for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen and crushes it into flatness.
The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them?
Imagination; honourable aims;
Free commune with the choir that cannot die;
Science and song; delight in little things,
The buoyant child surviving in the man;
Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky,
With all their voices--O dare I accuse
My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen,
Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no!
It is her largeness, and her overflow,
Which being incomplete, disquieteth me so!
For never touch of gladness stirs my heart,
But tim'rously beginning to rejoice
Like a blind Arab, that from sleep doth start
In lonesome tent, I listen for thy voice.
Beloved! 'tis not thine; thou art not there!
Then melts the bubble into idle air,
And wishing without hope I restlessly despair.
The mother with anticipated glee
Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair
And flatt'ning its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare
To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;
And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,
Then is she tenfold gladder than before!
But should disease or chance the darling take,
What then avail those songs, which sweet of yore
Were only sweet for their sweet echo's sake?
Dear maid! no prattler at a mother's knee
Was e'er so dearly prized as I prize thee;
Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me!
STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY ON HER RECOVERY, WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS, FROM A
WAS my last waking thought, how it could be
When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.
Methought he fronted me with peering look
Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game
The loves and griefs therein, as from a book;
And utter'd praise like one who wish'd to blame.
In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin
Two Founts there are, of suffering and of chcer!
That to let forth, and this to keep within!
But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,
Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,
That Fount alone unlock, by no distress
Choked or turn'd inward, but still issue thence
Unconquer'd cheer, persistent loveliness.
As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,
That gracious thing made up of tears and light,
Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below
Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright;
As though the spirits of all lovely flowers,
Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,
Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers,
Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.
Ev'n so, Eliza ! on that face of thine,
On that benignant face, whose look alone
(The soul's translucence thro' her crystal shrine !)
Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own.
A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,
But with a silent charm compels the stern
And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring
To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.
Who than needs wonder, if (no outlet found
In passion, spleen, or strife) the fount of pain
O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,
And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?
Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam
On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,
Had passed yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,
Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream;
Till audibly at length I cried, as though
Thou had'st indeed been present to my eyes,
O sweet, sweet sufferer; if the case be so,
I pray thee, be less good, less sweet, less wise!
In every look a barbed arrow send,
On those soft lips let scorn and anger live!
Do any thing, rather than thus, sweet friend!
Hoard for thyself the pain thou wilt not give !
IS a strange place, this Limbo !-not a Place, Yet name it so—where time and weary Space Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing, Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades-unmeaning
As moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely-looks like human Time,
An old man with a steady look sublime,
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind- -a statue hath such eyes-
Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high,
He gazes still--his eyeless face all eye—
As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,
His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear-a future state; 'tis positive Negation!
|