And standing, muffled round with woe, And if along with these should come And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop'd of late, And he should sorrow o'er my state And marvel what possess'd my brain; And I perceived no touch of change, XV TO-NIGHT the winds began to rise! And roar from yonder dropping day : The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, And wildly dash'd on tower and tree The sunbeam strikes along the world: And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass That makes the barren branches loud; The wild unrest that lives in woe That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. XVI WHAT words are these have fall'n from me? Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or sorrow such a changeling be? Or doth she only seem to take The touch of change in calm or storm; But knows no more of transient form In her deep self, than some dead lake That holds the shadow of a lark Hung in the shadow of a heaven ? And staggers blindly ere she sink? And all my knowledge of myself; And made me that delirious man And mingles all without a plan? XVII THOU Comest, much wept for: such a breeze Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer Was as the whisper of an air To breathe thee over lonely seas. For I in spirit saw thee move Thro' circles of the bounding sky, Come quick, thou bringest all I love. Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam, So may whatever tempest mars Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars. So kind an office hath been done, Such precious relics brought by thee; Till all my widow'd race be run. XVIII "Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. 'Tis little; but it looks in truth As if the quiet bones were blest And in the places of his youth. Come then, pure hands, and bear the head That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep, And come, whatever loves to weep, And hear the ritual of the dead. Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be, Would breathing thro' his lips impart The life that almost dies in me; That dies not, but endures with pain, XIX THE Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; And in the hearing of the wave. There twice a day the Severn fills; And makes a silence in the hills. The Wye is hush'd nor moved along, And hush'd my deepest grief of all, I brim with sorrow drowning song. The tide flows down, the wave again Is vocal in its wooded walls s; My deeper anguish also falls, And I can speak a little then. XX THE lesser griefs that may be said, That breathe a thousand tender vows, Who speak their feeling as it is, And weep the fullness from the mind: "It will be hard" they say "to find Another service such as this." My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze; For by the hearth the children sit Cold in that atmosphere of Death, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit : But open converse is there none, XXI I SING to him that rests below, And, since the grasses round me wave, And make them pipes whereon to blow. The traveller hears me now and then, And sometimes harshly will he speak ; And melt the waxen hearts of men." Another answers, "Let him be, He loves to make parade of pain, That with his piping he may gain The praise that comes to constancy." A third is wroth, "Is this an hour For private sorrow's barren song, When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power? A time to sicken and to swoon, When science reaches forth her arms To feel from world to world, and charms Her secret from the latest moon?” · Behold, ye speak an idle thing : Ye never knew the sacred dust: I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing: And unto one her note is gay, For now her little ones have ranged; And unto one her note is changed, Because her brood is stol'n away. XXII THE path by which we twain did go, And we with singing cheer'd the way, And crown'd with all the season lent, And glad at heart from May to May: But where the path we walk'd began Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold; And dull'd the murmur on thy lip; And bore thee where I could not see And think, that somewhere in the waste The Shadow sits and waits for me. |