Selected Poems and Prose

  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