hundred sheaves of sceptres! Ay, a planet's gathered crowns!
For with that resplendent harvest-moon, my inmost thoughts were shared
By a bright and shining maiden, hazel-eyed and golden-haired;
One blest hour we sat together in a lone and silent place,
O'er us, starry tears were trembling on the mighty midnight's face.
Gradual crept my arm around her, 'gainst my shoulder came her head,
And I could but draw her closer, whilst I tremulously said,—
"Passion as it runs grows purer, loses every tinge of clay,
As from Dawn all red and turbid flows the white transparent Day,
And in mingled lives of lovers, the array of human ills
Breaks their gentle course to music, as the stones break summer rills."
"You should give the world," she murmured, "such delicious thoughts as these."
"They are fit to line portmanteaus;" "Nay," she whispered, "Memories."
And thereat she looked upon me with a smile so full of grace,
All my blood was in a moment glowing in my ardent face!
Half-blind, I looked up to the host of palpitating stars,
'Gainst my sides my heart was leaping, like a lion 'gainst his bars,
For a thought was born within me, and I said within my mind,
"I will risk all in this moment, I will either lose or find."
"Dost thou love me?" then I whispered; for a minute after this,
I sat and trembled in great blackness—On my lips I felt a kiss;—
Than a roseleaf's touch 'twas lighter,—on her face her hands she prest,
And a heaven of tears and blushes was deep buried in my breast.
I could make her faith, my passion, a wide mark for scorn and sneers,
I could laugh a hollow laughter but for these hot bursting tears;
In the strong hand of my frenzy, laws and statutes snapt like reeds,
And furious as a wounded bull I tore at all the creeds;
I rushed into the desert, where I stood with hopeless eyes,
Glaring on vast desolations, barren sands, and empty skies!
Soon a trembling naked figure, to the earth my face was bowed,
For the curse of God gloomed o'er me like a bursting thunder-cloud.
Rolled away that fearful darkness, pass'd my weakness, pass'd my grief,
Washed with bitter tears I sat full in the sunshine of belief.
Weary eyes are looking eastward, whence the golden sun upsprings,
Cry the young and fervid spirits, clad with ardour as with wings,
"Life and Soul make wretched jangling, they should mingle to one Sire
As the lovely voices mingle in a holy temple choir.
O! those souls of ours, my brothers! prisoned now in mortal bars,
Have been riched by growth and travel, by the round of all the stars.
Soul, alas! is unregarded; Brothers! it is closely shut:
All unknown as royal Alfred in the Saxon neatherd's hut,
In the Dark house of the Body, cooking victuals, lighting fires,
Swelters on the starry stranger, to our nature's base desires.
From its lips is 't any marvel that no revelations come?
We have wronged it; we do wrong it—'tis majestically dumb!
God! our souls are aproned waiters! God! our souls are hired slaves:
Let us hide from Life, my Brothers! let us hide us in our graves.
O! why stain our holy childhoods? Why sell all for drinks and meats?
Why degrade, like those old mansions, standing in our pauper streets,
Lodgings once of kings and nobles, silken stirs and trumpet's din,
Now, where crouch 'mong rags and fever, shapes of squalor and of sin?"
Like a mist this wail surrounds me; Brothers, hush; the Lord Christ's hands
Ev'n now are stretched in blessing o'er the sea and o'er the lands.
Sit not like a mourner, Brother! by the grave of that dear Past,
Throw the Present! 'tis thy servant only when 'tis overcast,—
Give battle to the leaguèd world, if thou'rt worthy, truly brave,
Thou shalt make the hardest circumstance a helper or a slave,
As when thunder wraps the setting sun, he struggles, glows with ire,
Rifts the gloom with golden furrows, with a hundred bursts of fire,
Melts the black and thund'rous masses to a sphere of rosy light,
Then on edge of glowing heaven smiles in triumph on the night.
Lo! the song of Earth—a maniac's on a black and dreary road—
Rises up, and swells, and grandeurs, to the loud triumphal ode—
Earth casts off a slough of darkness, an eclipse of hell and sin,
In each cycle of her being, as an adder casts her skin;
Lo! I see long blissful ages, when these mammon days are done,
Stretching like a golden ev'ning forward to the setting sun.