Sound on, thou dark, unslumbering sea!
My dirge is in thy moan;
My spirit finds response in thee
To its own ceaseless cry—“Alone, alone!”
Yet send me back one other word,
Ye tones that never cease!
Oh! let your secret caves be stirr’d,
And say, dark waters! will ye give me peace?
Away! my weary soul hath sought
In vain one echoing sigh,
One answer to consuming thought
In human hearts—and will the wave reply?
Sound on, thou dark unslumbering sea!
Sound in thy scorn and pride!
I ask not, alien world! from thee
What my own kindred earth hath still denied.
And yet I loved that earth so well,
With all its lovely things!
Was it for this the death-wind fell
On my rich lyre, and quench’d its living strings?
Let them lie silent at my feet!
Since, broken even as they,
The heart whose music made them sweet
Hath pour’d on desert sands its wealth away.
Yet glory’s light hath touch’d my name,
The laurel-wreath is mine—
With a lone heart, a weary frame—
O restless deep! I come to make them thine!
Give to that crown, that burning crown,
Place in thy darkest hold!
Bury my anguish, my renown,
With hidden wrecks, lost gems, and wasted gold.
Thou sea-bird on the billow’s crest!
Thou hast thy love, thy home;
They wait thee in the quiet nest,
And I, th’ unsought, unwatch’d-for—I too come!
I, with this wingèd nature fraught,
These visions wildly free,
This boundless love, this fiery thought—
Alone I come—oh! give me peace, dark sea!

DIRGE.

Where shall we make her grave?
Oh! where the wild-flowers wave
In the free air!
Where shower and singing-bird
Midst the young leaves are heard—
There—lay her there!
Harsh was the world to her—
Now may sleep minister
Balm for each ill:
Low on sweet nature’s breast
Let the meek heart find rest,
Deep, deep and still!
Murmur, glad waters! by;
Faint gales! with happy sigh,
Come wandering o’er
That green and mossy bed,
Where, on a gentle head,
Storms beat no more!
What though for her in vain
Falls now the bright spring-rain,
Plays the soft wind?
Yet still, from where she lies,
Should blessed breathings rise,
Gracious and kind.
Therefore let song and dew
Thence in the heart renew
Life’s vernal glow!
And o’er that holy earth
Scents of the violet’s birth
Still come and go!
Oh! then, where wild flowers wave
Make ye her mossy grave,
In the free air!
Where shower and singing-bird
Midst the young leaves are heard—
There—lay her there!

A SONG OF THE ROSE.

“Cosi fior diverrai che non soggiace
All ’acqua, al gelo, al vento ed allo scherno
D’ una stagion volubile e fugace;
E a piu fido Cultor posto in governo,
Unir potrai nella tranquilla pace,
Ad eterna Bellezza odore eterno.” Metastasio.
Rose! what dost thou here?
Bridal, royal rose!
How, midst grief and fear,
Canst thou thus disclose
That fervid hue of love, which to thy heart-leaf glows?
Rose! too much array’d
For triumphal hours,
Look’st thou through the shade
Of these mortal bowers,
Not to disturb my soul, thou crown’d one of all flowers!
As an eagle soaring
Through a sunny sky,
As a clarion pouring
Notes of victory,
So dost thou kindle thoughts, for earthly life too high.
Thoughts of rapture, flushing
Youthful poet’s cheek;
Thoughts of glory, rushing
Forth in song to break,
But finding the spring-tide of rapid song too weak.
Yet, O festal rose!
I have seen thee lying
In thy bright repose
Pillow’d with the dying,
Thy crimson by the lip whence life’s quick blood was flying.
Summer, hope, and love
O’er that bed of pain,
Met in thee, yet wove
Too, too frail a chain
In its embracing links the lovely to detain.
Smilest thou, gorgeous flower?
Oh! within the spells
Of thy beauty’s power,
Something dimly dwells,
At variance with a world of sorrows and farewells.
All the soul forth flowing
In that rich perfume,
All the proud life glowing
In that radiant bloom—
Have they no place but here, beneath th’ o’ershadowing tomb?
Crown’st thou but the daughters
Of our tearful race?
Heaven’s own purest waters
Well might wear the trace
Of thy consummate form, melting to softer grace.
Will that clime enfold thee
With immortal air?
Shall we not behold thee
Bright and deathless there?
In spirit-lustre clothed, transcendantly more fair!
Yes! my fancy sees thee
In that light disclose,
And its dream thus frees thee
From the mist of woes,
Darkening thine earthly bowers, O bridal royal rose!

NIGHT-BLOWING FLOWERS.

Children of night! unfolding meekly, slowly,
To the sweet breathings of the shadowy hours,
When dark-blue heavens look softest and most holy,
And glow-worm light is in the forest bowers;
To solemn things and deep,
To spirit-haunted sleep,
To thoughts, all purified
From earth, ye seem allied;
O dedicated flowers!
Ye, from the gaze of crowds your beauty veiling,
Keep in dim vestal urns the sweetness shrined;
Till the mild moon, on high serenely sailing,
Looks on you tenderly and sadly kind.
—So doth love’s dreaming heart
Dwell from the throng apart,
And but to shades disclose
The inmost thought, which glows
With its pure life entwined.
Shut from the sounds wherein the day rejoices,
To no triumphant song your petals thrill,
But send forth odours with the faint, soft voices
Rising from hidden streams, when all is still.
—So doth lone prayer arise,
Mingling with secret sighs,
When grief unfolds, like you,
Her breast, for heavenly dew
In silent hours to fill.

THE WANDERER AND THE NIGHT-FLOWERS.

“Call back your odours, lovely flowers!
From the night-winds call them back;
And fold your leaves till the laughing hours
Come forth in the sunbeam’s track!
“The lark lies couch’d in her grassy nest,
And the honey-bee is gone,
And all bright things are away to rest—
Why watch ye here alone?
“Is not your world a mournful one,
When your sisters close their eyes,
And your soft breath meets not a lingering tone
Of song in the starry skies?
“Take ye no joy in the dayspring’s birth
When it kindles the sparks of dew?
And the thousand strains of the forest’s mirth,
Shall they gladden all but you?
“Shut your sweet bells till the fawn comes out
On the sunny turf to play,
And the woodland child with a fairy shout
Goes dancing on its way!”
“Nay! let our shadowy beauty bloom
When the stars give quiet light,
And let us offer our faint perfume
On the silent shrine of night.
“Call it not wasted, the scent we lend
To the breeze, when no step is nigh:
Oh, thus for ever the earth should send
Her grateful breath on high!
“And love us as emblems, night’s dewy flowers,
Of hopes unto sorrow given,
That spring through the gloom of the darkest hours
Looking alone to heaven!”

ECHO-SONG.

In thy cavern-hall,
Echo! art thou sleeping?
By the fountain’s fall
Dreamy silence keeping?
Yet one soft note borne
From the shepherd’s horn,
Wakes thee, Echo! into music leaping!
—Strange, sweet Echo! into music leaping.
Then the woods rejoice,
Then glad sounds are swelling
From each sister-voice
Round thy rocky dwelling;
And their sweetness fills
All the hollow hills,
With a thousand notes, of one life telling!
—Softly mingled notes, of one life telling.
Echo! in my heart
Thus deep thoughts are lying,
Silent and apart,
Buried, yet undying;
Till some gentle tone
Wakening haply one,
Calls a thousand forth, like thee replying!
—Strange, sweet Echo! even like thee replying.[414]

[414] This song is in the possession of Mr Power.

THE MUFFLED DRUM.[415]

The muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which told the hamlets round
Of a soldier’s burial-rite.
But it told them not how dear,
In a home beyond the main,
Was the warrior-youth laid low that hour
By a mountain-stream of Spain.
The oaks of England waved
O’er the slumbers of his race,
But a pine of the Ronceval made moan
Above his last, lone place;
When the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
Which call’d strange echoes round
To the soldier’s burial-rite.
Brief was the sorrowing there,
By the stream from battle red,
And tossing on its wave the plumes
Of many a stately head:
But a mother—soon to die,
And a sister—long to weep,
Even then were breathing prayers for him
In that home beyond the deep;
While the muffled drum was heard
In the Pyrenees by night,
With a dull, deep rolling sound,
And the dark pines mourn’d round,
O’er the soldier’s burial-rite.

[415] Set to beautiful music by John Lodge, Esq.

THE SWAN AND THE SKYLARK.

“Adieu, adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades.”   Keats.
“Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.”
Shelley.
Midst the long reeds that o’er a Grecian stream
Unto the faint wind sigh’d melodiously,
And where the sculpture of a broken shrine
Sent out thro’ shadowy grass and thick wild-flowers
Dim alabaster gleams—a lonely swan
Warbled his death-chant; and a poet stood
Listening to that strange music, as it shook
The lilies on the wave; and made the pines
And all the laurels of the haunted shore
Thrill to its passion. Oh! the tones were sweet,
Even painfully—as with the sweetness wrung
From parting love; and to the poet’s thought
This was their language.
“Summer! I depart—
O light and laughing summer! fare thee well:
No song the less through thy rich woods will swell,
For one, one broken heart.
“And fare ye well, young flowers!
Ye will not mourn! ye will shed odour still,
And wave in glory, colouring every rill,
Known to my youth’s fresh hours.
“And ye, bright founts! that lie
Far in the whispering forests, lone and deep,
My wing no more shall stir your shadowy sleep—
Sweet waters! I must die.
“Will ye not send one tone
Of sorrow through the pines?—one murmur low?
Shall not the green leaves from your voices know
That I, your child, am gone?
“No! ever glad and free
Ye have no sounds a tale of death to tell:
Waves, joyous waves! flow on, and fare ye well?
Ye will not mourn for me.
“But thou, sweet boon! too late
Pour’d on my parting breath, vain gift of song!
Why com’st thou thus, o’ermastering, rich and strong,
In the dark hour of fate?
“Only to wake the sighs
Of echo-voices from their sparry cell;
Only to say—O sunshine and blue skies!
O life and love! farewell.”
Thus flow’d the death-chant on; while mournfully
Low winds and waves made answer, and the tones
Buried in rocks along the Grecian stream—
Rocks and dim caverns of old Prophecy—
Woke to respond: and all the air was fill’d
With that one sighing sound—Farewell! farewell!
Fill’d with that sound? High in the calm blue heav’n
Even then a skylark hung; soft summer clouds
Were floating round him, all transpierced with light,
And midst that pearly radiance his dark wings
Quiver’d with song: such free, triumphant song,
As if tears were not,—as if breaking hearts
Had not a place below; and thus that strain
Spoke to the poet’s ear exultingly:—
“The summer is come; she hath said Rejoice!
The wild-woods thrill to her merry voice;
Her sweet breath is wandering around, on high:
Sing, sing through the echoing sky!
“There is joy in the mountains! The bright waves leap
Like the bounding stag when he breaks from sleep;
Mirthfully, wildly, they flash along—
Let the heavens ring with song!
“There is joy in the forests! The bird of night
Hath made the leaves tremble with deep delight;
But mine is the glory to sunshine given—
Sing, sing through the echoing heaven!
“Mine are the wings of the soaring morn,
Mine are the fresh gales with dayspring born:
Only young rapture can mount so high—
Sing, sing through the echoing sky!”
So those two voices met; so Joy and Death
Mingled their accents; and, amidst the rush
Of many thoughts, the listening poet cried,—
“Oh! thou art mighty, thou art wonderful,
Mysterious nature! Not in thy free range
Of woods and wilds alone, thou blendest thus
The dirge-note and the song of festival;
But in one heart, one changeful human heart—
Ay, and within one hour of that strange world—
Thou call’st their music forth, with all its tones,
To startle and to pierce!—the dying swan’s,
And the glad skylark’s—triumph and despair!”

THE CURFEW-SONG OF ENGLAND.

Hark! from the dim church-tower,
The deep, slow Curfew’s chime!
—A heavy sound unto hall and bower
In England’s olden time!
Sadly ’twas heard by him who came
From the fields of his toil at night,
And who might not see his own hearth-flame
In his children’s eyes make light.
Sternly and sadly heard,
As it quench’d the wood-fire’s glow,
Which had cheer’d the board with the mirthful word,
And the red wine’s foaming flow!
Until that sullen, boding knell,
Flung out from every fane,
On harp, and lip, and spirit, fell,
With a weight and with a chain.
Woe for the pilgrim then
In the wild-deer’s forest far!
No cottage lamp, to the haunts of men,
Might guide him, as a star.
And woe for him whose wakeful soul,
With lone aspirings fill’d,
Would have lived o’er some immortal scroll,
While the sounds of earth were still’d!
And yet a deeper woe
For the watcher by the bed,
Where the fondly-loved in pain lay low,
In pain and sleepless dread!
For the mother, doom’d unseen to keep
By the dying babe, her place,
And to feel its flitting pulse, and weep,
Yet not behold its face!
Darkness in chieftain’s hall!
Darkness in peasant’s cot!
While freedom, under that shadowy pall,
Sat mourning o’er her lot.
Oh! the fireside’s peace we well may prize!
For blood hath flow’d like rain,
Pour’d forth to make sweet sanctuaries
Of England’s homes again.
Heap the yule-faggots high
Till the red light fills the room!
It is home’s own hour when the stormy sky
Grows thick with evening gloom.
Gather ye round the holy hearth,
And by its gladdening blaze,
Unto thankful bliss we will change our mirth,
With a thought of the olden days!

GENIUS SINGING TO LOVE.

“That voice re-measures
Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures
The things of nature utter; birds or trees,
Or where the tall grass mid the heath-plant waves,
Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.” Coleridge.
I heard a song upon the wandering wind,
A song of many tones—though one full soul
Breathed through them all imploringly; and made
All nature as they pass’d, all quivering leaves
And low responsive reeds and waters, thrill
As with the consciousness of human prayer.
—At times the passion-kindled melody
Might seem to gush from Sappho’s fervent heart,
Over the wild sea-wave;—at times the strain
Flow’d with more plaintive sweetness, as if born
Of Petrarch’s voice, beside the lone Vaucluse;
And sometimes, with its melancholy swell,
A graver sound was mingled, a deep note
Of Tasso’s holy lyre. Yet still the tones
Were of a suppliant—“Leave me not!” was still
The burden of their music; and I knew
The lay which Genius, in its loneliness,
Its own still world, amidst th’ o’erpeopled world,
Hath ever breathed to Love.
“They crown me with the glistening crown,
Borne from a deathless tree;
I hear the pealing music of renown—
O Love! forsake me not!
Mine were a lone, dark lot,
Bereft of thee!
They tell me that my soul can throw
A glory o’er the earth;
From thee, from thee, is caught that golden glow!
Shed by thy gentle eyes,
It gives to flower and skies
A bright, new birth!
“Thence gleams the path of morning
Over the kindling hills, a sunny zone!
Thence to its heart of hearts the rose is burning
With lustre not its own!
Thence every wood-recess
Is fill’d with loveliness,
Each bower, to ring-doves and dim violets known.
“I see all beauty by the ray
That streameth from thy smile;=
Oh! bear it, bear it not away!
Can that sweet light beguile?
Too pure, too spirit-like, it seems,
To linger long by earthly streams;
I clasp it with th’ alloy
Of fear midst quivering joy.
Yet must I perish if the gift depart—
Leave me not, Love! to mine own beating heart!
“The music from my lyre
With thy swift step would flee;
The world’s cold breath would quench the starry fire
In my deep soul—a temple fill’d with thee!
Seal’d would the fountains lie,
The waves of harmony,
Which thou alone canst free!
“Like a shrine midst rocks forsaken,
Whence the oracle hath fled;
Like a harp which none might waken
But a mighty master dead;
Like the vase of a perfume scatter’d.
Such would my spirit be—
So mute, so void, so shatter’d,
Bereft of thee!
“Leave me not, Love! or if this earth
Yield not for thee a home,
If the bright summer-land of thy pure birth
Send thee a silvery voice that whispers ‘Come!’
Then, with the glory from the rose,
With the sparkle from the stream,
With the light thy rainbow-presence throws
Over the poet’s dream;
With all th’ Elysian hues
Thy pathway that suffuse,
With joy, with music, from the fading grove,
Take me, too, heavenward on thy wing, sweet Love!”

MUSIC AT A DEATHBED.

“Music! why thy power employ
Only for the sons of joy?
Only for the smiling guests
At natal or at nuptial feasts?
Rather thy lenient numbers pour
On those whom secret griefs devour;
And with some softly-whisper’d air
Smooth the brow of dumb despair!”
Warton from Euripides.
Bring music! stir the brooding air
With an ethereal breath!
Bring sounds, my struggling soul to bear
Up from the couch of death!
A voice, a flute, a dreamy lay,
Such as the southern breeze
Might waft, at golden fall of day,
O’er blue, transparent seas!
Oh, no! not such! That lingering spell
Would lure me back to life,
When my wean’d heart hath said farewell,
And pass’d the gates of strife.
Let not a sigh of human love
Blend with the song its tone!
Let no disturbing echo move
One that must die alone!
But pour a solemn-breathing strain
Fill’d with the soul of prayer!
Let a life’s conflict, fear, and pain,
And trembling hope be there.
Deeper, yet deeper! In my thought
Lies more prevailing sound,
A harmony intensely fraught
With pleading more profound:
A passion unto music given,
A sweet, yet piercing cry;
A breaking heart’s appeal to Heaven,
A bright faith’s victory!
Deeper! Oh! may no richer power
Be in those notes enshrined?
Can all which crowds on earth’s last hour
No fuller language find?
Away! and hush the feeble song,
And let the chord be still’d!
Far in another land ere long
My dream shall be fulfill’d.

MARSHAL SCHWERIN’S GRAVE.

[“I came upon the tomb of Marshal Schwerin—a plain, quiet cenotaph, erected in the middle of a wide corn-field, on the very spot where he closed a long, faithful, and glorious career in arms. He fell here, at eighty years of age, at the head of his own regiment, the standard of it waving in his hand. His seat was in the leathern saddle—his foot in the iron stirrup—his fingers reined the young war-horse to the last.”—Notes and Reflections during a Ramble into Germany.]

Thou didst fall in the field with thy silver hair,
And a banner in thy hand;
Thou wert laid to rest from thy battles there,
By a proudly mournful band.
In the camp, on the steed, to the bugle’s blast,
Thy long bright years had sped;
And a warrior’s bier was thine at last,
When the snows had crown’d thy head.
Many had fallen by thy side, old chief!
Brothers and friends, perchance;
But thou wert yet as the fadeless leaf,
And light was in thy glance.
The soldier’s heart at thy step leapt high,
And thy voice the war-horse knew;
And the first to arm, when the foe was nigh,
Wert thou, the bold and true.
Now may’st thou slumber—thy work is done—
Thou of the well-worn sword!
From the stormy fight in thy fame thou’rt gone,
But not to the festal board.
The corn-sheaves whisper thy grave around,
Where fiery blood hath flow’d:
O lover of battle and trumpet-sound!
Thou art couch’d in a still abode!
A quiet home from the noonday’s glare,
And the breath of the wintry blast—
Didst thou toil through the days of thy silvery hair
To win thee but this at last?

THE FALLEN LIME-TREE.

O joy of the peasant! O stately lime!
Thou art fall’n in thy golden honey-time!
Thou whose wavy shadows,
Long and long ago,
Screen’d our gray forefathers
From the noontide’s glow;
Thou, beneath whose branches,
Touch’d with moonlight gleams,
Lay our early poets
Wrapt in fairy dreams.
O tree of our fathers! O hallow’d tree!
A glory is gone from our home with thee.
Where shall now the weary
Rest through summer eves?
Or the bee find honey,
As on thy sweet leaves?
Where shall now the ringdove
Build again her nest?
She so long the inmate
Of thy fragrant breast!
But the sons of the peasant have lost in thee
Far more than the ringdove, far more than the bee!
These may yet find coverts
Leafy and profound,
Full of dewy dimness,
Odour, and soft sound:
But the gentle memories
Clinging all to thee,
When shall they be gather’d
Round another tree?
O pride of our fathers! O hallow’d tree!
The crown of the hamlet is fallen in thee!

THE BIRD AT SEA.

Bird of the greenwood!
Oh, why art thou here?
Leaves dance not o’er thee,
Flowers bloom not near.
All the sweet waters
Far hence are at play—
Bird of the greenwood!
Away, away!
Where the mast quivers
Thy place will not be,
As midst the waving
Of wild-rose and tree.
How shouldst thou battle
With storm and with spray?
Bird of the greenwood!
Away, away!
Or art thou seeking
Some brighter land,
Where by the south wind
Vine leaves are fann’d?
’Midst the wild billows
Why then delay?
Bird of the greenwood!
Away, away!
“Chide not my lingering
Where storms are dark;
A hand that hath nursed me
Is in the bark—
A heart that hath cherish’d
Through winter’s long day:
So I turn from the greenwood,
Away, away!”

THE DYING GIRL AND FLOWERS.

“I desire as I look on these, the ornaments and children of earth, to know whether, indeed, such things I shall see no more?—whether they have no likeness, no archetype in the world in which my future home is to be cast? or whether they have their images above, only wrought in a more wondrous and delightful mould.”—

“Conversations with an ambitious Student in ill health.”
Bear them not from grassy dells
Where wild bees have honey-cells;
Not from where sweet water-sounds
Thrill the greenwood to its bounds;
Not to waste their scented breath
On the silent room of Death!
Kindred to the breeze they are,
And the glow-worm’s emerald star,
And the bird whose song is free,
And the many-whispering tree:
Oh! too deep a love, and vain,
They would win to earth again.
Spread them not before the eyes
Closing fast on summer skies!
Woo thou not the spirit back
From its lone and viewless track,
With the bright things which have birth
Wide o’er all the colour’d earth!
With the violet’s breath would rise
Thoughts too sad for her who dies;
From the lily’s pearl-cup shed,
Dreams too sweet would haunt her bed;
Dreams of youth—of spring-time’s eves—
Music—beauty—all she leaves!
Hush! ’tis thou that dreaming art,
Calmer is her gentle heart.
Yes! o’er fountain, vale, and grove,
Leaf and flower, hath gush’d her love;
But that passion, deep and true,
Knows not of a last adieu.
Types of lovelier forms than these
In their fragile mould she sees;
Shadows of yet richer things,
Born beside immortal springs,
Into fuller glory wrought,
Kindled by surpassing thought!
Therefore, in the lily’s leaf,
She can read no word of grief;
O’er the woodbine she can dwell,
Murmuring not—Farewell! farewell!
And her dim, yet speaking eye
Greets the violet solemnly.
Therefore once, and yet again,
Strew them o’er her bed of pain;
From her chamber take the gloom
With a light and flush of bloom:
So should one depart, who goes
Where no death can touch the rose!

THE IVY-SONG.[416]