To the Moon
With silent step behold her steal
Over those envious clouds that hid
Till now her face, then stand—a seal
Of silver on heaven’s mighty lid!
So round me would I have her light
In one broad burst of beauty play,
And who whilst thus she rules the night
Would wish the day,
Nor feel his yearning spirit fraught
With sweetly solemn strains of visionary thought?
Love of my childhood! for but when
A child I loved thee of all things—
Yea, with what ecstacies I then
Did hail thee, what dear visionings!
And when between us up the sky
Obscuring glooms have wildly thronged,
With shortened breath and searching eye
How have I longed
For wings that I away might flee
To kiss thy hidden face and dwell awhile with thee.
I sadden Ah, why bringest thou
Yet later memories to my mind?
I would but gaze upon thee now,
As erst for wonder;—not to find
Dim phantoms of each faded dream
That fanned my heart with pinions dyed
In passion, by old HAwKEsBuRY’s stream,
Before me glide,
With shades of days all figured o’er
By feelings lost, and hopes that know their place no more!
Nor was it thus thy beauty shone
Upon me fewer summers past—
Thus hopeless, world-distrusting, lone,
And withering in Misfortune’s blast!
Many that loved me then were nigh,
Of whom now these I may not trust,
And those forget—are far—or lie
Cold in the dust!
And never may we meet again
Loving and loved as then ’neath thy nocturnal reign!
O Cynthia! it would seem as though
A something from our spirits fell,
Like scents from flowers, Life’s eras through
And by which web invisible,
A gathered after-scene of all
Affection builded to our loss,
Is drawn thus in dim funeral
The heart across:
And which where stained the most with gloom
Uncertain Thought is prone to map with spells of doom.
But sober Reason sagelier sings
These visioned mysteries are but
The semblances which former things
Imbued our being with, as put
In act by memory, when is seen
Again some marked associate sight;
And thence it happens, Orb serene,
Why thou to-night
Look’st on me from thy native sky
Like an old friend too fond to talk of things gone by.
Let me this night the Past forget!
For though its dying voices be
At times like tones from Eden, yet
It bosoms too much change for me,—
That when but now my thoughts were given
To all I had suffered—loved and lost!
Turning mine eyes again to heaven,
Tear-quenched almost,
I started with a strange despair,
To find thee—even thee smiling unaltered there!
Hence vain regrets of secret pride!
My human heart, what irks thee so,
What in the scale of Nature tried
Should weigh thy happiness or wo?
Pale millions, so by Fortune cursed,
Have loved for sorrow in the light
Of this yet youthful Moon, since first
She claimed the night,
And thus mature even from her birth,
Chased with pale beam the glooms that swathed the
infant Earth.
And be it humbling too, to know
That when this pile of haughty clay
For ages shall have ceased to glow,
Shall be a heap of ashes grey—
Which as the invading ploughshare drills
The unremembered burial ground,
The winds may o’er a hundred hills
Scatter around—
That in the midnight heavens thou
Shalt hang thy unfaded lamp and smile serene as now.
Nay, more than this: could even those,
The Edenites, who sorrow’d here
Ere Noah’s tilted ark arose
Or Nimrod chased the bounding deer,
Wherever sepulchered, could they
Shake the cold bonds of death and doom
But for a moment now away,—
Into each tomb
Solemnly gazing, thee they’d find
Even as they dying left thee, watchful Moon, behind!
But shall my thoughts thus widely range
And I no profit therein know?
Seeing that wither, waste and change
Must all that lives thine Orb below;
Shall I not turn with this sole aim,
In act to shun, in heart control,
Whatever dims the heavenward flame,
The essential soul
I feel within, and which must be
A living thing when thou art quenched eternally?
Memory’s Genesis
How few through Memory’s dreamy scope,
However resolute of hope,
Can view the backward scene where first
Their youth rejoiced—for ever crost—
And not bewail as Adam erst
The Eden they have lost!
Nor feel, alas! with it compared,
The Present but a lengthening wild
Whereon young Passion never fared,
Young Beauty never smiled!
Yet ’tis a melancholy pleasure
To sit by moon-struck Memory’s side,
And hear her wild lyre oft remeasure
The story of our youthful pride!
Hours recalling, ah! how rife
With emotions lavished wide
Through the Garden of our Life
Ere all its spring-time roses died,
And (like day’s splendours when the sun
Remits in his decline from weaving
A robe of beauty for the Ev’ning)
Fancy’s Elysiums, one by one,
Had paled away as the long night came on!
Yes! ’tis a melancholy sweet,
And thus let Memory oft repeat
Life’s first tale, that to the core
Retempered by such generous lore,
Our hard’ning spirits, as ’tis meet,
May pity the cold world—the world we trust no more!
Poetry
Rising and setting suns of Liberty—
Mountainous exploits and the wrecks thick strewn
By stormy Passion o’er Life’s treacherous sea,
Relieved with shores of green delight, and boon
And starry dreams and the serene pale moon
Of Pathos,—these with all of which they be
Idealisms, are of Poesy
The bodily temple into fitness hewn,
And for its Soul, all that the mind can seize
Of beauty harmonising with the might
Of natural ties and social sympathies
And that deep spirit of Piety whose flight
Is strongest and most heavenward ’mid the blight
Of mortal misery—its Soul are these.
The Vision of the Rock
I sate upon a lonely peak,
A backwood river’s course to view,
And watched the varying shadows freak
Its liquid length of gleaming blue,
Streaked by the crane now gliding o’er,
Now checkering to the leafy roar
Of woods that “neath me grew,
Or curdling dark as high o’er head
The gathering clouds before the sounding breezes fled.
Beyond, a broad herd grazed the vale,
Where ’mid the trees, its Station stood;
Beneath, a housewife with her pail
Plung’d dexterous, smote the booming flood—
Which suddenly from a reedy nook
Aroused the brooding teal that took
Her flight along the wood
And drew dull murmurs from each grot
And called the passing hawk to circle o’er the spot.
Straight I bethought how once the scene
Spread in its primal horror there,
When but some lone bird’s cry of teen,
Or howlings from the wild-dog’s lair
Or rush of startled kangaroo,
As near some stealthy savage drew
With hunger in his air,
Or from the stream some casual sound
Broke the dread slumbers there of Solitude profound.
A change came o’er my thoughts—behind
A length of coming time I threw—
Till round me, on that rock reclined
Its folds prophetic Vision drew;
And purpling like the morning, gave
Mine eye of Freedom’s births to have
It seemed an ante-view,
Like as in glorious promise stole
His country’s purer weal o’er youthful Hampden’s soul.
All round me villages arose
At once, with orchards clumpt about,
And oft between through piny rows
Some mansion’s pillared porch look out,
And thickening up from alleys green,
Where rustic groups in dance were seen,
Came merry laugh and shout,
While from yet choicer shades the cheer
Of more refined delight fainted like fragrance near.
And in the gusts that over-broke
The voice of neighbouring cities came,
Whose structures in the distance spoke
Of fullest opulence and fame,
O’er fields of ripening plenty viewed,
Or hills with white flocks fleeced, and strewed
With herds that grazed the same;
While on the paven roads between
The frequent chariot flamed with rapid-rolling din.
Now gaining depth the Vision lay
Around my spirit like a law,
So that my reason might not say
But all was real that I saw.
I mark a youth and maiden prest
By Love’s sweet power, elude the rest,
And as they nearer draw
I list the vow that each imparts
Folded in the sighed spells of harmonising hearts.
They pass: and lo, a lonely boy
With wandering step goes musing by—
Glory is in his air and joy,
And all the poet in his eye!
And now whilst rich emotions flush
His face as radiant colours blush
And burn in morning’s sky,
He sings—and to the charmful sound
Troops of angelic Shapes throng into being round.
Before me now an aged man,
Majestic passes: wisdom true
Illumes his brow—the power to scan
All time and look all nature through,
And stately youths of studious mien,
Children of light, with him are seen—
His auditors—and who
Attend the speaking sage along,
As though sciential manna issued from his tongue.
Listen!—He tells of patriot deeds
And lauds the happiness they brought,
He blazons Freedom’s holy creeds
With all the affluence of Thought,
Teaches the truths of Virtue’s cause
And what are nations’ proper laws,
And what blind Milton taught—
That to avert Oppression’s rod
And pull wrong Power down, is—“Glory be to God!”
And now doth his big utterance throw
A sacred solemnising spell
O’er scenes which yet no record know,
Round names that now I may not tell!
But there was One—too long unknown!
Whereat, as with a household tone
Upon the ear it fell,
Each listener’s speaking eyes were given
To glisten with a tear and turn awhile to Heaven!
Thus night came on; for hours had flown
And yet its hold the Vision kept,
Till lulled by many a dying tone,
I laid me on the rock and slept.
And now the big round moon between
Two western summits hung serene—
When all with dews bewept
And ’wakened by the loudening gale,
I rose and sought my hearth far gleaming from the vale.