Come, months, come away, From November to May,
In your saddest array ; Follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling;
Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and grey,
Let your light sisters play
Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet birds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast ; And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits,
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead.
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn ;
And wherever the heat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured bow:
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
AN EXHORTATION. CHAMELEONS feed on light and air;
Poets' food is love and fame.
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a-day?
Poets are on this cold earth As chameleons might be Hidden from their early birth In a cave beneath the sea. Where light is, chameleons change; Where love is not, poets do. Fame is love disguised: if few Find either, never think it strange That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power A poet's free and heavenly mind. If bright chameleons should devour Any food but beams and wind, They would grow as earthly soon As their brother lizards are. Children of a sunnier star, Spirits from beyond the moon, Oh! refuse the boon!
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS,
MANY a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track; Whilst above the sunless sky. Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o'er-brimming deep; And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity; And the dim low line before Of a dark and a distant shore Still recedes, as ever still Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave To the haven of the grave.
What, if there no friends will greet; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat; Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress
In friendship's smile, in love's caress? Then 'twill wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no: Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins and chill Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Are like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December's bough.
On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, Where a few grey rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the seamews, as they sail O'er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town, When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides: Those unburied bones around There is many a mournful sound; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves por murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony: To such a one this morn was led, My bark by soft winds piloted: 'Mid the mountains Euganean I stood listening to the pæan, With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun's uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning's fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapours cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill.
Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath day's azure eyes Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half reclined
On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier.
A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the seamew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day. Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aërial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering: But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime; If not, perish thou and they, Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away, Earth can spare ye: while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish! let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan; That a tempest-cleaving swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror: what though yet Poesy's unfailing river,
Which through Albion winds for ever, Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled! What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own,-oh, rather say, Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul ! As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs; As divinest Shakspeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscier power, which he Imaged 'mid nortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn, Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp, by which the heart Sees things unearthly; so thou art, Mighty spirit: so shall be The city that did refuge thee.
Lo, the sun floats up the sky Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height; From the sea a mist has spread, And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago.
By the skirts of that grey cloud Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage wild; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest home: Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, I win, I win !" And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time.
In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning; Like a meteor, whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray: Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth: Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world's might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells,
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