Selected Poems and Prose

  1

  How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten

  (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,

  That you condemn these verses I have written

  Because they tell no story, false or true?

  5What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,

  May it not leap and play as grown cats do,

  Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,

  Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

  2

  What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,

  10 The youngest of inconstant April’s minions,

  Because it cannot climb the purest sky

  Where the swan sings amid the sun’s dominions?

  Not thine. Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die

  When day shall hide within her twilight pinions,

  15The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,

  Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

  3

  To thy fair feet a winged Vision came

  Whose date should have been longer than a day,

  And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame,

  20 And in thy sight its fading plumes display;

  The watery bow burned in the evening flame,

  But the shower fell, the swift sun went his way—

  And that is dead.—O, let me not believe

  That any thing of mine is fit to live!

  4

  25Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years

  Considering and retouching Peter Bell;

  Watering his laurels with the killing tears

  Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell

  Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres

  30 Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well

  May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil

  The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil.

  5

  My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature

  As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise

  35Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,

  Though he took nineteen years, and she three days

  In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

  She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,

  Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

  40Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness’.

  6

  If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow

  Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial climate

  Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow,

  A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;

  45In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.

  If you unveil my Witch, no Priest or Primate

  Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be

  In love, when it becomes idolatry.

  The Witch of Atlas

  1

  Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth

  50 Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,

  Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth

  All those bright natures which adorned its prime,

  And left us nothing to believe in, worth

  The pains of putting into learned rhyme,

  55A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain

  Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

  2

  Her mother was one of the Atlantides:

  The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden

  In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas

  60 So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

  In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—

  He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden

  The chamber of grey rock in which she lay—

  She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

  3

  65’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,

  And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,

  Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,

  Round the red west when the sun dies in it:

  And then into a meteor, such as caper

  70 On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:

  Then into one of those mysterious stars

  Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

  4

  Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent

  Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden

  75With that bright sign the billows to indent

  The sea-deserted sand—like children chidden,

  At her command they ever came and went—

  Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden

  Took shape and motion: with the living form

  80Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

  5

  A lovely lady garmented in light

  From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are

  Two openings of unfathomable night

  Seen through a temple’s cloven roof—her hair

  85Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight

  Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,

  And her low voice was heard like love, and drew

  All living things towards this wonder new.

  6

  And first the spotted cameleopard came,

  90 And then the wise and fearless elephant;

  Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame

  Of his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt

  And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.

  They drank before her at her sacred fount;

  95And every beast of beating heart grew bold,

  Such gentleness and power even to behold.

  7

  The brinded lioness led forth her young,

  That she might teach them how they should forego

  Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung

  100 His sinews at her feet, and sought to know

  With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue

  How he might be as gentle as the doe.

  The magic circle of her voice and eyes

  All savage natures did imparadise.

  8

  105And old Silenus, shaking a green stick

  Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew

  Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick

  Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:

  And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,

  110 Teazing the God to sing them something new

  Till in this cave they found the lady lone,

  Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.

  9

  And Universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,

  And though none saw him,—through the adamant

  115Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,

  And through those living spirits, like a want

  He past out of his everlasting lair

  Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,

  And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—

  120And she felt him upon her emerald throne.

  10

  And every nymph of stream and spreading tree

  And every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks

  Who drives her white waves over the green sea;

  And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,

  125And quaint Priapus with his company

  All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks

  Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—

  Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

  11

  The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came

  130 And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—

  Their spirits shook within them, as a flame

  Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:

  Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,

  Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt

  135Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,

  Dog-headed, bosom-eyed and bi
rd-footed.

  12

  For she was beautiful—her beauty made

  The bright world dim, and every thing beside

  Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:

  140 No thought of living spirit could abide—

  Which to her looks had ever been betrayed—

  On any object in the world so wide,

  On any hope within the circling skies,

  But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

  13

  145Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle

  And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three

  Long lines of light such as the dawn may kindle

  The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she

  As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle

  150 In the belated moon, wound skilfully;

  And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—

  A shadow for the splendour of her love.

  14

  The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

  Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,

  155Which had the power all spirits of compelling,

  Folded in cells of chrystal silence there;

  Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling

  Will never die—yet ere we are aware,

  The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,

  160And the regret they leave remains alone.

  15

  And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,

  Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis;

  Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint

  With the soft burthen of intensest bliss

  165It was its work to bear to many a saint

  Whose heart adores that shrine which holiest is,

  Even Love’s—and others white, green, grey and black,

  And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.

  16

  And odours in a kind of aviary

  170 Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,

  Clipt in a floating net a love-sick Fairy

  Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept—

  As bats at the wired window of a dairy,

  They beat their vans; and each was an adept,

  175When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,

  To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

  17

  And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might

  Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,

  And change eternal death into a night

  180 Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,

  Could make their tears all wonder and delight,

  She in her chrystal vials did closely keep:

  If men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said

  The living were not envied of the dead.

  18

  185Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,

  The works of some Saturnian Archimage,

  Which taught the expiations at whose price

  Men from the Gods might win that happy age

  Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;

  190 And which might quench the earth-consuming rage

  Of gold and blood—till men should live and move

  Harmonious as the sacred stars above.

  19

  And how all things that seem untameable,

  Not to be checked and not to be confined,

  195Obey the spells of wisdom’s wizard skill;

  Time, Earth and Fire—the Ocean and the Wind

  And all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;

  And other scrolls whose writings did unbind

  The inmost lore of Love—let the prophane

  200Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

  20

  And wondrous works of substances unknown,

  To which the enchantment of her father’s power

  Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,

  Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;

  205Carved lamps and chalices and phials which shone

  In their own golden beams—each like a flower

  Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light

  Under a cypress in a starless night.

  21

  At first she lived alone in this wild home,

  210 And her own thoughts were each a minister,

  Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam,

  Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,

  To work whatever purposes might come

  Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire

  215Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,

  Through all the regions which he shines upon.

  22

  The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,

  Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks,

  Offered to do her bidding through the seas,

  220 Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,

  And far beneath the matted roots of trees

  And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,

  So they might live forever in the light

  Of her sweet presence—each a satellite.

  23

  225‘This may not be,’ the wizard maid replied;

  ‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew

  Their shining hair at length are drained and dried;

  The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew

  Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;

  230 The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew

  Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must

  Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust—

  24

  ‘And ye with them will perish one by one:

  If I must sigh to think that this shall be,

  235If I must weep when the surviving Sun

  Shall smile on your decay—Oh, ask not me

  To love you till your little race is run;

  I cannot die as ye must—over me

  Your leaves shall glance—the streams in which ye dwell

  240Shall be my paths henceforth, and so, farewell!’

  25

  She spoke and wept—the dark and azure well

  Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,

  And every little circlet where they fell

  Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres

  245And intertangled lines of light—a knell

  Of sobbing voices came upon her ears

  From those departing Forms, o’er the serene

  Of the white streams and of the forest green.

  26

  All day the wizard lady sate aloof

  250 Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity

  Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;

  Or broidering the pictured poesy

  Of some high tale upon her growing woof,

  Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye

  255In hues outshining heaven—and ever she

  Added some grace to the wrought poesy.

  27

  While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece

  Of sandal wood, rare gums and cinnamon;

  Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—

  260 Each flame of it is as a precious stone

  Dissolved in ever moving light, and this

  Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.

  The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand

  She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.

  28

  265This lady never slept, but lay in trance

  All night within the fountain—as in sleep.

  Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance:

  Through the green splendour of the water deep

  She saw the constellations reel and dance

  270 Like fire-flies—and withal did ever keep

  The tenour of her contemplations calm,

  With open eyes, close
d feet and folded palm.

  29

  And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended

  From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,

  275She passed at dewfall to a space extended,

  Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel

  Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended

  There yawned an inextinguishable well

  Of crimson fire, full even to the brim

  280And overflowing all the margin trim.

  30

  Within the which she lay when the fierce war

  Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor

  In many a mimic moon and bearded star,

  O’er woods and lawns—the serpent heard it flicker

  285In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar—

  And when the windless snow descended thicker

  Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came

  Melt on the surface of the level flame.

  31

  She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought

  290 For Venus, as the chariot of her star;

  But it was found too feeble to be fraught

  With all the ardours in that sphere which are,

  And so she sold it, and Apollo bought

  And gave it to this daughter: from a car

  295Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat

  Which ever upon mortal stream did float.

  32

  And others say, that when but three hours old

  The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt