Selected Poems and Prose

  The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

  Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed

  Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

  105 Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

  VIII

  From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,

  Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,

  Or utmost islet inaccessible,

  Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,

  110Teaching the woods and waves, and desart rocks,

  And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,

  To talk in echoes sad and stern,

  Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

  For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks

  115 Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep.

  What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks

  Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,

  When from its sea of death to kill and burn,

  The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

  120 And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

  IX

  A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?

  And then the shadow of thy coming fell

  On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:

  And many a warrior-peopled citadel,

  125Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,

  Arose in sacred Italy,

  Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea

  Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;

  That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

  130 And burst around their walls, like idle foam,

  Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep

  Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb

  Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

  With divine wand traced on our earthly home

  135 Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome.

  X

  Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror

  Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver

  Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,

  As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever

  140In the calm regions of the orient day!

  Luther caught thy wakening glance,

  Like lightning, from his leaden lance

  Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance

  In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

  145 And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen,

  In songs whose music cannot pass away,

  Though it must flow for ever: not unseen

  Before the spirit-sighted countenance

  Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene

  150 Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

  XI

  The eager hours and unreluctant years

  As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,

  Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,

  Darkening each other with their multitude,

  155And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation

  Answered Pity from her cave;

  Death grew pale within the grave,

  And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!

  When like heaven’s sun girt by the exhalation

  160 Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise,

  Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

  Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies

  At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,

  Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,

  165 Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

  XII

  Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,

  In ominous eclipse? a thousand years

  Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den,

  Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,

  170Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;

  How like Bacchanals of blood

  Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood

  Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!

  When one, like them, but mightier far than they,

  175 The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers

  Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,

  Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

  Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,

  Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,

  180 Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

  XIII

  England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

  Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder

  Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold

  Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:

  185O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle

  From Pithecusa to Pelorus

  Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:

  They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o’er us.

  Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile

  190 And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel,

  Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file.

  Twins of a single destiny! appeal

  To the eternal years enthroned before us,

  In the dim West; impress as from a seal

  195 All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.

  XIV

  Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,

  Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,

  His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;

  Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

  200Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine,

  King-deluded Germany,

  His dead spirit lives in thee.

  Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!

  And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

  205 And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!

  Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

  Where desolation clothed with loveliness

  Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

  Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

  210 The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

  XV

  O, that the free would stamp the impious name

  Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

  So that this blot upon the page of fame

  Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air

  215Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

  Ye the oracle have heard:

  Lift the victory-flashing sword,

  And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,

  Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind

  220 Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

  The axes and the rods which awe mankind;

  The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm

  Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;

  Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,

  225 To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

  XVI

  O, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle

  Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,

  That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle

  Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

  230A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;

  Till human thoughts might kneel alone

  Each before the judgement-throne

  Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown!

  O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure

  235 From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew

  From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture,

  Were stript of their thin masks and various hue

  And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,

  Till in the nakedness of false and true

  240 They stand befor
e their Lord, each to receive its due.

  XVII

  He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

  Can be between the cradle and the grave

  Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!

  If on his own high will a willing slave,

  245He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.

  What if earth can clothe and feed

  Amplest millions at their need,

  And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

  Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

  250 Diving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,

  Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

  And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

  Over all height and depth? if Life can breed

  New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan

  255 Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one.

  XVIII

  Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave

  Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star

  Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

  Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car

  260Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;

  Comes she not, and come ye not,

  Rulers of eternal thought,

  To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?

  Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

  265 Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

  O, Liberty! if such could be thy name

  Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:

  If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

  By blood or tears, have not the wise and free

  270 Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn harmony

  XIX

  Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing

  To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;

  Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging

  Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,

  275Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light

  On the heavy sounding plain,

  When the bolt has pierced its brain;

  As summer clouds dissolve, unburdened of their rain;

  As a far taper fades with fading night,

  280 As a brief insect dies with dying day,

  My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

  Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away

  Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,

  As waves which lately paved his watery way

  285 Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.

  To a Sky-Lark

  Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

  Bird thou never wert,

  That from Heaven, or near it,

  Pourest thy full heart

  5In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

  Higher still and higher

  From the earth thou springest

  Like a cloud of fire;

  The blue deep thou wingest,

  10And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

  In the golden lightning

  Of the sunken Sun,

  O’er which clouds are brightning,

  Thou dost float and run;

  15Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

  The pale purple even

  Melts around thy flight;

  Like a star of Heaven

  In the broad daylight

  20Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

  Keen as are the arrows

  Of that silver sphere,

  Whose intense lamp narrows

  In the white dawn clear,

  25Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there.

  All the earth and air

  With thy voice is loud,

  As when Night is bare

  From one lonely cloud

  30The moon rains out her beams—and Heaven is overflowed.

  What thou art we know not;

  What is most like thee?

  From rainbow clouds there flow not

  Drops so bright to see

  35As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

  Like a Poet hidden

  In the light of thought,

  Singing hymns unbidden

  Till the world is wrought

  40To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

  Like a high-born maiden

  In a palace-tower,

  Soothing her love-laden

  Soul in secret hour,

  45With music sweet as love—which overflows her bower:

  Like a glow-worm golden

  In a dell of dew,

  Scattering unbeholden

  Its aerial hue

  50Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

  Like a rose embowered

  In its own green leaves,

  By warm winds deflowered—

  Till the scent it gives

  55Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

  Sound of vernal showers

  On the twinkling grass,

  Rain-awakened flowers,

  All that ever was

  60Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass:

  Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

  What sweet thoughts are thine;

  I have never heard

  Praise of love or wine

  65That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine:

  Chorus Hymeneal

  Or triumphal chaunt

  Matched with thine, would be all

  But an empty vaunt,

  70A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

  What objects are the fountains

  Of thy happy strain?

  What fields or waves or mountains?

  What shapes of sky or plain?

  75What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

  With thy clear keen joyance

  Languor cannot be:

  Shadow of annoyance

  Never came near thee:

  80Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.

  Waking or asleep,

  Thou of death must deem

  Things more true and deep

  Than we mortals dream,

  85Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

  We look before and after

  And pine for what is not:

  Our sincerest laughter

  With some pain is fraught;

  90Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

  Yet if we could scorn

  Hate and pride and fear;

  If we were things born

  Not to shed a tear,

  95I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

  Better than all measures

  Of delightful sound,

  Better than all treasures

  That in books are found,

  100Thy skill to poet were, thou Scorner of the ground!

  Teach me half the gladness

  That thy brain must know,

  Such harmonious madness

  From my lips would flow,

  105The world should listen then—as I am listening now.

  Letter to Maria Gisborne

  The spider spreads her webs, whether she be

  In poet’s tower, cellar or barn or tree;

  The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves

  His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;

  5So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,

  Sit spinning still round this decaying form,

  From the fine threads of verse and subtle thought—

  No net of words in garish colours wrought

  To catch the idle buzzers of the day—

  10But a soft cell, where when that fades away,

  Memory may clothe in wings my living name

  And feed it with the asphodels of fame,

  Which in those hearts which most remembe
r me

  Grow, making love an immortality.

  15Whoever should behold me now, I wist,

  Would think I were a mighty mechanist,

  Bent with sublime Archimedean art

  To breathe a soul into the iron heart

  Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,

  20Which, by the force of figured spells might win

  Its way over the sea, and sport therein;

  For round the walls are hung dread engines, such

  As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch

  Ixion or the Titans:—or the quick

  25Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,

  To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,

  Or those in philanthropic council met,

  Who thought to pay some interest for the debt

  They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,

  30By giving a faint foretaste of damnation

  To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest

  Who made our land an island of the blest,

  When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire

  On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire—

  35With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,

  Which fishers found under the utmost crag

  Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,

  Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles

  Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn

  40When the exulting elements in scorn

  Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay

  Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,

  As panthers sleep;— and other strange and dread

  Magical forms the brick floor overspread—

  45Proteus transformed to metal did not make

  More figures, or more strange; nor did he take

  Such shapes of unintelligible brass,

  Or heap himself in such a horrid mass

  Of tin and iron not to be understood;

  50And forms of unimaginable wood

  To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:

  Great screws and cones, and wheels and grooved blocks,

  The elements of what will stand the shocks

  Of wave, and wind and time.—Upon the table