sons at play;
 Sees man control the wind,
 The wind sweep man away;
 Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark.
And, lastly, though of ours
 No weakness spoil our lot,
 Though the non-human powers
 Of nature harm us not,
 The ill deeds of other men make often our life dark.
What were the wise man’s plan?
 Through this sharp, toil-set life,
 To fight as best he can,
 And win what’s won by strife.
 But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found.
Scratched by a fall, with moans
 As children of weak age
 Lend life to the dumb stones
 Whereon to vent their rage,
 And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;
 So, loath to suffer mute,
 We, peopling the void air,
 Make gods to whom to impute
 The ills we ought to bear;
 With God and fate to rail at, suffering easily.
Yet grant,—as sense long missed
 Things that are now perceived,
 And much may still exist
 Which is not yet believed,—
 Grant that the world were full of gods we cannot see;
All things the world which fill
 Of but one stuff are spun,
 That we who rail are still,
 With what we rail at, one;
 One with the o’er-labored Power that through the breadth and length
Of earth, and air, and sea,
 In men, and plants, and stones,
 Hath toil perpetually,
 And travails, pants, and moans;
 Fain would do all things well, but sometimes fails in strength.
And patiently exact
 This universal God
 Alike to any act
 Proceeds at any nod,
 And quietly declaims the cursings of himself.
This is not what man hates,
 Yet he can curse but this.
 Harsh gods and hostile fates
 Are dreams! this only is,—
 Is everywhere; sustains the wise, the foolish elf.
Nor only, in the intent
 To attach blame elsewhere,
 Do we at will invent
 Stern powers who make their care
 To imbitter human life, malignant deities;
But, next, we would reverse
 The scheme ourselves have spun,
 And what we made to curse
 We now would lean upon,
 And feign kind gods who perfect what man vainly tries.
Look, the world tempts our eye,
 And we would know it all!
 We map the starry sky,
 We mine this earthen ball,
 We measure the sea-tides, we number the sea-sands;
We scrutinize the dates
 Of long-past human things,
 The bounds of effaced states,
 The lines of deceased kings;
 We search out dead men’s words, and works of dead men’s hands;
We shut our eyes, and muse
 How our own minds are made,
 What springs of thought they use,
 How rightened, how betrayed,—
 And spend our wit to name what most employ unnamed.
But still, as we proceed,
 The mass swells more and more
 Of volumes yet to read,
 Of secrets yet to explore.
 Our hair grows gray, our eyes are dimmed, our heat is tamed;
 We rest our faculties,
 And thus address the gods:
 “True science if there is,
 It stays in your abodes!
 Man’s measures cannot mete the immeasurable all.
“You only can take in
 The world’s immense design;
 Our desperate search was sin,
 Which henceforth we resign,
 Sure only that your mind sees all things which befall.”
Fools! That in man’s brief term
 He cannot all things view,
 Affords no ground to affirm
 That there are gods who do;
 Nor does being weary prove that he has where to rest.
Again: Our youthful blood
 Claims rapture as its right;
 The world, a rolling flood
 Of newness and delight,
 Draws in the enamoured gazer to its shining breast;
Pleasure, to our hot grasp,
 Gives flowers after flowers;
 With passionate warmth we clasp
 Hand after hand in ours;
 Now do we soon perceive how fast our youth is spent.
At once our eyes grow clear!
 We see, in blank dismay,
 Year posting after year,
 Sense after sense decay;
 Our shivering heart is mined by secret discontent.
Yet still, in spite of truth,
 In spite of hopes entombed,
 That longing of our youth
 Burns ever unconsumed,
 Still hungrier for delight as delights grow more rare.
We pause; we hush our heart,
 And thus address the gods:—
 “The world hath failed to impart
 The joy our youth forebodes,
 Failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.
“Changeful till now, we still
 Looked on to something new;
 Let us, with changeless will,
 Henceforth look on to you,
 To find with you the joy we in vain here require!”
Fools! That so often here
 Happiness mocked our prayer,
 I think, might make us fear
 A like event elsewhere;
 Make us not fly to dreams, but moderate desire.
And yet, for those who know
 Themselves, who wisely take
 Their way through life, and bow
 To what they cannot break,
 Why should I say that life need yield but moderate bliss?
Shall we, with temper spoiled,
 Health sapped by living ill,
 And judgment all embroiled
 By sadness and self-will,—
 Shall we judge what for man is not true bliss or is?
Is it so small a thing
 To have enjoyed the sun,
 To have lived light in the spring,
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes,—
That we must feign a bliss
 Of doubtful future date,
 And, while we dream on this,
 Lose all our present state,
 And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Not much, I know, you prize
 What pleasures may be had,
 Who look on life with eyes
 Estranged, like mine, and sad;
 And yet the village-churl feels the truth more than you;
Who’s loath to leave this life
 Which to him little yields,—
 His hard-tasked sunburnt wife,
 His often-labored fields,
 The boors with whom he talked, the country-spots he knew.
But thou, because thou hear’st
 Men scoff at heaven and fate,
 Because the gods thou fear’st
 Fail to make blest thy state,
 Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are!
I say: Fear not! Life still
 Leaves human effort scope.
 But, since life teems with ill,
 Nurse no extravagant hope;
 Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair!

A long pause. At the end of it the notes of a harp below are
again heard, and Callicles sings:—

Far, far from here,
 The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
 Among the green Illyrian hills; and there
 The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
 And by the sea, and in the brakes.
 The grass is cool, the sea-side air
 Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers
 More virginal and sweet than ours.
 And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes,
 Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
 Bask in the glens or on the warm seashore,
 In breathless quiet, after all their ills;
 Nor do they see their country, nor the place
 Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
 Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
 Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more.
There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes!
 They had stayed long enough to see,
 In Thebes, the billow of calamity
 Over their own dear children rolled,
 Curse upon curse, pang upon pang,
 For years, they sitting helpless in their home,
 A gray old man and woman; yet of old
 The gods had to their marriage come,
 And at the banquet all the Muses sang.
Therefore they did not end their days
 In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away,
 To where the west-wind plays,
 And murmurs of the Adriatic come
 To those untrodden mountain lawns; and there
 Placed safely in changed forms, the pair
 Wholly forget their first sad life, and home,
 And all that Theban woe, and stray
 Forever through the glens, placid and dumb.
EMPEDOCLES.
That was my harp-player again! Where is he?
 Down by the stream?
PAUSANIAS.
Yes, master, in the wood.
EMPEDOCLES.
He ever loved the Theban story well!
 But the day wears. Go now, Pausanias,
 For I must be alone. Leave me one mule;
 Take down with thee the rest to Catana.
 And for young Callicles, thank him from me;
 Tell him, I never failed to love his lyre;
 But he must follow me no more to-night.
PAUSANIAS.
Thou wilt return to-morrow to the city?
EMPEDOCLES.
Either to-morrow or some other day,
 In the sure revolutions of the world,
 Good friend, I shall revisit Catana.
 I have seen many cities in my time,
 Till mine eyes ache with the long spectacle,
 And I shall doubtless see them all again;
 Thou know’st me for a wanderer from of old.
 Meanwhile, stay me not now. Farewell, Pausanias!

He departs on his way up the mountain.

PAUSANIAS (alone).
I dare not urge him further—he must go;
 But he is strangely wrought! I will speed back,
 And bring Peisianax to him from the city;
 His counsel could once soothe him. But, Apollo!
 How his brow lightened as the music rose!
 Callicles must wait here, and play to him;
 I saw him through the chestnuts far below,
 Just since, down at the stream.—Ho! Callicles!

He descends, calling.

ACT II.
Evening. The Summit of Etna.

EMPEDOCLES.
Alone!
 On this charred, blackened, melancholy waste,
 Crowned by the awful peak, Etna’s great mouth,
 Round which the sullen vapor rolls,—alone!
 Pausanias is far hence, and that is well,
 For I must henceforth speak no more with man.
 He has his lesson too, and that debt’s paid;
 And the good, learned, friendly, quiet man,
 May bravelier front his life, and in himself
 Find henceforth energy and heart. But I,—
 The weary man, the banished citizen,
 Whose banishment is not his greatest ill,
 Whose weariness no energy can reach,
 And for whose hurt courage is not the cure,—
 What should I do with life and living more?
No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!
 And the world hath the day, and must break thee,
 Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live:
 Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine.
 And being lonely thou art miserable;
 For something has impaired thy spirit’s strength,
 And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy.
 Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself,
 O sage! O sage! Take, then, the one way left;
 And turn thee to the elements, thy friends,
 Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers,
 And say: Ye servants, hear Empedocles,
 Who asks this final service at your hands!
 Before the sophist-brood hath overlaid
 The last spark of man’s consciousness with words;
 Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world,
 Be disarrayed of their divinity;
 Before the soul lose all her solemn joys,
 And awe be dead, and hope impossible,
 And the soul’s deep eternal night come on,—
 Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home!

He advances to the edge of the crater. Smoke and fire
break forth with a loud noise, and Callicles is
heard below singing:—

The lyre’s voice is lovely everywhere;
 In the court of gods, in the city of men,
 And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain-glen,
 In the still mountain air.
Only to Typho it sounds hatefully,—
 To Typho only, the rebel o’erthrown,
 Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone,
 To embed them in the sea.
 Wherefore dost thou groan so loud?
 Wherefore do thy nostrils flash,
 Through the dark night, suddenly,
 Typho, such red jets of flame?
 Is thy tortured heart still proud?
 Is thy fire-scathed arm still rash?
 Still alert thy stone-crushed frame?
 Doth thy fierce soul still deplore
 Thine ancient rout by the Cilician hills,
 And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore?
 Do thy bloodshot eyes still weep
 The fight which crowned thine ills,
 Thy last mischance on this Sicilian deep?
 Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair,
 Where erst the strong sea-currents sucked thee down,
 Never to cease to writhe, and try to rest,
 Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair?
 That thy groans, like thunder prest,
 Begin to roll, and almost drown
 The sweet notes whose lulling spell
 Gods and the race of mortals love so well,
 When through thy caves thou hearest music swell?
But an awful pleasure bland
 Spreading o’er the Thunderer’s face,
 When the sound climbs near his seat,
 The Olympian council sees;
 As he lets his lax right hand,
 Which the lightnings doth embrace,
 Sink upon his mighty knees.
 And the eagle, at the beck
 Of the appeasing, gracious harmony,
 Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feathered neck,
 Nestling nearer to Jove’s feet;
 While o’er his sovran eye
 The curtains of the blue films slowly meet.
 And the white Olympus-peaks
 Rosily brighten, and the soothed gods smile
 At one another from their golden chairs,
 And no one round the charmed circle speaks.
 Only the loved Hebe bears
 The cup about, whose draughts beguile
 Pain and care, with a dark store
 Of fresh-pulled violets wreathed and nodding o’er;
 And her flushed feet glow on the marble floor.
EMPEDOCLES.
He fables, yet speaks truth!
 The brave impetuous heart yields everywhere
 To the subtle, contriving head;
 Great qualities are trodden down,
 And littleness united
 Is become invincible.
These rumblings are not Typho’s groans, I know!
 These angry smoke-bursts
 Are not the passionate breath
 Of the mountain-crushed, tortured, intractable Titan king;
 But over all the world
 What suffering is there not seen
 Of plainness oppressed by cunning,
 As the well-counselled Zeus oppressed
 That self-helping son of earth!
 What anguish of greatness,
 Railed and hunted from the world,
 Because its simplicity rebukes
 This envious, miserable age!
I am weary of it.
 —Lie there, ye ensigns
 Of my unloved pre-eminence
 In an age like this!
 Among a people of children,
 Who thronged me in their cities,
 Who worshipped me in their houses,
 And asked, not wisdom,
 But drugs to charm with,
 But spells to mutter
 All the fool’s-armory of magic! Lie there,
 My golden circlet,
 My purple robe!
CALLICLES (from below).
As the sky-brightening south-wind clears the day,
 And makes the massed clouds roll,
 The music of the lyre blows away
 The clouds which wrap the soul.
Oh that fate had let me see
 That triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,
 That famous, final victory
 When jealous Pan with Marsyas did conspire!
When, from far Parnassus’ side,
 Young Apollo, all the pride
 Of the Phrygian flutes to tame,
 To the Phrygian highlands came;
 Where the long green reed-beds sway
 In the rippled waters gray
 Of that solitary lake
 Where MÆander’s springs are born;
 Where the ridged pine-wooded roots
 Of Messogis westward break,
 Mounting westward, high and higher.
 There was held the famous strife;
 There the Phrygian brought his flutes,
 And Apollo brought his lyre;
 And, when now the westering sun
 Touched the hills, the strife was done,
 And the attentive muses said,—
 “Marsyas, thou art vanquishÈd!”
 Then Apollo’s minister
 Hanged upon a branching fir
 Marsyas, that unhappy Faun,
 And began to whet his knife.
 But the MÆnads, who were there,
 Left their friend, and with robes flowing
 In the wind, and loose dark hair
 O’er their polished bosoms blowing,
 Each her ribboned tambourine
 Flinging on the mountain-sod,
 With a lovely frightened mien
 Came about the youthful god.
 But he turned his beauteous face
 Haughtily another way,
 From the grassy sun-warmed place
 Where in proud repose he lay,
 With one arm over his head,
 Watching how the whetting sped.
But aloof, on the lake-strand,
 Did the young Olympus stand,
 Weeping at his master’s end;
 For the Faun had been his friend.
 For he taught him how to sing,
 And he taught him flute-playing.
 Many a morning had they gone
 To the glimmering mountain lakes,
 And had torn up by the roots
 The tall crested water-reeds
 With long plumes and soft brown seeds,
 And had carved them into flutes,
 Sitting on a tabled stone
 Where the shoreward ripple breaks.
 And he taught him how to please
 The red-snooded Phrygian girls,
 Whom the summer evening sees
 Flashing in the dance’s whirls
 Underneath the starlit trees
 In the mountain villages.
 Therefore now Olympus stands,
 At his master’s piteous cries
 Pressing fast with both his hands
 His white garment to his eyes,
 Not to see Apollo’s scorn.—
 Ah, poor Faun, poor Faun! ah, poor Faun!
EMPEDOCLES.
And lie thou there,
 My laurel bough!
 Scornful Apollo’s ensign, lie thou there!
 Though thou hast been my shade in the world’s heat,
 Though I have loved thee, lived in honoring thee,
 Yet lie thou there,
 My laurel bough!
I am weary of thee.
 I am weary of the solitude
 Where he who bears thee must abide,—
 Of the rocks of Parnassus,
 Of the gorge of Delphi,
 Of the moonlight peaks, and the caves.
 Thou guardest them, Apollo!
 Over the grave of the slain Pytho,
 Though young, intolerably severe!
 Thou keepest aloof the profane,
 But the solitude oppresses thy votary.
 The jars of men reach him not in thy valley,
 But can life reach him?
 Thou fencest him from the multitude:
 Who will fence him from himself?
 He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents,
 And the beating of his own heart;
 The air is thin, the veins swell,
 The temples tighten and throb there—
 Air! air!
Take thy bough, set me free from my solitude;
 I have been enough alone!
Where shall thy votary fly, then? back to men?
 But they will gladly welcome him once more,
 And help him to unbend his too tense thought,
 And rid him of the presence of himself,
 And keep their friendly chatter at his ear,
 And haunt him, till the absence from himself,
 That other torment, grow unbearable;
 And he will fly to solitude again,
 And he will find its air too keen for him,
 And so change back; and many thousand times
 Be miserably bandied to and fro
 Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee,
 Thou young, implacable god! and only death
 Shall cut his oscillations short, and so
 Bring him to poise. There is no other way.
And yet what days were those, Parmenides!
 When we were young, when we could number friends
 In all the Italian cities like ourselves;
 When with elated hearts we joined your train,
 Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth.[16]
 Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought
 Nor outward things were closed and dead to us;
 But we received the shock of mighty thoughts
 On simple minds with a pure natural joy;
 And if the sacred load oppressed our brain,
 We had the power to feel the pressure eased,
 The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again,
 In the delightful commerce of the world.
 We had not lost our balance then, nor grown
 Thought’s slaves, and dead to every natural joy.
 The smallest thing could give us pleasure then,—
 The sports of the country-people,
 A flute-note from the woods,
 Sunset over the sea;
 Seed-time and harvest,
 The reapers in the corn,
 The vinedresser in his vineyard,
 The village-girl at her wheel.
Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye
 Are for the happy, for the souls at ease,
 Who dwell on a firm basis of content!
 But he who has outlived his prosperous days;
 But he whose youth fell on a different world
 From that on which his exiled age is thrown,—
 Whose mind was fed on other food, was trained
 By other rules than are in vogue to-day;
 Whose habit of thought is fixed, who will not change,
 But, in a world he loves not, must subsist
 In ceaseless opposition, be the guard
 Of his own breast, fettered to what he guards,
 That the world win no mastery over him;
 Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one;
 Who has no minute’s breathing-space allowed
 To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy,—
 Joy and the outward world must die to him,
 As they are dead to me.

A long pause, during which Empedocles remains motionless,
plunged in thought. The night deepens.
He moves forward, and gazes around him, and proceeds:—

A long silence. He continues:—

Oh that I could glow like this mountain!
 Oh that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea!
 Oh that my soul were full of light as the stars!
 Oh that it brooded over the world like the air!
But no, this heart will glow no more; thou art
 A living man no more, Empedocles!
 Nothing but a devouring flame of thought,—
 But a naked, eternally restless mind!

After a pause:—

To the elements it came from,
 Every thing will return,—
 Our bodies to earth,
 Our blood to water,
 Heat to fire,
 Breath to air:
 They were well born, they will be well entombed.
 But mind?...
And we might gladly share the fruitful stir
 Down in our mother earth’s miraculous womb;
 Well would it be
 With what rolled of us in the stormy main;
 We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air,
 Or with the nimble, radiant life of fire.
But mind, but thought,
 If these have been the master part of us,—
 Where will they find their parent element?
 What will receive them, who will call them home?
 But we shall still be in them, and they in us;
 And we shall be the strangers of the world;
 And they will be our lords, as they are now,
 And keep us prisoners of our consciousness,
 And never let us clasp and feel the All
 But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils.
 And we shall be unsatisfied as now;
 And we shall feel the agony of thirst,
 The ineffable longing for the life of life
 Baffled forever; and still thought and mind
 Will hurry us with them on their homeless march
 Over the unallied unopening earth,
 Over the unrecognizing sea; while air
 Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth,
 And fire repel us from its living waves.
 And then we shall unwillingly return
 Back to this meadow of calamity,
 This uncongenial place, this human life:
 And in our individual human state
 Go through the sad probation all again,
 To see if we will poise our life at last,
 To see if we will now at last be true
 To our own only true, deep-buried selves,
 Being one with which, we are one with the whole world;
 Or whether we will once more fall away
 Into the bondage of the flesh or mind,
 Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze
 Forged by the imperious lonely thinking-power.
 And each succeeding age in which we are born
 Will have more peril for us than the last;
 Will goad our senses with a sharper spur,
 Will fret our minds to an intenser play,
 Will make ourselves harder to be discerned.
 And we shall struggle a while, gasp and rebel;
 And we shall fly for refuge to past times,
 Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness;
 And the reality will pluck us back,
 Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature.
 And we shall feel our powers of effort flag,
 And rally them for one last fight—and fail;
 And we shall sink in the impossible strife,
 And be astray forever.
 Slave of sense
 I have in no wise been; but slave of thought?
 And who can say: I have been always free,
 Lived ever in the light of my own soul?
 I cannot; I have lived in wrath and gloom,
 Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man,
 Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light;
 But I have not grown easy in these bonds,
 But I have not denied what bonds these were.
 Yea, I take myself to witness,
 That I have loved no darkness,
 Sophisticated no truth,
 Nursed no dlusion,
 Allowed no fear!
And therefore, O ye elements! I know know—
 Ye know it too—it hath been granted me
 Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.
 I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud
 Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free.
Is it but for a moment?
 —Ah, boil up, ye vapors!
 Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!
 My soul glows to meet you.
 Ere it flag, ere the mists
 Of despondency and gloom
 Rush over it again,
 Receive me, save me!

[He plunges into the crater.

CALLICLES (from below).
Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
 Thick breaks the red flame;
 All Etna heaves fiercely
 Her forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!
 Are haunts meet for thee;
 But where Helicon breaks down
 In cliff to the sea,—
Where the moon-silvered inlets
 Send far their light voice
 Up the still vale of Thisbe,—
 Oh, speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top
 Lie strewn the white flocks:
 On the cliff-side the pigeons
 Roost deep in the rocks.
In the moonlight the shepherds,
 Soft lulled by the rills,
 Lie wrapped in their blankets
 Asleep on the hills.
—What forms are these coming
 So white through the gloom?
 What garments out-glistening
 The gold-flowered broom?
What sweet-breathing presence
 Out-perfumes the thyme?
 What voices enrapture
 The night’s balmy prime?
’Tis Apollo comes leading
 His choir, the Nine.
 The leader is fairest,
 But all are divine.
They are lost in the hollows!
 They stream up again!
 What seeks on this mountain
 The glorified train?
They bathe on this mountain,
 In the spring by their road;
 Then on to Olympus,
 Their endless abode.
—Whose praise do they mention?
 Of what is it told?
 What will be forever,
 What was from of old.
First hymn they the Father
 Of all things; and then,
 The rest of immortals,
 The action of men.
The day in his hotness,
 The strife with the palm;
 The night in her silence,
 The stars in their calm.

BACCHANALIA; OR, THE NEW AGE.

I.

The evening comes, the fields are still.
 The tinkle of the thirsty rill,
 Unheard all day, ascends again;
 Deserted is the half-mown plain,
 Silent the swaths; the ringing wain,
 The mower’s cry, the dog’s alarms,
 All housed within the sleeping farms.
 The business of the day is done,
 The last-left haymaker is gone.
 And from the thyme upon the height,
 And from the elder-blossom white
 And pale dog-roses in the hedge,
 And from the mint-plant in the sedge,
 In puffs of balm the night-air blows
 The perfume which the day foregoes.
 And on the pure horizon far,
 See, pulsing with the first-born star,
 The liquid sky above the hill!
 The evening comes, the fields are still.
Loitering and leaping,
 With saunter, with bounds,
 Flickering and circling
 In files and in rounds,
 Gayly their pine-staff green
 Tossing in air,
 Loose o’er their shoulders white
 Showering their hair,
 See! the wild MÆnads
 Break from the wood,
 Youth and Iacchus
 Maddening their blood.
 See! through the quiet land
 Rioting they pass,
 Fling the fresh heaps about,
 Trample the grass,
 Tear from the rifled hedge
 Garlands, their prize;
 Fill with their sports the field,
 Fill with their cries.
Shepherd, what ails thee, then?
 Shepherd, why mute?
 Forth with thy joyous song!
 Forth with thy flute!
 Tempts not the revel blithe?
 Lure not their cries?
 Glow not their shoulders smooth?
 Melt not their eyes?
 Is not, on cheeks like those,
 Lovely the flush?
 —Ah! so the quiet was!
 So was the hush!

II.

The epoch ends, the world is still.
 The age has talked and worked its fill.
 The famous orators have shone,
 The famous poets sung and gone,
 The famous men of war have fought,
 The famous speculators thought,
 The famous players, sculptors, wrought,
 The famous painters filled their wall,
 The famous critics judged it all.
 The combatants are parted now;
 Uphung the spear, unbent the bow,
 The puissant crowned, the weak laid low.
 And in the after-silence sweet,
 Now strifes are hushed, our ears doth meet,
 Ascending pure, the bell-like fame
 Of this or that down-trodden name,
 Delicate spirits, pushed away
 In the hot press of the noonday.
 And o’er the plain, where the dead age
 Did its now-silent warfare wage,—
 O’er that wide plain, now wrapped in gloom,
 Where many a splendor finds its tomb,
 Many spent fames and fallen nights nights—
 The one or two immortal lights
 Rise slowly up into the sky,
 To shine there everlastingly,
 Like stars over the bounding hill.
 The epoch ends, the world is still.
Thundering and bursting
 In torrents, in waves,
 Carolling and shouting
 Over tombs, amid graves,
 See! on the cumbered plain
 Clearing a stage,
 Scattering the past about,
 Comes the new age.
 Bards make new poems,
 Thinkers new schools,
 Statesmen new systems,
 Critics new rules.
 All things begin again;
 Life is their prize;
 Earth with their deeds they fill,
 Fill with their cries.
Poet, what ails thee, then?
 Say, why so mute?
 Forth with thy praising voice!
 Forth with thy flute!
 Loiterer! why sittest thou
 Sunk in thy dream?
 Tempts not the bright new age?
 Shines not its stream?
 Look, ah! what genius,
 Art, science, wit!
 Soldiers like CÆsar,
 Statesmen like Pitt!
 Sculptors like Phidias,
 Raphaels in shoals,
 Poets like Shakspeare,—
 Beautiful souls!
 See, on their glowing cheeks
 Heavenly the flush!
 —Ah! so the silence was!
 So was the hush!
The world but feels the present’s spell:
 The poet feels the past as well;
 Whatever men have done, might do,
 Whatever thought, might think it too.

EPILOGUE TO LESSING’S LAOCOÖN.

One morn as through Hyde Park we walked,
 My friend and I, by chance we talked
 Of Lessing’s famed LaocoÖn;
 And after we a while had gone
 In Lessing’s track, and tried to see
 What painting is, what poetry,—
 Diverging to another thought,
 “Ah!” cries my friend, “but who hath taught
 Why music and the other arts
 Oftener perform aright their parts
 Than poetry? why she, than they,
 Fewer fine successes can display?
“For ’tis so, surely! Even in Greece,
 Where best the poet framed his piece,
 Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground
 Pausanias on his travels found
 Good poems, if he looked, more rare
 (Though many) than good statues were—
 For these, in truth, were everywhere.
 Of bards full many a stroke divine
 In Dante’s, Petrarch’s, Tasso’s line,
 The land of Ariosto showed;
 And yet, e’en there, the canvas glowed
 With triumphs, a yet ampler brood,
 Of Raphael and his brotherhood.
 And nobly perfect, in our day
 Of haste, half-work, and disarray,
 Profound yet touching, sweet yet strong,
 Hath risen Goethe’s, Wordsworth’s song;
 Yet even I (and none will bow
 Deeper to these) must needs allow,
 They yield us not, to soothe our pains,
 Such multitude of heavenly strains
 As from the kings of sound are blown,—
 Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn.”
While thus my friend discoursed, we pass
 Out of the path, and take the grass.
 The grass had still the green of May,
 And still the unblackened elms were gay;
 The kine were resting in the shade,
 The flies a summer murmur made.
 Bright was the morn, and south the air;
 The soft-couched cattle were as fair
 As those which pastured by the sea,
 That old-world morn, in Sicily,
 When on the beach the Cyclops lay,
 And Galatea from the bay
 Mocked her poor lovelorn giant’s lay.
 “Behold,” I said, “the painter’s sphere!
 The limits of his art appear.
 The passing group, the summer morn,
 The grass, the elms, that blossomed thorn,—
 Those cattle couched, or, as they rise,
 Their shining flanks, their liquid eyes,—
 These, or much greater things, but caught
 Like these, and in one aspect brought!
 In outward semblance he must give
 A moment’s life of things that live;
 Then let him choose his moment well,
 With power divine its story tell.”
Still we walked on, in thoughtful mood,
 And now upon the bridge we stood.
 Full of sweet breathings was the air,
 Of sudden stirs and pauses fair.
 Down o’er the stately bridge the breeze
 Came rustling from the garden-trees,
 And on the sparkling waters played;
 Light-plashing waves an answer made,
 And mimic boats their haven neared.
 Beyond, the abbey-towers appeared,
 By mist and chimneys unconfined,
 Free to the sweep of light and wind;
 While through their earth-moored nave below,
 Another breath of wind doth blow,
 Sound as of wandering breeze—but sound
 In laws by human artists bound.
 “The world of music!” I exclaimed,—
 “This breeze that rustles by, that famed
 Abbey, recall it! what a sphere,
 Large and profound, hath genius here!
 The inspired musician, what a range,
 What power of passion, wealth of change!
 Some source of feeling he must choose,
 And its locked fount of beauty use,
 And through the stream of music tell
 Its else unutterable spell;
 To choose it rightly is his part,
 And press into its inmost heart.
“Miserere, Domine!
 The words are uttered, and they flee.
 Deep is their penitential moan,
 Mighty their pathos, but ’tis gone.
 They have declared the spirit’s sore,
 Sore load, and words can do no more.
 Beethoven takes them then,—those two
 Poor, bounded words,—and makes them new;
 Infinite makes them, makes them young;
 Transplants them to another tongue,
 Where they can now, without constraint,
 Pour all the soul of their complaint,
 And roll adown a channel large
 The wealth divine they have in charge.
 Page after page of music turn,
 And still they live, and still they burn,
 Eternal, passion-fraught, and free,—
 Miserere, Domine!”
Onward we moved, and reached the ride
 Where gayly flows the human tide.
 Afar, in rest the cattle lay;
 We heard, afar, faint music play;
 But agitated, brisk, and near,
 Men, with their stream of life, were here.
 Some hang upon the rails, and some
 On foot behind them go and come.
 This through the ride upon his steed
 Goes slowly by, and this at speed.
 The young, the happy, and the fair,
 The old, the sad, the worn, were there;
 Some vacant and some musing went,
 And some in talk and merriment.
 Nods, smiles, and greetings, and farewells!
 And now and then, perhaps, there swells
 A sigh, a tear—but in the throng
 All changes fast, and hies along.
 Hies, ah! from whence, what native ground?
 And to what goal, what ending, bound?
 “Behold at last the poet’s sphere!
 But who,” I said, “suffices here?
“For, ah! so much he has to do,—
 Be painter and musician too!
 The aspect of the moment show,
 The feeling of the moment know!
 The aspect not, I grant, express
 Clear as the painter’s art can dress;
 The feeling not, I grant, explore
 So deep as the musician’s lore:
 But clear as words can make revealing,
 And deep as words can follow feeling.
 But, ah! then comes his sorest spell
 Of toil,—he must life’s movement tell!
 The thread which binds it all in one,
 And not its separate parts alone.
 The movement he must tell of life,
 Its pain and pleasure, rest and strife;
 His eye must travel down, at full,
 The long, unpausing spectacle;
 With faithful, unrelaxing force
 Attend it from its primal source,
 From change to change and year to year
 Attend it of its mid-career,
 Attend it to the last repose
 And solemn silence of its close.
“The cattle rising from the grass,
 His thought must follow where they pass;
 The penitent with anguish bowed,
 His thought must follow through the crowd.
 Yes! all this eddying, motley throng
 That sparkles in the sun along,—
 Girl, statesman, merchant, soldier bold,
 Master and servant, young and old,
 Grave, gay, child, parent, husband, wife,—
 He follows home, and lives their life.
“And many, many are the souls
 Life’s movement fascinates, controls.
 It draws them on, they cannot save
 Their feet from its alluring wave;
 They cannot leave it, they must go
 With its unconquerable flow.
 But ah! how few, of all that try
 This mighty march, do aught but die!
 For ill-endowed for such a way,
 Ill-stored in strength, in wits, are they.
 They faint, they stagger to and fro,
 And wandering from the stream they go;
 In pain, in terror, in distress,
 They see, all round, a wilderness.
 Sometimes a momentary gleam
 They catch of the mysterious stream;
 Sometimes, a second’s space, their ear
 The murmur of its waves doth hear;
 That transient glimpse in song they say,
 But not as painter can portray;
 That transient sound in song they tell,
 But not as the musician well.
 And when at last their snatches cease,
 And they are silent and at peace,
 The stream of life’s majestic whole
 Hath ne’er been mirrored on their soul.
“Only a few the life-stream’s shore
 With safe unwandering feet explore;
 Untired its movement bright attend,
 Follow its windings to the end.
 Then from its brimming waves their eye
 Drinks up delighted ecstasy,
 And its deep-toned, melodious voice
 Forever makes their ear rejoice.
 They speak! the happiness divine
 They feel runs o’er in every line;
 Its spell is round them like a shower;
 It gives them pathos, gives them power.
 No painter yet hath such a way,
 Nor no musician made, as they,
 And gathered on immortal knolls
 Such lovely flowers for cheering souls.
 Beethoven, Raphael, cannot reach
 The charm which Homer, Shakspeare, teach.
 To these, to these, their thankful race
 Gives, then, the first, the fairest place;
 And brightest is their glory’s sheen,
 For greatest hath their labor been.”

PERSISTENCY OF POETRY.

Though the Muse be gone away,
 Though she move not earth to-day,
 Souls, erewhile who caught her word,
 Ah! still harp on what they heard.

A CAUTION TO POETS.

What poets feel not, when they make,
 A pleasure in creating,
 The world, in its turn, will not take
 Pleasure in contemplating.

THE YOUTH OF NATURE.

Raised are the dripping oars,
 Silent the boat! The lake,
 Lovely and soft as a dream,
 Swims in the sheen of the moon.
 The mountains stand at its head
 Clear in the pure June-night,
 But the valleys are flooded with haze.
 Rydal and Fairfield are there;
 In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
 So it is, so it will be for aye.
 Nature is fresh as of old,
 Is lovely; a mortal is dead.
The spots which recall him survive,
 For he lent a new life to these hills.
 The Pillar still broods o’er the fields
 Which border Ennerdale Lake,
 And Egremont sleeps by the sea.
 The gleam of The Evening Star
 Twinkles on Grasmere no more,
 But ruined and solemn and gray
 The sheepfold of Michael survives;
 And far to the south, the heath
 Still blows in the Quantock coombs,
 By the favorite waters of Ruth.
 These survive! Yet not without pain,
 Pain and dejection to-night,
 Can I feel that their poet is gone.
He grew old in an age he condemned.
 He looked on the rushing decay
 Of the times which had sheltered his youth;
 Felt the dissolving throes
 Of a social order he loved;
 Outlived his brethren, his peers;
 And, like the Theban seer,
 Died in his enemies’ day.
Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,
 Copais lay bright in the moon,
 Helicon glassed in the lake
 Its firs, and afar rose the peaks
 Of Parnassus, snowily clear;
 Thebes was behind him in flames,
 And the clang of arms in his ear,
 When his awe-struck captors led
 The Theban seer to the spring.
 Tiresias drank and died.
 Nor did reviving Thebes
 See such a prophet again.
Well may we mourn, when the head
 Of a sacred poet lies low
 In an age which can rear them no more!
 The complaining millions of men
 Darken in labor and pain;
 But he was a priest to us all
 Of the wonder and bloom of the world,
 Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad.
 He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day
 Of his race is past on the earth;
 And darkness returns to our eyes.
For, oh! is it you, is it you,
 Moonlight, and shadow, and lake,
 And mountains, that fill us with joy,
 Or the poet who sings you so well?
 Is it you, O beauty, O grace,
 O charm, O romance, that we feel,
 Or the voice which reveals what you are?
 Are ye, like daylight and sun,
 Shared and rejoiced in by all?
 Or are ye immersed in the mass
 Of matter, and hard to extract,
 Or sunk at the core of the world
 Too deep for the most to discern?
 Like stars in the deep of the sky,
 Which arise on the glass of the sage,
 But are lost when their watcher is gone.
“They are here,”—I heard, as men heard
 In Mysian Ida the voice
 Of the mighty Mother, or Crete,
 The murmur of Nature, reply,—
 “Loveliness, magic, grace,
 They are here! they are set in the world,
 They abide; and the finest of souls
 Hath not been thrilled by them all,
 Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.
 The poet who sings them may die,
 But they are immortal and live,
 For they are the life of the world.
 Will ye not learn it, and know,
 When ye mourn that a poet is dead,
 That the singer was less than his themes,
 Life, and emotion, and I?
“More than the singer are these.
 Weak is the tremor of pain
 That thrills in his mournfullest chord
 To that which once ran through his soul.
 Cold the elation of joy
 In his gladdest, airiest song,
 To that which of old in his youth
 Filled him and made him divine.
 Hardly his voice at its best
 Gives us a sense of the awe,
 The vastness, the grandeur, the gloom,
 Of the unlit gulf of himself.
“Ye know not yourselves; and your bards—
 The clearest, the best, who have read
 Most in themselves—have beheld
 Less than they left unrevealed.
 Ye express not yourselves: can ye make
 With marble, with color, with word,
 What charmed you in others re-live?
 Can thy pencil, O artist! restore
 The figure, the bloom of thy love,
 As she was in her morning of spring?
 Canst thou paint the ineffable smile
 Of her eyes as they rested on thine?
 Can the image of life have the glow,
 The motion of life itself?
“Yourselves and your fellows ye know not; and me,
 The mateless, the one, will ye know?
 Will ye scan me, and read me, and tell
 Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast,
 My longing, my sadness, my joy?
 Will ye claim for your great ones the gift
 To have rendered the gleam of my skies,
 To have echoed the moan of my seas,
 Uttered the voice of my hills?
 When your great ones depart, will ye say,—
 All things have suffered a loss,
 Nature is hid in their grave?
“Race after race, man after man,
 Have thought that my secret was theirs,
 Have dreamed that I lived but for them,
 That they were my glory and joy.
 —They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!
 I remain.”

THE YOUTH OF MAN.

We, O Nature, depart:
 Thou survivest us! This,
 This, I know, is the law.
 Yes! but, more than this,
 Thou who seest us die
 Seest us change while we live;
 Seest our dreams, one by one,
 Seest our errors depart;
 Watchest us, Nature! throughout
 Mild and inscrutably calm.
Well for us that we change!
 Well for us that the power
 Which in our morning prime
 Saw the mistakes of our youth,
 Sweet, and forgiving, and good,
 Sees the contrition of age!
Behold, O Nature, this pair!
 See them to-night where they stand,
 Not with the halo of youth
 Crowning their brows with its light,
 Not with the sunshine of hope,
 Not with the rapture of spring,
 Which they had of old, when they stood
 Years ago at my side
 In this self-same garden, and said,—
 “We are young, and the world is ours;
 Man, man is king of the world!
 Fools that these mystics are
 Who prate of Nature! but she
 Hath neither beauty, nor warmth,
 Nor life, nor emotion, nor power.
 But man has a thousand gifts,
 And the generous dreamer invests
 The senseless world with them all.
 Nature is nothing; her charm
 Lives in our eyes which can paint,
 Lives in our hearts which can feel.”
Thou, O Nature, wast mute,
 Mute as of old! Days flew,
 Days and years; and Time
 With the ceaseless stroke of his wings
 Brushed off the bloom from their soul.
 Clouded and dim grew their eye,
 Languid their heart—for youth
 Quickened its pulses no more.
 Slowly, within the walls
 Of an ever-narrowing world,
 They drooped, they grew blind, they grew old.
 Thee, and their youth in thee,
 Nature! they saw no more.
Murmur of living,
 Stir of existence,
 Soul of the world!
 Make, oh, make yourselves felt
 To the dying spirit of youth!
 Come, like the breath of the spring!
 Leave not a human soul
 To grow old in darkness and pain!
 Only the living can feel you,
 But leave us not while we live!
Here they stand to-night,—
 Here, where this gray balustrade
 Crowns the still valley; behind
 In the castled house with its woods
 Which sheltered their childhood; the sun
 On its ivied windows; a scent
 From the gray-walled gardens, a breath
 Of the fragrant stock and the pink,
 Perfumes the evening air.
 Their children play on the lawns.
 They stand and listen; they hear
 The children’s shouts, and at times,
 Faintly, the bark of a dog
 From a distant farm in the hills.
 Nothing besides! in front
 The wide, wide valley outspreads
 To the dim horizon, reposed
 In the twilight, and bathed in dew,
 Cornfield and hamlet and copse
 Darkening fast; but a light,
 Far off, a glory of day,
 Still plays on the city-spires;
 And there in the dusk by the walls,
 With the gray mist marking its course
 Through the silent, flowery land,
 On, to the plains, to the sea,
 Floats the imperial stream.
Well I know what they feel!
 They gaze, and the evening wind
 Plays on their faces; they gaze,—
 Airs from the Eden of youth
 Awake and stir in their soul;
 The past returns: they feel
 What they are, alas! what they were.
 They, not Nature, are changed.
 Well I know what they feel!
Hush, for tears
 Begin to steal to their eyes!
 Hush, for fruit
 Grows from such sorrow as theirs!
And they remember,
 With piercing, untold anguish,
 The proud boasting of their youth.
 And they feel how Nature was fair.
 And the mists of delusion,
 And the scales of habit,
 Fall away from their eyes;
 And they see, for a moment,
 Stretching out like the desert
 In its weary, unprofitable length,
 Their faded, ignoble lives.
While the locks are yet brown on thy head,
 While the soul still looks through thine eyes,
 While the heart still pours
 The mantling blood to thy cheek,
 Sink, O youth, in thy soul!
 Yearn to the greatness of Nature;
 Rally the good in the depths of thyself!

PALLADIUM.

span class="i0">The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind
 Then, then at last, to quit my side.
Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
 The friends who come, and gape, and go;
 The ceremonious air of gloom,—
 All which makes death a hideous show!
Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
 Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
 To shake his sapient head, and give
 The ill he cannot cure a name.
Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll
 Of the poor sinner bound for death,
 His brother-doctor of the soul,
 To canvass with official breath
 The future and its viewless things,—
 That undiscovered mystery
 Which one who feels death’s winnowing wings
 Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!
Bring none of these; but let me be,
 While all around in silence lies,
 Moved to the window near, and see
 Once more, before my dying eyes,—
Bathed in the sacred dews of morn
 The wide aËrial landscape spread,—
 The world which was ere I was born,
 The world which lasts when I am dead;
Which never was the friend of one,
 Nor promised love it could not give,
 But lit for all its generous sun,
 And lived itself, and made us live.
There let me gaze, till I become
 In soul, with what I gaze on, wed!
 To feel the universe my home;
 To have before my mind—instead
Of the sick-room, the mortal strife,
 The turmoil for a little breath—
 The pure eternal course of life,
 Not human combatings with death!
Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow
 Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear;
 Then willing let my spirit go
 To work or wait elsewhere or here!

THE FUTURE.

A wanderer is man from his birth.
 He was born in a ship
 On the breast of the river of Time;
 Brimming with wonder and joy,
 He spreads out his arms to the light,
 Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
 Whether he wakes
 Where the snowy mountainous pass,
 Echoing the screams of the eagles,
 Hems in its gorges the bed
 Of the new-born, clear-flowing stream;
 Whether he first sees light
 Where the river in gleaming rings
 Sluggishly winds through the plain;
 Whether in sound of the swallowing sea,—
 As is the world on the banks,
 So is the mind of the man.
Vainly does each, as he glides,
 Fable and dream
 Of the lands which the river of Time
 Had left ere he woke on its breast,
 Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
 Only the tract where he sails
 He wots of; only the thoughts,
 Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any more
 As she was by the sources of Time?
 Who imagines her fields as they lay
 In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
 Who thinks as they thought,
 The tribes who then roamed on her breast,
 Her vigorous, primitive sons?
What girl
 Now reads in her bosom as clear
 As Rebekah read, when she sate
 At eve by the palm-shaded well?
 Who guards in her breast
 As deep, as pellucid a spring
 Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?
What bard,
 At the height of his vision, can deem
 Of God, of the world, of the soul,
 With a plainness as near,
 As flashing, as Moses felt,
 When he lay in the night by his flock
 On the starlit Arabian waste?
 Can rise and obey
 The beck of the Spirit like him?
This tract which the river of Time
 Now flows through with us, is the plain.
 Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
 Bordered by cities, and hoarse
 With a thousand cries is its stream.
 And we on its breast, our minds
 Are confused as the cries which we hear,
 Changing and short as the sights which we see.
And we say that repose has fled
 Forever the course of the river of Time.
 That cities will crowd to its edge
 In a blacker, incessanter line;
 That the din will be more on its banks,
 Denser the trade on its stream,
 Flatter the plain where it flows,
 Fiercer the sun overhead;
 That never will those on its breast
 See an ennobling sight,
 Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
But what was before us we know not,
 And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply, the river of Time—
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge
 Fling their wavering lights
 On a wider, statelier stream—
 May acquire, if not the calm
 Of its early mountainous shore,
 Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the hush
 Of the gray expanse where he floats,
 Freshening its current, and spotted with foam
 As it draws to the ocean, may strike
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast,—
 As the pale waste widens around him,
 As the banks fade dimmer away,
 As the stars come out, and the night-wind
 Brings up the stream
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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