One sent among us to defeat the curse That binds us to the Actual.Yea,thy part,Oh,lute-voiced lover!is to lull the heart Of love repelled:its darkness to disperse.
VII.THE STANZA OF CHILDE HAROLD.
WHO framed the stanza of Childe Harold?He It was who,halting on a stormy shore,Knew well the lofty Voice which evermore,In grand distress,doth haunt the sleepless sea With solemn sounds!And as each wave did roll Till one came up,the mightiest of the whole,To sweep and surge across the vacant lea,Wild words were wedded to wild melody.
This poet must have had a speechless sense Of some dead summer's boundless affluence!
Else,whither can we trace the passioned lore Of Beauty,steeping to the very core His royal verse?And that rare light which lies About it like a Sunset in the skies?
VIII.A LIVING POET.
HE knows the sweet vexation in the strife Of Love with Time,this bard who fain would stray To fairer place beyond the storms of Life,With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow Which best he loves;for there the echoes,rife With rich suggestions of his Long Ago,Astarte!pass with thee.And,far away,Dear Southern Seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring,flower-zoned,and Summer,warbling low In tasselled corn,alternate come and go;While gypsy Autumn,splashed from heel to thigh With vine-blood,treads the leaves;and,halting nigh,Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.
IX.DANTE AND VIRGIL.
WHEN lost Francesca sobbed her broken tale Of Love,and Sin,and boundless Agony;While that wan spirit by her side did wail And bite his lips for utter misery -The Grief which could not speak,nor hear,nor see;So tender grew the superhuman face Of one who listened,that a mighty trace Of superhuman woe gave way,and pale,The sudden light upstruggled to its place;While all his limbs began to faint and fail With such excess of Pity.But,behind,The Roman Virgil stood -the calm,the wise -With not a shadow in his regal eyes,A stately type of all his stately kind!
X.REST.
SOMETIMES we feel so spent for want of rest,We have no thought beyond.I know to-day,When tired of bitter lips and dull delay With faithless words,I cast mine eyes upon The shadows of a distant mountain-crest,And said,"That hill must hide within its breast Some secret glen secluded from the sun.
Oh,mother Nature!would that I could run Outside to thee,and,like a wearied guest Half blind with lamps,and sick of feasting,lay An aching head on thee.Then down the streams The moon might swim;and I should feel her grace,While soft winds blew the sorrows from my face So quiet in the fellowship of dreams.''
XI.AFTER PARTING.
I CANNOT tell what change hath come to you To vex your splendid hair.I only know One grief:The Passion left betwixt us two,Like some forsaken watchfire,burneth low.
'Tis sad to turn and find it dying so Without a hope of resurrection!Yet,O radiant face that found me tired and lone,I shall not for the dear dead past forget The sweetest looks of all the Summers gone.
Ah!time hath made familiar wild Regret;
For now the leaves are white in last year's bowers;And now doth sob along the ruined leas The homeless storm from saddened southern seas,While March sits weeping over withered flowers.
XII.ALFRED TENNYSON.
THE silvery dimness of a happy dream I've known of late.Methought where Byron moans,Like some wild gulf in melancholy zones,I passed tear-blinded!Once a lurid gleam Of stormy sunset loitered on the sea While,travelling troubled,like a straitened stream,The voice of Shelley died away from me.
Still sore at heart I reached a lake-lit lea.
And then the green-mossed glades with many a grove Where lies the calm which Wordsworth used to love;And lastly,Locksley Hall!from whence did rise A haunting Song that blew,and breathed,and blew,With rare delights:'twas there I woke and knew The sumptuous comfort left in drowsy eyes.
