Selected Poems and Prose
Page 31
As the billows leap in the morning beams.
Chorus
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
70 Pierce with song Heaven’s silent light,
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the Day like a bleeding deer,
75And it limped and stumbled with many wounds
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now—oh weave the mystic measure
Of music and dance and shapes of light,
Let the Hours, and the Spirits of might and pleasure,
80 Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.
A Voice
Unite!
Panthea
See, where the Spirits of the human mind
Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.
Chorus of Spirits
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
85By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.
Chorus of Hours
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,
90For sandals of lightning are on your feet,
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as Love which is veiled not?
Chorus of Spirits
We come from the mind
Of human kind,
95Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind;
Now ’tis an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A Heaven of serene and mighty motion.
From that deep abyss
100 Of wonder and bliss,
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought’s crowned Powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
105 From the dim recesses
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;
From the azure isles
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
110Delaying your ships with her syren wiles.
From the temples high
Of Man’s ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
115 Of the unsealed springs
Where Science bedews his Daedal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears,
120 We waded and flew,
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
125And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
Chorus of Spirits and Hours
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
130From the depths of the sky and the ends of the Earth,
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an Ocean of splendour and harmony!
Chorus of Spirits
135 Our spoil is won,
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
140Which clips the world with darkness round.
We’ll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize:
Death, Chaos, and Night,
145 From the sound of our flight,
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
150 And Love, Thought, and Breath,
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void’s loose field
155A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
Chorus of Hours
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
160Let some depart, and some remain.
Semichorus I
We, beyond heaven, are driven along—
Semichorus II
Us, the enchantments of earth retain—
Semichorus I
Ceaseless and rapid and fierce and free
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
165And a Heaven where yet Heaven could never be—
Semichorus II
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day, and outspeeding the Night,
With the Powers of a world of perfect light—
Semichorus I
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
170Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear—
Semichorus II
We encircle the Oceans and Mountains of Earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits
175Break the dance, and scatter the song—
Let some depart, and some remain;
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like star-beams, soft and yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with Love’s sweet rain.
Panthea
180Ha! They are gone!
Ione
Yet feel you no delight
From the past sweetness?
Panthea
As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!
Ione
Even whilst we speak
185New notes arise. What is that awful sound?
Panthea
’Tis the deep music of the rolling world,
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
Aeolian modulations.
Ione
Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
190Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones,
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter’s crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
Panthea
But see where, through two openings in the forest
195Which hanging branches overcanopy,
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss, violet-interwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
200Turning their dear disunion to an isle
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
205Under the ground and through the windless air.
Ione
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat
In which the Mother of the Months is borne
By ebbing light into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams,
210O’er which is curved an orblike canopy
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter’s glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
215Such as the genii of the thunder-storm
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind.
Within it sits a winged infant, white
220Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of aetherial pearl.
Its hair is white,—the brightness of white light
225Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are Heavens
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around
230With fire that is not brightness; in its hand
It sways a quivering moon-beam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot’s prow
Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds
235Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.
Panthea
And from the other opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
240Flow, as through empty space, music and light:
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white and green and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
245Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,
Yet each inter-transpicuous; and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
250Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on,
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous Orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
255Of elemental subtlety, like light;
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams,
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
260Seem kneaded into one aerial mass
Which drowns the sense. Within the Orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o’erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
265The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
And you can see its little lips are moving
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
Ione
’Tis only mocking the Orb’s harmony …
Panthea
270And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming Heaven and Earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
275Which whirl as the Orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sunlike lightnings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the Earth’s deep heart;
280Infinite mine of adamant and gold,
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs
285Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,
Whose vapours clothe Earth’s monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships,
290Planks turned to marble, quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which Death laughed, sepulchred emblems
295Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the Earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
300Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
Huddled in grey annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these
The anatomies of unknown winged things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
305And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags;—and over these
The jagged alligator, and the might
310Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores
And weed-overgrown continents of Earth
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
315Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried
‘Be not!’—and like my words they were no more.
The Earth
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
320The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation, not to be confined!
Ha! ha! The animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind!
The Moon
325 Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
330With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me, through me!
The Earth
Ha! ha! The caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound exulting fountains,
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
335 The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses
Of the deep air’s unmeasured wildernesses
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do:—‘Sceptred Curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
340Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending
A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,
And splinter and knead down my children’s bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending.
‘Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
345 Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire.
350 ‘How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered—drunk up
By th
irsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drain’d by a desert-troop, a little drop for all!
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, Love
355Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.’
The Moon
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
360 It clothes with unexpected birth
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!
Gazing on thee I feel, I know,
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
365And living shapes upon my bosom move:
Music is in the sea and air,
Winged clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
’Tis Love, all Love!
The Earth
370 It interpenetrates my granite mass,
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds ’tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead—
375They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers—
And like a storm, bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being,
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
380 Thought’s stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever
Till Hate, and Fear, and Pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many sided mirror
Which could distort to many a shape of error
This true fair world of things—a sea reflecting Love;
385 Which over all his kind as the Sun’s Heaven