Selected Poems and Prose

75Tho’ suffering leaves the knowledge and the power

  Which says:—Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.

  And from thy side two gentle babes are born

  To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we

  Most fortunate beneath life’s beaming morn;

  80And these delights, and thou, have been to me

  The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.

  10

  Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers

  But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?

  Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers

  85Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again,

  Tho’ it might shake the Anarch Custom’s reign,

  And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway

  Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain

  Reply in hope—but I am worn away,

  90And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

  11

  And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:

  Time may interpret to his silent years.

  Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,

  And in the light thine ample forehead wears,

  95And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,

  And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy

  Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:

  And thro’ thine eyes, even in thy soul I see

  A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

  12

  100They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,

  Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child.

  I wonder not—for One then left this earth

  Whose life was like a setting planet mild,

  Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled

  105Of its departing glory; still her fame

  Shines on thee, thro’ the tempests dark and wild

  Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim

  The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.

  13

  One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,

  110Which was the echo of three thousand years;

  And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,

  As some lone man who in a desart hears

  The music of his home:—unwonted fears

  Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,

  115And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,

  Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space

  Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.

  14

  Truth’s deathless voice pauses among mankind!

  If there must be no response to my cry—

  120If men must rise and stamp with fury blind

  On his pure name who loves them,—thou and I,

  Sweet Friend! can look from our tranquillity

  Like lamps into the world’s tempestuous night,—

  Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by

  125Which wrap them from the foundering seaman’s sight,

  That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

  To Constantia

  Thy voice, slow rising like a spirit, lingers

  O’er-shadowing me with soft and lulling wings;

  The blood and life within thy snowy fingers

  Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.

  5 My brain is wild, my breath comes quick,

  The blood is listening in my frame,

  And thronging shadows fast and thick

  Fall on my overflowing eyes,

  My heart is quivering like a flame;

  10As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,

  I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

  I have no life, Constantia, but in thee;

  Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song

  Flows on, and fills all things with melody:

  15Now is thy voice a tempest, swift and strong,

  On which, as one in trance upborne,

  Secure o’er woods and waves I sweep

  Rejoicing, like a cloud of morn:

  Now ’tis the breath of summer’s night

  20 Which, where the starry waters sleep

  Round western isles with incense blossoms bright,

  Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

  A deep and breathless awe, like the swift change

  Of dreams unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers;

  25Wild, sweet, yet incommunicably strange,

  Thou breathest now, in fast ascending numbers:

  The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven

  By the enchantment of thy strain,

  And o’er my shoulders wings are woven

  30 To follow its sublime career,

  Beyond the mighty moons that wane

  Upon the verge of nature’s utmost sphere,

  Till the world’s shadowy walls are past, and disappear.

  Cease, cease—for such wild lessons madmen learn:

  35Long thus to sink—thus to be lost and die

  Perhaps is death indeed—Constantia turn!

  Yes! in thine eyes a power like light doth lie,

  Even though the sounds its voice that were

  Between thy lips are laid to sleep—

  40 Within thy breath and on thy hair

  Like odour it is lingering yet—

  And from thy touch like fire doth leap:

  Even while I write my burning cheeks are wet—

  Such things the heart can feel and learn, but not forget!

  Ozymandias

  I met a traveller from an antique land,

  Who said—‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desart … Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  5And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

  And on the pedestal, these words appear:

  10“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

  Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!”

  No thing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.’—

  Lines

  Written among the Euganean Hills,

  October, 1818

  Many a green isle needs must be

  In the deep wide sea of misery,

  Or the mariner, worn and wan,

  Never thus could voyage on

  5Day and night, and night and day,

  Drifting on his dreary way,

  With the solid darkness black

  Closing round his vessel’s track;

  Whilst above the sunless sky,

  10Big with clouds, hangs heavily,

  And behind the tempest fleet

  Hurries on with lightning feet,

  Riving sail, and cord, and plank,

  Till the ship has almost drank

  15Death from the o’er-brimming deep;

  And sinks down, down, like that sleep

  When the dreamer seems to be

  Weltering through eternity;

  And the dim low line before

  20Of a dark and distant shore

  Still recedes, as ever still

  Longing with divided will,

  But no power to seek or shun,

  He is ever drifted on

  25O’er the unreposing wave

  To the haven of the grave.

  What, if there no friends will greet;

  What, if there no heart will meet

  His with love’s impatient beat;

  30Wander wheresoe’er he may,

  Can he dream before that day

  To find refuge from distress

  In friendship’s smile, in love’s caress?

  Then ’twill wr
eak him little woe

  35Whether such there be or no:

  Senseless is the breast, and cold,

  Which relenting love would fold;

  Bloodless are the veins and chill

  Which the pulse of pain did fill;

  40Every little living nerve

  That from bitter words did swerve

  Round the tortured lips and brow,

  Are like sapless leaflets now

  Frozen upon December’s bough.

  45On the beach of a northern sea

  Which tempests shake eternally,

  As once the wretch there lay to sleep,

  Lies a solitary heap,

  One white skull and seven dry bones,

  50On the margin of the stones,

  Where a few grey rushes stand,

  Boundaries of the sea and land:

  Nor is heard one voice of wail

  But the sea-mews, as they sail

  55O’er the billows of the gale;

  Or the whirlwind up and down

  Howling, like a slaughtered town,

  When a King in glory rides

  Through the pomp of fratricides:

  60Those unburied bones around

  There is many a mournful sound;

  There is no lament for him,

  Like a sunless vapour dim

  Who once clothed with life and thought

  65What now moves nor murmurs not.

  Aye, many flowering islands lie

  In the waters of wide Agony:

  To such a one this morn was led

  My bark by soft winds piloted—

  70’Mid the mountains Euganean

  I stood listening to the paean

  With which the legioned rooks did hail

  The sun’s uprise majestical;

  Gathering round with wings all hoar,

  75Thro’ the dewy mist they soar

  Like grey shades, till th’ eastern heaven

  Bursts, and then, as clouds of even

  Flecked with fire and azure lie

  In the unfathomable sky,

  80So their plumes of purple grain,

  Starred with drops of golden rain,

  Gleam above the sunlight woods,

  As in silent multitudes

  On the morning’s fitful gale

  85Thro’ the broken mist they sail,

  And the vapours cloven and gleaming

  Follow down the dark steep streaming,

  Till all is bright, and clear, and still,

  Round the solitary hill.

  90Beneath is spread like a green sea

  The waveless plain of Lombardy,

  Bounded by the vaporous air,

  Islanded by cities fair;

  Underneath day’s azure eyes

  95Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies,

  A peopled labyrinth of walls,

  Amphitrite’s destined halls

  Which her hoary sire now paves

  With his blue and beaming waves.

  100Lo! the sun upsprings behind,

  Broad, red, radiant, half reclined

  On the level quivering line

  Of the waters chrystalline;

  And before that chasm of light,

  105As within a furnace bright,

  Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

  Shine like obelisks of fire,

  Pointing with inconstant motion

  From the altar of dark ocean

  110To the sapphire-tinted skies;

  As the flames of sacrifice

  From the marble shrines did rise,

  As to pierce the dome of gold

  Where Apollo spoke of old.

  115Sun-girt City, thou hast been

  Ocean’s child, and then his queen;

  Now is come a darker day,

  And thou soon must be his prey,

  If the power that raised thee here

  120Hallow so thy watery bier.

  A less drear ruin then than now,

  With thy conquest-branded brow

  Stooping to the slave of slaves

  From thy throne, among the waves

  125Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew

  Flies, as once before it flew,

  O’er thine isles depopulate,

  And all is in its antient state,

  Save where many a palace gate

  130With green sea-flowers overgrown

  Like a rock of ocean’s own,

  Topples o’er the abandoned sea

  As the tides change sullenly.

  The fisher on his watery way,

  135Wandering at the close of day,

  Will spread his sail and seize his oar

  Till he pass the gloomy shore,

  Lest thy dead should, from their sleep

  Bursting o’er the starlight deep,

  140Lead a rapid masque of death

  O’er the waters of his path.

  Those who alone thy towers behold

  Quivering through aerial gold,

  As I now behold them here,

  145Would imagine not they were

  Sepulchres, where human forms,

  Like pollution-nourished worms

  To the corpse of greatness cling,

  Murdered, and now mouldering:

  150But if Freedom should awake

  In her omnipotence, and shake

  From the Celtic Anarch’s hold

  All the keys of dungeons cold,

  Where a hundred cities lie

  155Chained like thee, ingloriously,

  Thou and all thy sister band

  Might adorn this sunny land,

  Twining memories of old time

  With new virtues more sublime;

  160If not, perish thou and they!—

  Clouds which stain truth’s rising day

  By her sun consumed away,

  Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,

  In the waste of years and hours,

  165From your dust new nations spring

  With more kindly blossoming.

  Perish—let there only be

  Floating o’er thy hearthless sea

  As the garment of the sky

  170Clothes the world immortally,

  One remembrance, more sublime

  Than the tattered pall of time

  Which scarce hides thy visage wan;—

  That a tempest-cleaving Swan

  175Of the songs of Albion,

  Driven from his ancestral streams

  By the might of evil dreams,

  Found a nest in thee; and Ocean

  Welcomed him with such emotion

  180That its joy grew his, and sprung

  From his lips like music flung

  O’er a mighty thunder-fit,

  Chastening terror:—what though yet

  Poesy’s unfailing River,

  185Which thro’ Albion winds forever

  Lashing with melodious wave

  Many a sacred Poet’s grave,

  Mourn its latest nursling fled?

  What though thou with all thy dead

  190Scarce can for this fame repay

  Aught thine own? oh, rather say

  Though thy sins and slaveries foul

  Overcloud a sunlike soul?

  As the ghost of Homer clings

  195Round Scamander’s wasting springs;

  As divinest Shakespeare’s might

  Fills Avon and the world with light

  Like Omniscient power which he

  Imaged ’mid mortality;

  200As the love from Petrarch’s urn

  Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

  A quenchless lamp by which the heart

  Sees things unearthly;—so thou art,

  Mighty Spirit—so shall be

  205The City that did refuge thee.

  Lo, the sun floats up the sky

  Like thought-winged Liberty,

  Till the universal light

  Seems to level plain and height;

  210From the sea a mist
has spread,

  And the beams of morn lie dead

  On the towers of Venice now,

  Like its glory long ago.

  By the skirts of that grey cloud

  215Many-domed Padua proud

  Stands, a peopled solitude,

  ’Mid the harvest-shining plain,

  Where the peasant heaps his grain

  In the garner of his foe,

  220And the milk-white oxen slow

  With the purple vintage strain,

  Heaped upon the creaking wain,

  That the brutal Celt may swill

  Drunken sleep with savage will;

  225And the sickle to the sword

  Lies unchanged, though many a lord,

  Like a weed whose shade is poison,

  Overgrows this region’s foizon,

  Sheaves of whom are ripe to come

  230To destruction’s harvest home:

  Men must reap the things they sow,

  Force from force must ever flow,

  Or worse; but ’tis a bitter woe

  That love or reason cannot change

  235The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge.

  Padua, thou within whose walls

  Those mute guests at festivals,

  Son and Mother, Death and Sin,

  Played at dice for Ezzelin,

  240Till Death cried, ‘I win, I win!’

  And Sin cursed to lose the wager,

  But Death promised, to assuage her,

  That he would petition for

  Her to be made Vice-Emperor,

  245When the destined years were o’er,

  Over all between the Po

  And the eastern Alpine snow,

  Under the mighty Austrian.

  Sin smiled so as Sin only can,

  250And since that time, aye, long before,

  Both have ruled from shore to shore,

  That incestuous pair, who follow

  Tyrants as the sun the swallow,

  As Repentance follows Crime,

  255And as changes follow Time.

  In thine halls the lamp of learning,

  Padua, now no more is burning;

  Like a meteor, whose wild way

  Is lost over the grave of day,

  260It gleams betrayed and to betray:

  Once remotest nations came

  To adore that sacred flame,

  When it lit not many a hearth

  On this cold and gloomy earth:

  265Now new fires from antique light

  Spring beneath the wide world’s might;

  But their spark lies dead in thee,

  Trampled out by tyranny.

  As the Norway woodman quells,