Friendship, how rare!—
10Love, how it sells poor bliss
For proud despair!
But these though soon they fall,
Survive their joy, and all
Which ours we call.—
15Whilst skies are blue and bright,
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day;
Whilst yet the calm hours creep
20Dream thou—and from thy sleep
Then wake to weep.
The Indian Girl’s Song
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sleep of night—
The winds are breathing low
And the stars are burning bright.
5I arise from dreams of thee—
And a spirit in my feet
Has borne me—Who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!—
The wandering airs they faint
10On the dark silent stream—
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint—
It dies upon her heart—
15As I must die on thine
O beloved as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
20On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast.
Oh press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.
‘Rough wind that moanest loud’
Rough wind that moanest loud,
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
5Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail for the world’s wrong.
Ah me, my heart is bare
10 Like a winter bough;
The same blast of frozen air
Bared it then that breaks it now;
Green leaves and crimson flowers
Clothed in the azure hours;
15Death
To the Moon
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
5And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Remembrance
Swifter far than summer’s flight,
Swifter far than happy night,
Swifter far than youth’s delight
Art thou come and gone—
5As the earth when leaves are dead—
As the Night when sleep is sped—
As the heart when joy is fled
I am left alone,—alone—
The swallow Summer comes again—
10The owlet Night resumes her reign—
But the wild-swan Youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou—
My heart today desires tomorrow—
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow—
15Vainly would my Winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.
Lilies for a bridal bed,
Roses for a matron’s head,
Violets for a maiden dead,—
20 Sadder flowers find for me.
On the living grave I bear
Scatter them without a tear;—
Let no friend, however dear,
Waste a hope, a fear, for me.
Lines to —– [Sonnet to Byron]
If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill
My mind, which, like a worm whose life may share
5A portion of the Unapproachable,
Marks your creations rise as fast and fair
As perfect worlds at the creator’s will,
And bows itself before the godhead there.
But such is my regard, that, nor your fame
10 Cast on the present by the coming hour,
Nor your well-won prosperity and power
Move one regret for his unhonoured name
Who dares these words.—The worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in worship to the God.
To —– (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’)
1
The serpent is shut out from Paradise—
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart’s cure lies—
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
5Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour—
I too, must seldom seek again
Near happy friends a mitigated pain.
2
Of hatred I am proud,—with scorn content;
10Indifference, which once hurt me, is now grown
Itself indifferent.
But not to speak of love, Pity alone
Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one
15Turns the mind’s poison into food:
Its medicine is tears, its evil, good.
3
Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,
Dear friends, dear friend, know that I only fly
Your looks, because they stir
20Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die.
The very comfort which they minister
I scarce can bear; yet I
(So deeply is the arrow gone)
Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.
4
25When I return to my cold home, you ask
Why I am not as I have lately been?
You spoil me for the task
Of acting a forced part in life’s dull scene.
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask
30Of author, great or mean,
In the world’s carnival. I sought
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.
5
Full half an hour today I tried my lot
With various flowers, and every one still said
35‘She loves me, loves me, not.’
And if this meant a Vision long since fled—
If it meant Fortune, Fame, or Peace of thought,
If it meant—(but I dread
To speak what you may know too well)
40Still there was truth in the sad oracle.
6
The crane o’er seas and forests seeks her home.
No bird so wild, but has its quiet nest
When it no more would roam.
The sleepless billows on the Ocean’s breast
45Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam
And thus, at length, find rest.
Doubtless there is a place of peace
Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease.
7
I asked her yesterday if she believed
50That I had resolution. One who had
Would ne’er have thus relieved
His heart with words, but what his judgment bade
Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.—
These verses were too sad
55To send to you, but that I know,
Happy yourself, you feel another’s woe.
To Jane. The Invitation
Best and brightest, come away—
Fairer far than this fair day
Which like thee to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
5To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.—
The brightest hour of unborn spring
Through the winter wandering
Found it seems this halcyon morn
10To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven in azure mirth
It kissed the forehead of the earth
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free
15And waked to music all their fountains
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
20Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
Away, away from men and towns
To the wild wood and the downs,
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
25Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.—
I leave this notice on my door
30For each accustomed visitor—
‘I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflexion, you may come tomorrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow—
35You, with the unpaid bill, Despair,
You, tiresome verse-reciter Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave—
Expectation too, be off!
40To-day is for itself enough—
Hope, in pity mock not woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment’s good
45After long pain—with all your love
This you never told me of.’
Radiant Sister of the day,
Awake, arise and come away
To the wild woods and the plains
50And the pools where winter-rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green and ivy dun
Round stems that never kiss the Sun—
55Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sand hills of the sea—
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers, and violets
60Which yet join not scent to hue
Crown the pale year weak and new
When the night is left behind
In the deep east dun and blind
And the blue noon is over us,
65And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal Sun.—
To Jane—The Recollection
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead.
Rise Memory, and write its praise!
5Up to thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled;
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
1
We wandered to the pine forest
10 That skirts the Ocean foam;
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The Tempest in its home;
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
15And on the bosom of the deep
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
20 A light of Paradise.
2
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
25And soothed by every azure breath
That under Heaven is blown
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep
30 Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The Ocean woods may be.
3
How calm it was! the silence there
By such a chain was bound
35That even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller with her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
40 The calm that round us grew.—
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain-waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet
A magic circle traced,
45A spirit interfused around
A thrilling silent life.
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife;—
And still I felt the centre of
50 The magic circle there
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
4
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough—
55Each seemed as ’twere, a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay
More boundless than the depth of night
60 And purer than the day,
In which the lovely forests grew
As in the upper air
More perfect, both in shape and hue,
Than any spreading there;
65There lay the glade, the neighbouring lawn,
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views, which in our world above
70 Can never well be seen
Were imaged in the water’s love
Of that fair forest green;
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
75An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below—
Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
80 With more than truth exprest;
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.—
85Though thou art ever fair and kind
And forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in ——’s mind
Than calm in water seen.
‘When the lamp is shattered’
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow’s glory is shed—
5 When the lute is broken
Sweet tones are remembered not—
When the lips have spoken
Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
10Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute—
No song—but sad dirges
Like the wind through a ruined cell
15 Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have once mingled
Love first leaves the well-built nest—
The weak one is singled
20To endure what it once possest.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home and your bier?
25 Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high—
Bright Reason will mock thee
Like the Sun from a wintry sky—
From thy nest every rafter
30Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
‘One word is too often prophaned’
One word is too often prophaned
For me to prophane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
5One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love,—
10 But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not—
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
15The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
The Magnetic lady to her patient
‘Sleep, sleep on, forget thy pain—
My hand is on thy brow,
My spirit on thy brain,
My pity on thy heart, poor friend;
5 And from my fingers flow
The powers of life, and like a sign
Seal thee from thine hour of woe,
And brood on thee, but may not blend
With thine.
10‘Sleep, sleep, sleep on—I love thee not—
Yet when I think that he
Who made and makes my lot
As full of flowers, as thine of weeds,
Might have been lost like thee,—
15And that a hand which was not mine
Might then have charmed his agony
As I another’s—my heart bleeds
For thine.
‘Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of
20 The dead and the unborn …
Forget thy life and love;
Forget that thou must wake—forever
Forget the world’s dull scorn.—
Forget lost health, and the divine
25Feelings which died in youth’s brief morn;
And forget me, for I can never
Selected Poems and Prose Page 61
