into his darker musings, with a mild
and healing sympathy that steals away
their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
of the last bitter hour come like a blight
over thy spirit, and sad images
of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
and breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
go forth, under the open sky, and list
to Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
the all-beholding sun shall see no more
in all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
and, lost each human trace, surrendering up
thine individual being, shalt thou go
to mix forever with the elements,
to be a brother to the insensible rock
and to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
with patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
the powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
all in one mighty sepulcher. The hills
rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
stretching in pensive quietness between;
the venerable woods—rivers that move
in majesty, and the complaining brooks
that make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
are but the solemn decorations all
of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
the planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
are shining on the sad abodes of death
through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
the globe are but a handful to the tribes
that slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
or lose thyself in the continuous woods
where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
and millions in those solitudes, since first
the flight of years began, have laid them down
in their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest—and what if thou withdraw
in silence from the living, and no friend
take note of thy departure? All that breathe
will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
when thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
plod on, and each one as before will chase
his favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
their mirth and their employments, and shall come
and make their bed with thee. As the long train
of ages glides away, the sons of men—
the youth in life’s fresh spring, and he who goes
in the full strength of years, matron and maid,
the speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
by those, who in their turn, shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
the innumerable caravan, which moves
to that mysterious realm, where each shall take
his chamber in the silent halls of death,
thou go not, like the Quarry-slave at night,
scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
The Hurricane1
Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
for the coming of the hurricane!
And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales,
through the boundless arch of heaven he sails.
Silent and slow, and terribly strong,
the mighty shadow is borne along,
like the dark eternity to come;
while the world below, dismayed and dumb,
through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.
They darken fast; and the golden blaze
of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
and he sends through the shade a funeral ray—
a glare that is neither night nor day,
a beam that touches, with hues of death,
the cloud above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,
while the hurricane’s distant voice is heard
uplifted among the mountains round,
and the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
his ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!—
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
how his huge and writhing arms are bent
to clasp the zone of the firmament,
and fold at length, in their dark embrace,
from mountain to mountain the visible space!
Darker,—still darker! the whirlwinds bear
the dust of the plains to the middle air;
and hark to the crashing, long and loud,
of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
from the rapid wheels where’er they dart,
as the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
and flood the skies with a lurid glow.
What roar is that?—’t is the rain that breaks
in torrents away from the airy lakes,
heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
and shedding a nameless horror round.
Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
with the very clouds!—ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place
the shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
a whirling ocean that fills the wall
of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
alone with the terrible hurricane.
The Murdered Traveler1
When spring, to woods and wastes around,
brought bloom and joy again,
the murdered traveler’s bones were found,
far down a narrow glen.
The fragrant birch, above him, hung
her tassels in the sky;
and many a vernal blossom sprung,
and nodded careless by.
The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
his hanging nest o’erhead,
and fearless, near the fatal spot,
her young the partridge led.
But there was weeping far away,
and gentle eyes, for him,
with watching many an anxious day,
were sorrowful and dim.
They little knew, who loved him so,
the fearful death he met,
when shouting o’er the desert snow,
unarmed, and hard beset;—
nor how, when round the frosty pole
the northern dawn was red,
/> the mountain wolf and wild-cat stole
to banquet on the dead;
nor how, when strangers found his bones,
they dressed the hasty bier,
and marked his grave with nameless stones,
unmoistened by a tear.
But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
within his distant home;
and dreamed, and started as they slept,
for joy that he was come.
So long they looked—but never spied
his welcome step again,
nor knew the fearful death he died
far down that narrow glen.
The Poet1
Thou, who wouldst wear the name
of poet mid thy brethren of mankind,
and clothe in words of flame
thoughts that shall live within the general mind!
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
the pastime of a drowsy summer day.
But gather all thy powers,
and wreak them on the verse that thou dost weave,
and in thy lonely hours,
at silent morning or at wakeful eve,
while the warm current tingles through thy veins
set forth the burning words in fluent strains.
No smooth array of phrase
artfully sought and ordered though it be,
which the cold rhymer lays
upon his page with languid industry
can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed,
or fill with sudden tears the eyes that read.
The secret wouldst thou know
to touch the heart or fire the blood at will?
Let thine own eyes o’erflow;
let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill;
seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past,
and bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.
Then, should thy verse appear
halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought,
touch the crude line with fear,
save in the moment of impassioned thought;
then summon back the original glow and mend
the strain with rapture that with fire was penned.
Yet let no empty gust
of passion find an utterance in thy lay,
a blast that whirls the dust
along the howling street and dies away;
but feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,
like currents journeying through the windless deep.
Seek’st thou, in living lays,
to limn the beauty of the earth and sky?
Before thine inner gaze
let all that beauty in clear vision lie,
look on it with exceeding love, and write
the words inspired by wonder and delight.
Of tempest wouldst thou sing,
or tell of battles—make thyself a part
of the great tumult; cling
to the tossed wreck with terror in thy heart;
scale, with the assault host, the rampart’s height
and strike and struggle in the thickest fight.
So shalt thou frame a lay
that haply may endure from age to age,
and they who read shall say;
what witchery hangs upon this poet’s page!
What art is this the written spells to find
that sway from mood to mood the willing mind!
The Strange Lady1
The summer morn is bright and fresh,
the birds are darting by,
as if they loved to breast the breeze
that sweeps the cool clear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest’s edge,
has heard a rustling sound
an arrow slightly strikes his hand
and falls upon the ground.
A lovely woman from the wood
comes suddenly in sight;
her merry eye is full and black,
her cheek is brown and bright;
she wears a tunic of the blue,
her belt with beads is strung,
and yet she speaks in gentle tones,
and in the English tongue.
“It was an idle bolt I sent,
against the villain crow;
fair sir, I fear it harmed thy hand;
beshrew my erring bow!”
“Ah! would that bolt had not been spent,
then, lady, might I wear
a lasting token on my hand
of one so passing fair!”
“Thou art a flatterer like the rest,
but wouldst thou take with me
a day of hunting in the wilds,
beneath the greenwood tree,
I know where most the pheasants feed,
and where the red-deer herd,
and thou shouldst chase the nobler game,
and I bring down the bird.”
Now Albert in her quiver lays
the arrow in its place,
and wonders as he gazes on
the beauty of her face:
‘Those hunting-grounds are far away,
and, lady, ’twere not meet
that night, amid the wilderness,
should overtake thy feet.”
“Heed not the night, a summer lodge
amid the wild is mine,
‘tis shadowed by the tulip-tree,
‘tis mantled by the vine;
the wild plum sheds its yellow fruit
from fragrant thickets nigh,
and flowery prairies from the door
stretch till they meet the sky.
“There in the boughs that hide the roof
the mock-bird sits and sings,
and there the hang-bird’s brood within
its little hammock swings;
a pebbly brook, where rustling winds
among the hopples sweep,
shall lull thee till the morning sun
looks in upon thy sleep.”
Away, into the forest depths
by pleasant paths they go,
he with his rifle on his arm,
the lady with her bow,
where cornels arch their cool dark boughs
o’er beds of wintergreen,
and never at his father’s door again was Albert seen.
That night upon the woods came down a furious hurricane,
with howl of winds and roar of streams
and beating of the rain;
the mighty thunder broke and drowned
the noises in its crash;
the old trees seemed to fight like fiends
beneath the lightning-flash.
Next day, within a mossy glen,
mid moldering trunks were found
the fragments of a human form,
upon the bloody ground;
white bones from which the flesh was torn,
and locks of glossy hair;
they laid them in the place of graves,
yet wist not whose they were.
And whether famished evening wolves
had mangled Albert so,
or that strange dame so gay and fair
were some mysterious foe,
or whether to that forest lodge,
beyond the mountains blue,
he went to dwell with her, the friends
who mourned him never knew.
To a Waterfowl1
Whither, ’midst falling dew,
while glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
as, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
or where the rocking billows rise and sink
on the chafed ocean side?
<
br /> There is a Power whose care
teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
the desert and illimitable air,—
lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fann’d
at that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:
yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
and scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend
soon o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
and shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
in the long way that I must tread alone,
will lead my steps aright.
John Keats (1795 – 1821)
Isabella1
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love’s eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
without some stir of heart, some malady;
they could not sit at meals but feel how well
it soothed each to be the other by;
they could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep
but to each other dream, and nightly weep.
With every morn their love grew tenderer,
with every eve deeper and tenderer still;
he might not in house, field, or garden stir,
but her full shape would all his seeing fill;
and his continual voice was pleasanter
to her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
she spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch
before the door had given her to his eyes;
and from her chamber-window he would catch
her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
and constant as her vespers would he watch,
because her face was turned to the same skies;
and with sick longing all the night outwear,
to hear her morning-step upon the stair.
A whole long month of May in this sad plight
made their cheeks paler by the break of June:
“Tomorrow will I bow to my delight,
tomorrow will I ask my lady’s boon.”—
“O may I never see another night,
Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love’s tune.”—
so spake they to their pillows; but, alas,
honeyless days and days did he let pass;
The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Page 9
