Canto I
1 Over a bloomy land untrod
2 By heavier foot than bird or bee
3 Lays on the grassy-bosomed sod,
4 I passed one day in reverie.
5 High on his unpavilioned throne
6 The heaven’s hot tyrant sat alone,
7 And like the fabled king of old
8 Was turning all he touched to gold.
9 The glittering fountains seemed to pour
10 Steep downward rills of molten ore,
11 Glassily tinkling smooth between
12 Broom-shaded banks of golden green,
13 And o’er the yellow pasture straying
14 Dallying still yet undelaying,
15 In hasty trips from side to side
16 Footing adown their steepy slide
17 Headlong, impetuously playing
18 With the flowery border pied,
19 That edged the rocky mountain stair,
20 They pattered down incessant there,
21 To lowlands sweet and calm and wide.
22 With golden lip and glistening bell
23 Burned every bee-cup on the fell,
24 Whate’er its native unsunned hue,
25 Snow-white or crimson or cold blue;
26 Even the black lustres of the sloe
27 Glanced as they sided to the glow;
28 And furze in russet frock arrayed
29 With saffron knots, like shepherd maid,
30 Broadly tricked out her rough brocade.
31 The singed mosses curling here,
32 A golden fleece too short to shear!
33 Crumbled to sparkling dust beneath
34 My light step on that sunny heath.
35 Light, for the ardour of the clime
36 Made rare my spirit, that sublime
37 Bore me as buoyant as young Time
38 Over the green Earth’s grassy prime,
39 Ere his slouch’d wing caught up her slime;
40 And sprang I not from clay and crime,
41 Had from those humming beds of thyme
42 Lifted me near the starry chime
43 To learn an empyrean rhyme.
44 No melody beneath the moon
45 Sweeter than this deep runnel tune!
46 Here on the greensward grown hot gray,
47 Crisp as the unshorn desert hay,
48 Where his moist pipe the dulcet rill
49 For humorous grasshopper doth fill,
50 That spits himself from blade to blade
51 By long o’er-rest uneasy made,
52 Here, ere the stream by fountain pushes
53 Lose himself brightly in the rushes
54 With butterfly path among the bushes,
55 I’ll lay me, on these mosses brown,
56 Murmuring beside his murmurs down,
57 And from the liquid tale he tells
58 Glean out some broken syllables,
59 Or close mine eyes in dreamy swoon,
60 As by hoarse-winding deep Gihoon
61 Soothes with the hum his idle pain
62 The melancholy Tartar swain,
63 Sole mark on that huge-meadowed plain!
64 Hie on to great Ocean! hie on! hie on!
65 Fleet as water can gallop, hie on!
66 Hear ye not thro’ the ground
67 How the sea-trumpets sound
68 Round the sea-monarch’s shallop, hie on!
69 Hie on to brave Ocean! hie on! hie on!
70 From the sleek mountain levels, hie on!
71 Hear ye not in the boom
72 Of the water-bell’s womb
73 Pleasant whoop to sea-revels, hie on!
74 Hie on to bright Ocean! hie on! hie on!
75 ’Tis the store of rich waters, hie on!
76 Hear ye not the rough sands
77 Rolling gold on the strands
78 For poor Earth’s sons and daughters, hie on!
79 Hie on to calm Ocean! hie on! hie on!
80 Summer-rest from earth riot, hie on!
81 Hear ye not the smooth tide
82 With deep murmur and wide
83 Call ye down to its quiet, hie on!
84 Thus to the babbling streamlet elves
85 To haste them down the slopes and shelves,
86 Methought some Naiad of their fall
87 In her bright-dropping sparry hall
88 Sang to her glassy virginal. —
89 Perchance to me monition sweet!
90 I started upright to my feet
91 Attent: ’twas but a fancy dream!
92 I only heard in measure meet
93 The pulses of the fountain beat,
94 As onward prest the throbbing stream.
95 Fair fall no less my fancy dream!
96 I have been still led like a child
97 My heedless, wayward path and wild
98 Thro’ this rough world by feebler clues,
99 So they were bright, than rainbow dews
100 Spun by the insect gossamer
101 To climb with thro’ the ropy air.
102 Fair fall ye then, my fancy dream!
103 I’ll with this labyrinthian stream,
104 Where’er it flow, where’er it cease,
105 There be my pathway and my peace!
106 Swift as a star falls thro’ the night,
107 Swift as a sunshot dart of light,
108 Down from the hill’s heaven-touching height
109 The streamlet vanished from my sight!
110 I crept me to a promontory
111 Where it had fallen from earth’s top story,
112 And peering over, saw its flow,
113 A cataract white of smoke and snow,
114 Looping in fleecy shawls below;
115 Frail footing on such shrouds as these!
116 Elves may descend them if they please;
117 But here, by help of bushy stem
118 That plumes the hill’s huge diadem,
119 By hoar rock, its gigantic gem
120 Far glancing o’er the prostrate seas,
121 Into the vale that spreads to them
122 Lark-like I’ll drop by glad degrees.
123 Shrill on those lofty-sloping leas
124 The wind-bells sounded in the breeze,
125 Dingling beside me, as I glid,
126 So sweet, I scarce knew what I did;
127 But shrilly, too, as that lithe shell
128 Blown from old Ocean’s world-broad well,
129 When the red hour of morn’s begun
130 And Zephyr posts before the Sun.
131 Yet shriller still than rings at morn
132 The wet-mouthed wind-god’s broadening horn,
133 Sudden above my head I heard
134 The cliff-scream of the thunder-bird,
135 The rushing of his forest wings,
136 A hurricane when he swoops or springs,
137 And saw upon the darkening glade
138 Cloud-broad his sun-eclipsing shade.
139 With the shrill clang that cleft the skies
140 When he flew Joveward with his prize,
141 The golden-haired Dardanian boy,
142 With such rude burst of robber joy,
143 Rose the sun-scorner; from earth’s shore
144 My boy-weight like a worm he bore
145 Methought to heaven’s embowed floor;
146 My brain turned — I could see no more!
147 O blest unfabled Incense Tree,
148 That burns in glorious Araby,
149 With red scent chalicing the air,
150 Till earth-life grow Elysian there!
151 Half buried to her flaming breast
152 In this bright tree, she makes her nest,
153 Hundred-sunned Phœnix! when she must
154 Crumble at length to hoary dust!
155 Her gorgeous death-bed! her rich pyre
156 Burnt up with aromatic fire!
157 Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!
158 Her birthplace when self-born again!
159 The mountainless green wilds among,
160 Here ends she her unechoing song!
161 With amber tears and odorous sighs
162 Mourned by the desert where she dies!
163 Laid like the young fawn mossily
164 In sun-green vales of Araby,
165 I woke, hard by the Phœnix tree
166 That with shadeless boughs flamed over me,
167 And upward called by a dumb cry
168 With moonbroad orbs of wonder, I
169 Beheld the immortal Bird on high
170 Glassing the great sun in her eye.
171 Stedfast she gazed upon his fire,
172 Still her destroyer and her sire!
173 As if to his her soul of flame
174 Had flown already, whence it came;
175 Like those that sit and glare so still,
176 Intense with their death struggle, till
177 We touch, and curdle at their chill! —
178 But breathing yet while she doth burn
179 The deathless Daughter of the sun!
180 Slowly to crimson embers turn
181 The beauties of the brightsome one.
182 O’er the broad nest her silver wings
183 Shook down their wasteful glitterings;
184 Her brinded neck high-arched in air
185 Like a small rainbow faded there;
186 But brighter glowed her plumy crown
187 Mouldering to golden ashes down;
188 With fume of sweet woods, to the skies,
189 Pure as a Saint’s adoring sighs,
190 Warm as a prayer in Paradise,
191 Her life-breath rose in sacrifice!
192 The while with shrill triumphant tone
193 Sounding aloud, aloft, alone,
194 Ceaseless her joyful deathwail she
195 Sang to departing Araby!
196 Deep melancholy wonder drew
197 Tears from my heartspring at that view.
198 Like cresset shedding its last flare
199 Upon some wistful mariner,
200 The Bird, fast blending with the sky,
201 Turned on me her dead-gazing eye
202 Once — and as surge to shallow spray
203 Sank down to vapoury dust away!
204 O, fast her amber blood doth flow
205 From the heart-wounded Incense Tree,
206 Fast as earth’s deep-embosomed woe
207 In silent rivulets to the sea!
208 Beauty may weep her fair first-born,
209 Perchance in as resplendent tears,
210 Such golden dewdrops bow the corn
211 When the stern sickleman appears.
212 But oh! such perfume to a bower
213 Never allured sweet-seeking bee,
214 As to sip fast that nectarous shower
215 A thirstier minstrel drew in me!
216 My burning soul one drop did quaff —
217 Heaven reeled and gave a thunder-laugh!
218 Earth reeled, as if with pendulous swing
219 She rose each side through half her ring,
220 That I, head downward, twice uphurled,
221 Saw twice the deep blue underworld,
222 Twice, at one glance, beneath me lie
223 The bottomless, boundless, void sky!
224 Tho’ inland far, me seemed around
225 Ocean came on with swallowing sound
226 Like moving mountains serried high!
227 Methought a thousand daystars burned
228 By their mere fury as they turned,
229 Bewildering heaven with too much bright,
230 Till day looked like a daylight night.
231 Brief chaos, only of the brain!
232 Heaven settled on its poles again,
233 And all stood still, but dizzily.
234 Light-trooping o’er the distant lea
235 A band I saw, where Revelry
236 Seemed on her bacchant foot to be,
237 And heard the dry tambour afar
238 Before her Corybantian car
239 Booming the rout to winy war.
240 Forward I felt my spirit chime
241 Awhoop with this hot-raging rhyme,
242 That, breathed up by the feverish crew
243 While back their Mænad locks they threw,
244 O’er them imbrowned the welkin blue.
245 Ambition mad, when most sublime!
246 Fain had I clomb Heaven’s empery,
247 Fain would my Titan spirit climb
248 Mountain-topt mountain arduously,
249 To whoop the far uproar to me!
250 Such insane power and subtilty
251 The magic drop ethereal gave,
252 Tireless I clomb that palmy tree
253 And saw broad-landed Earth how brave!
254 Low on the horizontal lee
255 I saw, bedreamed, far ocean dumb
256 Upgathering his white skirts to come
257 Midland; his arms twixt Araby
258 And Europe, Afric, India, spread
259 I saw; the Mediterraneans three,
260 Azure, and orient grey, and red,
261 Washing at once the earth and sky;
262 With the untravelled wastes that lie
263 Of greenest ocean, where the South
264 Swills it with demogorgon drouth,
265 Disgorging amid foam and roar
266 His salt draught back to every shore.
267 Mute as I gaze my feet below,
268 By times the silvery ashes glow
269 Under me, where the Bird of Fire
270 In her own flames seemed to expire,
271 Chanting her odorous monody;
272 Methought in each faint glow, again
273 I saw her last dim glance at me
274 Languid with hope akin to pain.
275 “How, if the juice with ether rife,
276 Elixir of superfluous life,
277 Instinct with spiritual flame
278 Which from yon still of splendour came,
279 Might prove more quick restorative
280 Of her, than Hippocrat could give!”
281 So thought I, and with fancy fired
282 Did what the draught itself inspired:
283 I sprinkled on the embers white
284 Few drops; they curdle — close — unite,
285 Each with his orb of atomies,
286 Till in firm corporation these
287 Leaguing again by law occult,
288 Shapening and shapening by degrees,
289 Develop fair the full result;
290 And like the sun in giant mould,
291 Cast of unnumbered stars, behold
292 The Phœnix with her crest of gold,
293 Her silver wings, her starry eyes,
294 The Phœnix from her ashes rise!
295 Now was the wherefore easy scanned,
296 She bore me from my bloomy land,
297 Threw on me her last filmed look;
298 Smouldering aidless in her nook
299 Years had departed ere she grew
300 By sun and starlight bird anew;
301 But their full essence poured in flame,
302 Distilment sweet! Nepenthe true!
303 (By nature panacée sure, and name!)
304 Poured on her dust-dismembered frame,
305 Phœnix at once to heaven she flew!
306 Over hills and uplands high
307 Hurry me, Nymphs! O, hurry me!
308 Where green Earth from azure sky
309 Seems but one blue step to be;
310 Where the sun his wheel of gold
311 Burnishes deeply in her mould,
312 And her shining walks uneven
313 Seem declivities of Heaven.
314 Come! where high Olympus nods,
315 Groundsill to the hall of gods!
316 Let us through the breathless air
317 Soar insuperable, where
318 Audibly in mystic ring
319 The angel orbs are heard to sing;
320 And from that bright vantage ground
321 Viewing nether heaven profound,
322 Mark the eagle near the sun
323 Scorching to gold his pinions dun;
324 With fleecy birds of paradise
325 Upfloating to their native skies;
326 Or hear the wild swans far below
327 Faintly whistle as they row
328 Their course on the transparent tide
329 That fills the hollow welkin wide!
330 Hurry me, Nymphs! O, hurry me
331 Far above the grovelling sea,
332 Which, with blind weakness and base roar
333 Casting his white age on the shore,
334 Wallows along that slimy floor;
335 With his widespread webbèd hands
336 Seeking to climb the level sands,
337 But rejected still to rave
338 Alive in his uncovered grave.
339 Light-skirt dancers, blithe and boon
340 With high hosen and low shoon,
341 ’Twixt sandal bordure and kirtle rim
342 Showing one pure wave of limb,
343 And frequent to the cestus fine
344 Lavish beauty’s undulous line,
345 Till like roses veiled in snow
346 Neath the gauze your blushes glow;
347 Nymphs, with tresses which the wind
348 Sleekly tosses to its mind,
349 More deliriously dishevelled
350 Than when the Naxian widow revelled
351 With her flush bridegroom on the ooze,
352 Hurry me, Sisters! where ye choose,
353 Up the meadowy mountains wild,
354 Aye by the broad sun oversmiled,
355 Up the rocky paths of gray
356 Shaded all my hawthorn way,
357 Past the very turban crown
358 Feathered with pine and aspen spray,
359 Darkening like a soldan’s down
360 O’er the mute stoopers to his sway,
361 Meek willows, daisies, brambles brown,
362 Grasses and reeds in green array,
363 Sighing what he in storm doth say —
364 Hurry me, hurry me, Nymphs, away!
365 Here on the mountain’s sunburnt side
366 Trip we round our steepy slide,
367 With tinsel moss, dry-woven pall,
368 Minist’ring many a frolic fall;
369 Now, sweet Nymphs, with ankle trim
370 Foot we around this fountain brim,
371 Where even the delicate lilies show
372 Trangressing bosoms in bright row
373 (More lustrous-sweet than yours, I trow!)
374 Above their deep green boddices.
375 Shall you be charier still than these?
376 Garments are only good to inspire
377 Warmer, wantoner desire;
378 For those beauties make more riot
379 In our hearts, themselves at quiet
380 Under veils and vapoury lawns
381 Thro’ which their moon-cold lustre dawns,
382 And might perchance if full revealed
383 Seem less wondrous than concealed,
384 Greater defeat of Virtue made
385 When Love shoots from an ambuscade,
386 Than with naked front and fair.
387 Who the loose Grace in flowing hair
388 Hath ever sought with so much care,
389 As the crape-enshrouded nun
390 Scarce warmed by touches of the sun?
391 Nathless, whatsoe’er your tire,
392 Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher, higher!
393 Till the broad seas shrink to streams,
394 Or, beneath my lofty eye,
395 Ocean a broken mirror seems,
396 Whose fragments ’tween the lands do lie,
397 Glancing me from its hollow sky
398 Till my cheated vision deems
399 My place in heaven twice as high!
400 Ho! Evoe! I have found
401 True Nepenthe, balm of pain,
402 Sought by sagest wits profound,
403 Mystic Panacée! in vain.
404 Virtuous Elixir, this
405 Sure the supreme sense of bliss!
406 Feeling my impetuous soul
407 Ravish me swifter than Earth’s roll
408 Tow’rds bright day’s Eoan goal;
409 Or if West I chose to run,
410 Would sweep me thither before the sun,
411 Raising me on ethereal wing
412 Lighter than the lark can spring
413 When drunk with dewlight which the Morn
414 Pours from her translucent horn
415 To steep his sweet throat in the corn.
416 Still, O still my step sublime
417 Footless air would higher climb,
418 Like the Chaldee Hunter bold,
419 Builder of towery Babel old!
420 O what sweeter, finer pleasure
421 Than this wild, unruly measure,
422 Reeling hither, thither, so
423 Higher to the heavens we go!
424 Nymph and swain, with rosy hand,
425 Wreathed together in a band,
426 Like embracing vines that loop
427 Browner elms with tendril hoop,
428 Let us, liker still to these
429 In rich autumn’s purple weather,
430 Mix, as the vineyard in the breeze,
431 Our wine-dropping brows together!
432 Swinging on our feet around
433 Till our tresses touch the ground,
434 That mad moment we do stay
435 To meditate our whirl-away!
436 Winds that, blown off the honied heath,
437 Warm the deep reeds with mellowing breath,
438 Shall for us, Æolian still,
439 These green flutes of Nature fill;
440 On bluebell beds like dulcimers
441 Tingle us most fantastic airs;
442 And where’er her numerous strings
443 Woodbine like a wind-harp swings,
444 Play us light fugues with nimble wings,
445 Trumpeting thro’ each twisted shell
446 Till its mossy wrinkles swell.
447 Such shall, with sweet voluntaries,
448 Blithe accompaniment bear us,
449 Not without help of that dim band,
450 Minstrels of each woody land,
451 Piping unhired on every hand;
452 These shall be our volatile chorus,
453 Fleeting the wilderness before us,
454 Like their small brethren of the chant,
455 Drone-winders itinerant,
456 Old-world humming birds, the bees,
457 Our sweet whifflers shall be these!
458 While our oval close within
459 Capering faun keeps mellow din,
460 With pipe and ceaseless cittern thrum,
461 Tinkling tabor’s shallow drum,
462 Cymbal and lengthening cornmuse hum.
463 Uproar sweet! as when he crost,
464 Omnipotent Bacchus, with his host,
465 To farthest Ind; and for his van
466 Satyrs and other sons of Pan,
467 With swoln eye-burying cheeks of tan,
468 Who trolled him round which way he ran
469 His spotted yoke through Hindostan,
470 And with most victorious scorn
471 The mild foes of wine to warn,
472 Blew his dithyrambic horn!
473 That each river to his source
474 Trembled — and sunk beneath his course,
475 Where, ’tis said of many, they
476 Mourn undiscovered to this day.
477 Still my thoughts, mine eyes aspire!
478 Hurry me, sweet Nymphs, higher and higher!
479 Smooth green hills my soul do tire;
480 Let us leave this lowly shire,
481 Tho’ it be the Happy Clime,
482 ’Tis for spirits less sublime!
483 Fleet we sheer as lightning-blast
484 Pinnacled Petrea past,
485 Burning rocks bestrown with sands!
486 O’er the bleak Deserta lands
487 Pass we, as o’er dead Nature’s tomb,
488 Where Sirocco and Simoom
489 Battle with hot breath for room,
490 Tho’ not even a flower or cress
491 Make war-worth that wilderness;
492 From this wavering blown arene
493 To where the Rome-repelling queen,
494 High-stomach’d, star-bound Emperess!
495 Long beruled broad Palmyrene,
496 Let’s begone; and farther still,
497 Here, too, naught but sandblown hill,
498 Only another ocean bed
499 Tossed by billowy winds instead
500 Of the old legitimate breakers,
501 Dust-disturbers, not earth-shakers!
502 From these deep abysses dry,
503 Filled with sunlight to the sky,
504 Let us, O let us swift begone
505 To the cedared Lebanon;
506 Over Carmel’s flowery sides
507 Where the wild-bee ever bides,
508 Round each beauty of the glade
509 Singing his noontide serenade,
510 Till the ear-enchanted fair,
511 Opening her leafy stomacher,
512 Lets in the little ravisher.
513 On to shadowy Taurus, on!
514 Looming o’er the Syrian wave,
515 Scarce a flower his sides upon,
516 Swoln with many an antique grave
517 Of slaughtered Persepolitan,
518 Rare Greek and Macedonian.
519 Lowly shelter for the slain
520 Still his rueful heaths remain,
521 That purpler tinged with buried blood
522 Darken deeper the green flood,
523 And, a blushing chronicle,
524 The tale of fallen glory tell,
525 Persia’s dumb echoes know so well!
526 Thou whose thrilling hand in mine
527 Makes it tremble as unbid,
528 Whose dove-drooping eyes divine
529 Curtain Love beneath their lid;
530 Fairest Anthea! thou whose grace
531 Leads me enchantedly along
532 Till the sweet windings that we trace
533 Seem like the image of a song!
534 Blithest Anthea! thou I ween
535 Of this jocund choir the queen,
536 From thy beauty still more rare,
537 And a more earth-spurning air,
538 If forsooth my reeling vision
539 Hold thee steadily, and this
540 Be not my mind’s insane misprision,
541 Drunk with the essence-drop of bliss!
542 Small matter! — while the dream be bright!
543 Surely thou with form so light
544 Must be some creature born for winging
545 Where the chimes of Heaven are ringing,
546 And sweet cherub faces singing
547 Requiems to ascending souls
548 Where each orb of glory rolls!
549 Bind me, oh bind me next thy heart,
550 So shall we to the skies depart,
551 And like a twin-star fixt in ether,
552 Burn with immortal flame together!
553 That be our emprised rest,
554 Eyry where birds of Eden nest,
555 Warbling hymns in Wonder’s ear!
556 We still walk this lowly sphere,
557 Lost in the heaven’s crystalline mere
558 More than in ocean one small tear.
559 Wherefore, without vain delay,
560 Haste, Anthea! haste away
561 To those highest peaks the sun
562 Steps with glittering sandal on,
563 That this bosom-fire as fast
564 As his, breathe forth in the clear vast!
565 Bright-haired Spirit! Golden Brow!
566 Onward to far Ida now!
567 Leaving these garden lands below
568 In sea-born dews to steep their glow:
569 Caria and Lycia, dulcet climes!
570 Beds of flowers whose odour limes
571 The o’erflying fast far bird, their thrall
572 Hovering entranced till he fall;
573 Broad Mæonia’s streamy vales
574 Winding beneath us, white with swans
575 Borne by their downy-swelling sails;
576 Each her lucid beauty scans,
577 Bending her slow beak round, and sees
578 Her grandeur as she floats along
579 Gracefully ruffled by the breeze,
580 And troats for joy, too proud for song.
581 Leave we the downlands, tho’ be there
582 Joy a lifelong sojourner;
583 There for ever wildwood numbers
584 Poured in Doric strains dilute
585 Thro’ the unlaborious flute,
586 Soothe Disquiet to his slumbers;
587 In his rosebed sleeps the bee,
588 Lulled by Lydian melody,
589 Half the honied morn in vain!
590 Idler still the Doric swain,
591 Steeped in double sweetness he
592 Hums, as he dreams, his wildwood strain.
593 The Mysian vineplucker sings i’ the tree,
594 And Ionia’s echoing train
595 Of reapers, bending down the lea,
596 Make rich the winds with minstrelsy.
597 Here, no less, if any linger,
598 Pointing us down with abject finger,
599 Or stop with but a sigh to praise
600 The slothful fields on which we gaze
601 More time than serves him to renew
602 His buoyant draughts of ether blue,
603 Or (if the wine-sweat pouring through
604 With beaded reek his brows embrue)
605 Shake from his curls the shining dew —
606 Down with the grovelling caitiff, down!
607 Scourge him with your green thyrses down!
608 While as a thundercloud on high
609 Bursting its blackness o’er him, I
610 Envelop him in my blazing scorn
611 Of dread pride and bright anger born!
612 Here is meet repose for none
613 That climb Earth’s mountain-studded zone!
614 Here the Great Mother smoothes again
615 Her broad skirts to the broader main!
616 Even Æolia’s lofty steep
617 Shelves to the tributary deep,
618 And her level winds do play
619 His watery organ far away
620 To the hoarse Thermaic strand;
621 Sleek as the tremulous lady moon
622 From her bright horizon chair,
623 Tipping his silver keys in tune
624 With long low arm and beamy hand
625 She stretches all enjewelled there.
626 Ida! — illoo! behold! behold
627 Ida, the Queen of the Hills of old,
628 Rising with sundropt crown of gold!
629 Alone great Ida from the shore
630 Lifts high above its silent roar
631 Her caverns, and with those rude ears
632 Only the haughty thunder hears!
633 All hail, green-mantled Ida!
634 Floodgate of heaven-fall’n streams!
635 Replenisher of wasteful ocean’s store!
636 Sweetener of his salt effluence! Ever-pure!
637 Battener of meagre Earth! Bestower
638 Of their moist breath to vegetable things
639 That suck their life from thee! —
640 All hail! —
641 All hail, green Ida! —
642 Woody-belted ida! —
643 Nurse of the bounding lion! his green lair,
644 Whence he doth shake afar
645 The shepherdry with his roar! All hail,
646 Peaks where the wild ass flings
647 His Pegasean heels against mankind,
648 And the more riotous mares,
649 Pawing at heaven, snuff the womb-swelling wind!
650 Ida, all hail! all hail!
651 Nature’s green, ever-during pyramid
652 Heaped o’er the behemoth brute-royal bones
653 Of monstrous Anakim!
654 All hail, great Ida! throne
655 Of that old Jove the olden poet sung
656 Where, from the Gods alone,
657 He listened to the moan
658 Of his divine Sarpedon, thousand moans among! —
659 Ida, all hail! all hail!
660 Thus on thy pinnacle,
661 With springy foot like the wild swan that soars
662 Off to invisible shores,
663 I stand! with blind Ambition’s waxen wings
664 High o’er my head
665 Outspread,
666 Plucking me off the Earth to wheel aerial rings!
667 Lo! as my vision glides
668 Adown these perilous flowery sides,
669 Green hanging-gardens only trod
670 By Nymph or Sylvan God,
671 And sees o’er what a gulf their eminent glory swells,
672 I tremble with delight,
673 Proud of my terrible plight,
674 And turn me to the hollow caves
675 Where the hoarse spirit of the Euxine raves.
676 The melancholy tale of that drown’d Youth he tells
677 To the fast fleeting waves,
678 For ever in vast murmurs, as he laves
679 With foam his sedgy locks loose-floating down the Dardanelles!
680 Down the Dardanelles!
681 What Echo in musical sound repels
682 My words, like thunder tolled
683 From the high-toppling rocks
684 In loud redoublous shocks
685 Behold, great Sun, behold!
686 Down the Dardanelles!
687 Behold the Thunderer where she rides!
688 Behold her how she swells
689 Like floating clouds her canvas sides!
690 Raising with ponderous breast the tides
691 On both the shores, as down she rides,
692 Down the Dardanelles!
693 Down the Dardanelles!
694 Each Continent like a caitiff stands,
695 As every broadside knells!
696 While with a voice that shakes the strands
697 She spreads her hundred-mouth’d commands,
698 Albion’s loud law to both the lands,
699 Down the Dardanelles!
700 Down the Dardanelles!
701 Ye billowy hills before her bowne!
702 Wind caverns! your deep shells
703 Ring Ocean and Earth her old renown
704 Long as that sun from Ida’s crown
705 Smoothes her broad road with splendour down,
706 Down the Dardanelles!
707 Anthea, ever dear,
708 I feel, I feel the sharp satyric ear
709 Thy draught Circean gave me, echoing clear
710 With that far chime!
711 Capacious grown enough to hear
712 The music of the lower sphere,
713 Tho’ fainter than the passing tread of stealthy-footed Time!
714 Be mute, ye summer airs around!
715 Let not a sigh disturb the sound
716 That like a shadow climbs the steepy ground
717 Up from blue Helle’s dim profound!
718 Listen! the roar
719 Creeps on the ear as on a little shore,
720 And by degrees
721 Swells like the rushing sound of many seas,
722 And now as loud upon the brain doth beat
723 As Helle’s tide in thunderbursts broke foaming at my feet!
724 Hist! ho! — the Spirit sings
725 While in the cradle of the surge he swings,
726 Or falling down its sheeted laps,
727 Speaks to it in thunder-claps
728 Terrifical, half-suffocated things!
729 For ever with his furious breath
730 Keeping a watery storm beneath
731 Where’er he sinks, that o’er him seethe
732 The frothy salt-sea surfaces
733 Dissolving with an icy hiss,
734 As if the marvellous flood did flow
735 Over a quenchless fire below!
736 Hist! ho! the Spirit sings!
737 In the caves of the deep — lost Youth! lost Youth! —
738 O’er and o’er, fleeting billows! fleeting billows! —
739 Rung to his restless everlasting sleep
740 By the heavy death-bells of the deep,
741 Under the slimy-dropping sea-green willows,
742 Poor Youth! lost Youth!
743 Laying his dolorous head, forsooth,
744 On Carian reefs uncouth —
745 Poor Youth! —
746 On the wild sand’s ever-shifting pillows!
747 In the foam’s cold shroud — lost Youth! lost Youth! —
748 And the lithe waterweed swathing round him! —
749 Mocked by the surges roaring o’er him loud,
750 “Will the sun-seeker freeze in his shroud,
751 Aye, where the deep-wheeling eddy has wound him?”
752 Lost Youth! poor Youth!
753 Vail him his Dædalian wings, in truth?
754 Stretched there without all ruth —
755 Poor Youth! —
756 Weeping fresh torrents into those that drowned him!
757 List no more the ominous din,
758 Let us plunge deep Helle in!
759 Thracia hollos! — what to us
760 Sky-dejected Icarus?
761 Shall we less than those wild kine
762 That swam this shallow salt confine,
763 Venture to shew how mere a span
764 Keeps continental man from man?
765 Welcome, gray Europe, native clime
766 Of clouds, and cliffs yet more sublime!
767 Gray Europe, on whose Alpine head
768 The Northwind makes his snowy bed,
769 And fostered in that savage form
770 Lies down a blast and wakes a storm!
771 Up! up! to shrouded Rhodope
772 That seems in the white waste to be
773 An icerock in a foaming sea!
774 This inward rage, this eating flame,
775 Turns into fiery dust my frame;
776 Thro’ my red nostril and my teeth
777 In sulphury fumes I seem to breathe
778 My dragon soul, and fain would quench
779 This drouth in some o’erwhelming drench!
780 Up! to the frostbound waterfalls,
781 That hang in waves the mountain walls,
782 Down tumbling ever and anon
783 With long-pent thunders loosed in one,
784 Thro’ the deep valleys where of yore
785 The Deluge his wide channels wore.
786 Hark! thro’ each green and gateless door,
787 Valley to echoing valley calls
788 Me, steep up, higher to the sun!
789 Hark! while we stand in mute astound,
790 Cloud-battled high Pangæus hoar
791 With earthquake voice and ocean roar
792 Keeps the pale region trembling round!
793 Upward! each loftier height we gain,
794 I spurn it like the basest plain
795 Trod by the fallen in hell’s profound!
796 Illoo, great Hæmus! Hæmus old,
797 Half earth into his girdle rolled,
798 Swells against heaven! — Up! up! the stars
799 Wheel near his goal their glittering cars;
800 Ambition’s mounting-step sublime
801 To vault beyond the sphere of Time
802 Into Eternity’s bright clime!
803 Where this fierce joy
804 I feel, shall aye subside,
805 Like a swoln bubble on the ocean tide,
806 Into the River of Bliss, Elysium-wide;
807 And all annoy
808 Lie drowned with it for ever there,
809 And never-ebbing Life’s soft stream with confluent wave
810 My floating spirit bear
811 Among those calm Beatitudes and fair,
812 That lave
813 Their angel forms, with pure luxuriance free,
814 In thy rich ooze and amber-molten sea,
815 Slow-flooding to the one deep choral stave —
816 Eterne Tranquillity!
817 All-blessing, blest, eterne Tranquillity!
818 Strymon, heaven-descended stream!
819 Valley along, thy silver sand
820 Broader and broader yet doth gleam,
821 Spreading into ocean’s strand,
822 Over whose white verge the storm
823 With his wide-swaying loomy arm
824 Weaves his mournful tapestry,
825 Slowly let down from sky to sea.
826 Strymon! up thy craggy banks
827 Mid the pinewood’s wavering ranks,
828 What terrible howl ascends? What blaze
829 Of torches blackening the coil’d haze
830 With grim contrast of smoky rays?
831 What hideous features mid the flare,
832 Lit with yellow laughter? Where,
833 Ah! where my boon Circean band
834 Quiring round me hand in hand? —
835 Furies, avaunt! that dismal joy
836 Breeds me horrible annoy!
837 Avaunt, she-wolves! with rabid yell
838 Riving the very seams of hell
839 To swallow me and your rout as well!
840 Flee, flee, my wretched soul, from these
841 Erinnys and Eumenides,
842 Bacchants no more, but raging brood
843 Of fiends to feast them on hot blood! —
844 Down! down! and shelter me in the flood!
845 “Hollo after! — to living shreds tear him! — hollo after!
846 To the ravenous wild winds share him! — hollo after!
847 Our rite he spurns,
848 From our love he turns,
849 Hurl him the glassy crags down! hollo after!
850 With your torches blast him,
851 To the broken waves cast him,
852 Head and trunk far asunder!
853 With a bellow like thunder,
854 Hollo after! hollo after! hollo after!”
855 Dull in the Drowner’s ear
856 Bubbled amid far ocean these sad echoes drear.
857 In the caves of the deep — Hollo! hollo! —
858 Lost Youth! — o’er and o’er fleeting billows!
859 Hollo! hollo! — without all ruth! —
860 In the foam’s cold shroud! — Hollo! hollo!
861 To his everlasting sleep! — Lost Youth!
Canto II
1 Antiquity, thou Titan-born!
2 That rear’st thee, in stupendous scorn
3 At all succession. from thy bed
4 On prime earth’s firm foundations spread,
5 And look’st with dim but settled eye
6 O’er thy deep lap, within whose span
7 Layer upon layer sepulchred lie
8 Whole generations of frail man!
9 That steady glare not fierce Simoom,
10 Blasting with his hot pinion blinds,
11 Nor floods of dust thy corse entomb,
12 Heaped o’er thee by the sexton winds!
13 Nor temple, tower, nor ponderous town
14 Built on thy grave can keep thee down,
15 But still thou rear’st thee in thy scorn,
16 Antiquity, thou Titan-born,
17 To crush our souls with that dim frown!
18 Strong Son of Chaos! who didst seem
19 Only a fairer form of him,
20 Moulding his mountainous profounds
21 To fanes and monumental grounds;
22 His rocky coigns, with giant ease,
23 In pyramids and palaces
24 Piling aslope, as we with pain
25 His ruinous rubbish raised in vain!
26 Thou that with Tubal old compeer,
27 In living cliffs didst statue man
28 And carve, for toys, leviathan
29 Or mammoth, yet found bedded here
30 His stony limbs, where once he stood
31 Scarce moved a footpace by the Flood!
32 Still at thy works in mute amaze,
33 Sorrow and envy and awe we gaze!
34 Enlarge our little eyeballs still
35 To grasp in these degenerate days
36 Marvels that shewed a mighty will,
37 Huge power and hundred-handed skill,
38 That seek prostration and not praise
39 Too faint such lofty ears to fill!
40 From Ind to Egypt thou art one,
41 Pyramidal Memphis to Tanjore,
42 From Ipsambul to Babylon
43 Reddening the waste suburban o’er;
44 From sand-locked Thebes to old Ellore,
45 Her caverned roof on columns high
46 Pitched, like a Giant brood that bore
47 Headstrong the mountain to the sky:
48 That one same Power, enorm, sublime
49 Thou art, from antique clime to clime,
50 Eternal stumbling-block of Time!
51 Whose fragmentary limbs do stay,
52 Stones of offence, his difficult way,
53 And turn it o’er our works of clay.
54 Lo! where thy strength colossal lay
55 Dormant, within the deep-sunk halls
56 Of cities labyrinthian
57 Mid sandy Afric and the walls
58 Of sunburnt Syria or Deccan,
59 Up from the bilging globe he calls
60 Seas to surprise thee, or enthralls
61 Earth to deluginous ocean,
62 So far he may; with foamy van
63 Whelming her shores where thou bedreamed
64 Heard’st not the tide that o’er thee teemed
65 Mountains of water! Aye in vain!
66 O’ersailing vessels see below
67 Clear, thro’ the glass-green undulous plain,
68 Like emerald cliffs unmoved glow
69 Thy towering forms stretched far a-main
70 By Coromandel, or that side
71 Neptunian Ganges rolls the tide
72 Of his swoln sire; by Moab’s lake
73 Whose purulent flood dry land doth slake
74 With bittern ooze, where that salt wife
75 Drinks her own tears she weeps as rife,
76 Empillared there, as when she turned
77 Back tow’rds her liquorish late-spent life
78 Where Shame’s sulphureous cities burned:
79 By Dorian Sicily and Misene,
80 Upon whose strand thou oft didst lean
81 Thy temple-crowned head; and where
82 Antium with opposite Carthage were;
83 By green Juvernia’s giant road
84 Paved from her headland slope and broad
85 Sands down to Rachlin’s columned isle,
86 And dim Finn Gael’s huge-antred pile
87 Where his vast orgue, high fluted, stands
88 Basaltic, swept with billowy hands
89 Oft, till the mystic chancel mourn
90 To weltering biers around it borne
91 Hoarse ritual o’er the wrecked forlorn;
92 There did the scythed Demon hew
93 Sheer the Cyclopian causeway through,
94 Letting the steep Icelandic sea
95 In on the Ibernian and on Thee!
96 So from their icy moorings he,
97 Lopt cable, loosed the Arctic isles
98 Full sail, with mountainous weigh and prore
99 To force that boom of seadriven piles,
100 Bulwark against the Northern bore
101 Of Ocean, laid by thee, and now
102 Chaining the Strait, as long before,
103 Tho’ scattered on the Southern bow
104 Kamchatka’s sparry waters o’er —
105 What need for thy great relics plough
106 Tartaria sands, or seek that scroll
107 Which the rapt Bonze can scarce unroll,
108 Thy chronicle, in pagodas dim,
109 Lengthening it wave and wave a-flow
110 Incessant, as from darkness’ brim
111 Wells forth Cathaian Hoan-ho?
112 What need thy famous works be told
113 I’ the New World, older than the Old,
114 If sooth the Mexique annals say
115 With Eve’s first born, Tradition gray,
116 And monuments more fixed than they —
117 Pyramids baked in Noah’s sun,
118 Dials and monstrous Gods, far back
119 Out-dating Denderah’s Zodiac,
120 Crocodilopolis and Karnak;
121 With scrolls of pictured speech begun
122 Ere smoother hieroglyph could run,
123 Slight copy of that primeval one?
124 What need the wondrous town untomb,
125 Palenque, aye too old for Fame
126 To tell her antediluvian name
127 Or fate; perchance, at her own door,
128 Crept back into Creation’s womb,
129 Tired of endurance, thro’ the chasm
130 Oped in Earth’s side with mighty spasm
131 When Orinook burst forth, and down
132 From Chimborazo’s streamy crown
133 Rolled oceanic Maranon,
134 Contributing fresh seas to seas;
135 Huge chasm! with Andes’ ponderous chain
136 Locked to Eternity again,
137 The gulf of All as well as these.
138 Passing thy pierless bridges swung
139 Gorge over, darkening every dell,
140 With keystone rocks colossal hung
141 Like Sin’s broad way from heaven to hell,
142 Sloping aloft with cliffy sides,
143 Thro’ the burnt air the porchway rides;
144 Demoniac shapes, devices grim,
145 Trenching the storied panels dim,
146 And mystic signs, dark oracles
147 Of Destiny, and Hell’s decrees! —
148 Alas! what scalding sand-wind rolls
149 Me to the sulphury rack of souls
150 Fierce on, and scarfs my victim eyes
151 With careless wreaths for sacrifice?
152 Thus weep I, whirlwind-rapt amain:
153 Save me! O save, ye mighty Twain,
154 Arbiters here twixt Sin and Pain!
155 Tho’ Angels still of Judgment, be
156 Angels of Mercy now to me!
157 Bend down your level looks, or raise
158 One iron finger from the knee,
159 So Cherubin Pities sing your praise! —
160 Thus to a Twain that reared their forms
161 Like promontories o’er the storms,
162 Methought, dread Umpires of my doom,
163 Sitting impalled within the gloom
164 As ebon Seraphim by Night’s throne,
165 Low at their feet I made my moan.
166 They stirred not at my prayer; but dumb,
167 Sate like the symbols of the world to come,
168 Immutable, inscrutable! I lay
169 Drowned in my heart-blood, wept away
170 Fruitlessly at those feet, long time,
171 Like the dust-clung, outcast corse of Crime.
172 A sigh that seemed to come from heaven
173 By some aerial Sorrow given,
174 Weeping his sublunar state — a sigh —
175 One faint far sound, like a swan’s cry
176 Heard thro’ the daffodils ere it die,
177 O’ercame my senses; a sweet wail
178 Soothing me with its violet gale
179 To gentlest mood. I looked — and lo!
180 Sweet as Love’s star a crest did glow
181 On that now visible head I deemed
182 One of my Arbiter’s. Fair it beamed
183 With soft dilation, mellowing still
184 The heav’n-fall’n gem its saffron fire,
185 Crowning the radiant front until
186 Godlike and glorified entire:
187 The while, as there essayed his skill
188 Light-handed Zephyr o’er a lyre
189 With the bright hair strung like golden wire,
190 Dulcetly did the sunbeams thrill
191 Within that coronal attire,
192 Hailing the dawn! And at such hail
193 Behold a-peak the Orient dale,
194 Morning, with light-blown silver veil,
195 Stands dewy-eyed, and matron-pale;
196 Breathing in smiles and tears upon
197 This sacred head her blessings dear,
198 As erst she did, each daylight peer,
199 Sad for her monumental Son.
200 O unchanged world! ’Twas Memnon here
201 Sat gazing with a mournful cheer
202 Still at his mother! Still with smile
203 Fond as her own would fain beguile
204 Her sorrow! Still each matin rise
205 Welcomed her bright tears with his sighs!
206 Most strange! most true! for I anon
207 Heard the famed chant heard long agone
208 By storiers sage, ascend the skies
209 From his Æolian barbiton;
210 Soft parleying like the voice of rills
211 With Echo in the distant hills,
212 But versing words more liquid clear
213 Than those could, to a thirstier ear.
214 Thus, with a breezy rise and fall, rang the Memnonian rhyme,
215 Like the sweet-mouthed bells of heaven, wild but in one same chime.
216 Winds of the West, arise!
217 Hesperian balmiest airs, O waft back those sweet sighs
218 To her that breathes them from her own pure skies,
219 Dew-dropping, mixt with dawn’s engoldened dyes,
220 O’er my unhappy eyes!
221 From primrose bed and willow bank, where your moss cradle lies,
222 O from your rushy bowers, to waft back her sweet sighs,
223 Winds of the West, arise!
224 Over the ocean blown,
225 Far-winnowing, let my soul be mingled with her own,
226 By sighs responsive to each other known!
227 Bird unto bird’s loved breast has often flown
228 From distant zone to zone;
229 Why must the Darling of the Morn lament him here alone?
230 Shall not his fleeting spirit be mingled with her own,
231 Over the ocean blown?
232 From your aerial bourne
233 Look down, O Mother, and hear your hapless Memnon mourn!
234 Spectre of my gone self, by sorrow worn,
235 Leave me not, Mother beloved! from your embraces torn,
236 For ever here forlorn!
237 For ever, ever lonely here! of all life’s glory shorn!
238 Look down, O Mother! behold your hapless Memnon mourn,
239 From your aerial bourne!
240 The sweet Voice swooned, deep-thrilling; then
241 Raised its wild monody once more
242 As the far murmuring of the main
243 Heard in a sea-shell’s fairy shore,
244 Scarce sensible, made one with pain,
245 Wind-lost and fitfuller than before;
246 Yet still methought the mystic strain
247 Burden like this bewildered bore.
248 O could my Spirit wing
249 Hills over, where salt Ocean hath his fresh headspring
250 And snowy curls bedeck the Blue-haired King,
251 Up where sweet oral birds articulate sing
252 Within the desert ring —
253 Their mighty shadows o’er broad Earth the Lunar Mountains fling,
254 Where the Sun’s chariot bathes in Ocean’s fresh headspring —
255 O could my spirit wing!
256 O could this Spirit, prisoned here
257 Like thine, Immortal Murmurer!
258 In hatefullest bounds and bonds of clay,
259 O could this Spirit of mine away
260 To those strange lands — “Away! away!”
261 Methought the breeze with soft command
262 Raised itself in a sigh to say
263 After me, whispering still “Away!”
264 Still by my side re-echoing bland
265 In fervorous secrecy — “Away!”
266 The desert breeze with pinion gray
267 Rustled along the leafless sand,
268 Warning me still — “Away! away!”
269 Not less than magic breath had blown
270 Ashy ambition now to flame,
271 Within me; but like veins in stone
272 Red grew the blood in my cold frame:
273 Tho’ drained this life-spring to the lees
274 On lancing rocks — this body worn,
275 Weed-wrung, and saturate with seas
276 Gulped thro’ — by their wild mercy borne
277 Half jellied hither, and well nigh
278 Piecemeal by those white coursers torn
279 That shook their manes of me, foam high,
280 Cast on their saviour backs forlorn —
281 Tho’ thus my flesh, my spirit still
282 Is unsubdued! aspiring will
283 Buoys up my sinking power. ’Tis thine,
284 This quenchless spark! To thee this glow,
285 This rise from my sea-grave I owe,
286 Nepenthe! vital fire divine!
287 Yet ah! what boots, if cup of bliss
288 Have such a bitter dreg as this?
289 Fragile and faint must I still on
290 The arduous path that I have gone,
291 Or burn in my own sighs! Like thee,
292 A winged cap, O Mercury!
293 I wear, that lifts me still to heaven,
294 Tho’ down to herd with mortals driven.
295 Now as swift as Sadness may
296 Let me to those hills away,
297 Where the shadows of the Moon
298 Reach broad earth at brightest noon,
299 Where the Sun’s car glittering
300 Waits at Ocean’s fresh headspring,
301 And sweet oral birds do sing
302 Wild catches in the desert ring,
303 Mocking the changeful-crested King!
304 That must be where Cybele rears
305 Her tow’red head above the spheres,
306 Awful to Gods! where Eden high,
307 With terraced stairs that climb the sky,
308 Long lost to mortal ken doth lie.
309 E’en let me thither sad and slow
310 As wayworn he from thence doth go,
311 Reptilous Nile! — As shades that pass
312 Silent and soft o’er fields of grass,
313 So let my trackless spectre glide
314 His solitary wave beside.
315 Hundred-gated City! thou
316 With gryphoned arch and avenue
317 For denizen giants, serve they now
318 But to let one poor mortal thro’?
319 Wide those streaming gates of war
320 Ran once with many a conqueror,
321 Horseman and chariot, to the sound
322 Of the dry serpent blazoning round
323 Theban Sesostris’ dreaded name.
324 Where is now the loud acclaim?
325 Where the trample and the roll,
326 Shaking staid Earth like a mole?
327 Sunk to a rushes sigh! — Farewell,
328 Thou bleached wilderness o’erblown
329 By treeless winds, unscythable
330 Sandbanks, with peeping rocks bestrown,
331 That for thy barrenness seem’st to be
332 The bed of some retreated sea!
333 City of Apis, shrine and throne,
334 Fare thee well! dispeopled sheer
335 Of thy mighty millions, here
336 Giant thing inhabits none,
337 But vast Desolation!
338 Fare well thee! — and lowly too,
339 Ye rev’rend sites, colossal names,
340 Esné and Ombos and Edfou,
341 Echoing still your bygone fames
342 In such ponderous syllables,
343 Howsoe’er forgotten else.
344 Over white-cliffed Elephantine,
345 Thro’ thy quarries red and gray,
346 Womb of sublimity, Syene
347 Onward still I take my way:
348 Where broad Nile with deafening hymn
349 Enters the land of Mizraim,
350 O’er sounding cliffs made musical
351 By his wave-choral waterfall;
352 Athwart high Nubia’s tawny shelves,
353 Down which ploughing deep he delves,
354 Long strider of the level sands,
355 Three cataract steps to lower lands.
356 Scarce my fiery breath I cool
357 In thee, hill-hollowed Ipsambul,
358 Where primeval Troglodyte
359 Turned the torrid day to night.
360 Helmed high within the gloom,
361 Thy pillaring statues sit sublime,
362 Taking, each side, colossal room
363 On granite thrones no king might climb,
364 And keeping halled state till Doom,
365 Co-templar Deities with Time.
366 Or before thy porch profound
367 By the choked river’s antique roll,
368 From their seats, dry fathoms drowned,
369 Peering mildly over ground,
370 Head-free, along the desert shoal,
371 If not with form discumbered whole,
372 Looking blank on, as they did see
373 Far o’er this little earthy knoll
374 Into thy depths, Infinity.
375 Narrowing now my path begins
376 Toward the lofty Abyssins;
377 Now in silk-soft fleece below,
378 Shrunk to miniature sound and show,
379 Tumbos’ cataract seems to flow
380 A visual roar, and that high steep
381 Jebel Arambo, a step deep.
382 Now while this keen air renews,
383 On my strength its aim pursues,
384 From that old sand-swallowed Isle
385 Meroe, doubled by the Nile,
386 Balking before whose watery bar
387 Vainly Simoom his dragon cheers,
388 That sandward home from Senaar
389 Back on his stormy rider rears;
390 Fierce recusant to daggle still
391 His dusty wings at that blind will!
392 So I too, in dragon scorn,
393 With red breath like the desert-born,
394 Bicker against the winds that press
395 Me from that broad wilderness,
396 Westward then, where Nile divides
397 In two varicolour tides,
398 Milky and sable, I shall rise
399 By that soft galaxy to the skies.
400 Thanks, Nepenthe fine, for this
401 Living apotheosis!
402 Hark! above me I do hear
403 Heavenly joybells ringing clear,
404 And see their golden mouths, ding-dong,
405 Vibrate with a starry tongue.
406 Welcome! welcome! still they toll
407 Syllabled sweetly in knell-knoll,
408 While more deep, with undulous swell,
409 Chimes unseen the burden-bell,
410 Mellowing, in the mighty boom
411 Of his huge sonorous womb,
412 Their sweet clangour, like the din
413 Of streams lost in a roaring lynn.
414 Twilight now o’er lawn and dale
415 Draws her dew-enwoven veil,
416 Tender-bosomed flowers to keep
417 Unruffled in their balmy sleep;
418 Her’s from planet fair and star
419 Day’s last blushing Hour doth steal,
420 Those bright rivals to reveal,
421 And the Queen Moon, their non-pareil,
422 Rolling between her noiseless car,
423 Where in heaven-wide race they reel
424 Light splintering from each glassy wheel.
425 Small birds now thro’ leafy shed
426 Rustling haste to bower and bed,
427 And the Roc, slow winnowing, sails
428 Heavily homeward thro’ the vales
429 Clanging betimes, while they do cheep,
430 The tremblers, and more inwood creep.
431 Then shall not I, in some thick sward
432 Rest me, like gazelle or pard,
433 Brinded hyæna or zebir barred;
434 Now that even these supple rovers
435 Hie to caves and healthy covers,
436 There to sleep till huntress Morn
437 Rouse them again with her far horn!
438 Solitary wayfarer!
439 Minstrel winged of the green wild!
440 What dost thou delaying here,
441 Like a wood-bewildered child
442 Weeping to his far-flown troop,
443 Whoop! and plaintive whoop! and whoop?
444 Now from rock and now from tree,
445 Bird! methinks thou whoop’st to me,
446 Flitting before me upward still
447 With clear warble, as I’ve heard
448 Oft on my native Northern hill
449 No less wild and lone a bird,
450 Luring me with his sweet chee-chee
451 Up the mountain crags which he
452 Tript as lightly as a bee,
453 O’er steep pastures, far among
454 Thickets and briary lanes along,
455 Following still a fleeting song!
456 If such my errant nature, I
457 Vainly to curb or coop it try
458 Now that the sundrop thro’ my frame
459 Kindles another soul of flame!
460 Whoop on, whoop on, thou canst not wing
461 Too fast or far, thou well-named thing,
462 Hoopoe, if of that tribe which sing
463 Articulate in the desert ring!
464 Striding the rough mountain mane
465 Of Earth, her forelock now I gain,
466 Whence I behold the lucid spheres
467 As thick as ocean dropt in tears
468 On the sapphire-paven ciel,
469 That close now to my head doth wheel.
470 Brighter the Moon, and brighter glows!
471 Broader and broader still she grows!
472 On that steepling pinnacle
473 With glance rocks silver-slated down,
474 Her radiant ball sits tangible,
475 Huge pearl of Afric’s mountain crown!
476 Ponderous jewel of Earth’s crest!
477 There, star-studded she doth rest,
478 Filling every vale and lea
479 From her lucid fountain free,
480 Bank high, as with a crystal sea.
481 Flooded bright each woodland moves
482 Crisp as the sounding coral groves,
483 And each emerald lane doth seem
484 Bed of a diamond-watered stream.
485 But lo! what mighty shadows cast
486 Their lengths upon the glittering vast
487 Portentous, as with giant reach
488 Eclipse thro’ fields of air did stretch
489 Printing the lunar hills upon
490 Earth’s disk in darkest colours dun?
491 Ha! more true shall Fantasy,
492 Twin-brother profane to Prophecy,
493 Interpret yon bright written sign,
494 Blazoning the dome with sense divine.
495 Yon far luminary stands
496 Apparent on these peaked lands,
497 Meanful device and monogram
498 Of their veritable name —
499 The Mountains of the Moon! long known
500 On Afric’s groin enormous zone,
501 But trod by mortal me alone!
502 ’Less Gomer here did set his shoon,
503 Crossing to southern Zanguebar,
504 And call’d them Jebel-el-Gomar,
505 Arabiqued, Mountains of the Moon:
506 Since that double word implies
507 This sense, and toward the Star they rise
508 Her semblable footstool in the skies.
509 Now that she sinks amid the hills
510 And vaporous gloom her region fills,
511 Tearful light each orb distils,
512 Faintly closing his small eye!
513 Wrapt in stole of sablest dye,
514 Death-heavy Darkness on his throne
515 Nods like a corse! What Anguish draws
516 That sigh, to make Existence pause,
517 And the deep slumberers under stone
518 Turn in their wormy beds and groan?
519 Yet, a more terrible moan!
520 Like the buried Titan’s sob
521 Bursting Etna’s rocky chains
522 It shakes huge Afric with a throb,
523 Her stout girdle scarce sustains.
524 Hark, another! — but like the sound
525 Of hell’s breath bubbling up thro’ pools profound,
526 Sent forth in cloudy wise!
527 And now that Dawn, with flickering plumage gray,
528 Brushes the thick-spun web of Night away,
529 Two pools in mist and murmur bubble before mine eyes!
530 Black-watered that: right o’er
531 Its cave, a bust of Mauritanian mood,
532 Thick-lipt and carved in negro curls, as rude
533 As the grim lake itself in wavy tresses wore:
534 This ripples in soft ringlets, and sleek folds
535 Of milky undulance, eastward oozing
536 The hill’s green shoulders down, diffusing
537 His wealth of waters o’er the humble wolds:
538 Not like his dark Brother making
539 His chasmy way, by choice, nor taking
540 Precipitous steps into the Atlantic holds.
541 Over the smooth well-front was seen
542 Cut in a stony table of Syene,
543 A head, of that colossal leaven,
544 But with mild looks, and patient eyeballs graven,
545 Waiting for day!
546 She rose, maternal Morn!
547 With her first golden smile greeting the brow
548 Memnonian, and with balmiest sighs
549 Breathing her soul of love into those sanguine eyes
550 That gazed with large affection on the skies!
551 And like the joy of a faint-swelling horn
552 Heard far aloof, notes of glad welcome now
553 Rose from the steep front of the Goddess-born.
554 Charactered underneath upon the stone
555 I read these mystic words alone:
556 Memnon — the God of the Blue River — the King
557 Of the Endless Valley — whoever his spirit
558 Will free from earthly fetters, let him mingle
559 A cup of darkness here with one of light,
560 Fit opiate for Life’s fever,
561 And so be blest, pouring it on his brain.
562 Two cups I mingled, dark and light,
563 From that black fountain and this white,
564 Pouring the opiate deftly down
565 The Nile-God’s cleft and hollow crown,
566 As I divined his will. The air
567 Grew vocal for a moment there,
568 With out-flown shriek of joy; and where
569 Welkin aloft the sunbird sings,
570 I heard a clap and rush of wings,
571 As if some earth-pent spirit freed
572 Rose to the realms of bliss indeed!
573 Memnon from that day, by the shore
574 Of Nile, sits murmurless evermore!
575 Thy claybound spirit is free, and mine
576 Still in this barry skeleton pine?
577 No! — and I quaffed from either well
578 The mingled cup of heaven and hell!
579 Darkness began to hood the sky,
580 Methought, once more, the day to die
581 On this bleak death-bed, but not I!
582 From the sharp East a blackening wind
583 Came with broad vans the hills behind,
584 In her cloud-hung pavilion
585 Rolling Death’s sable sister on,
586 Portentous Night! Within the fold
587 Of its dark valance I was rolled
588 Whirling, steep down, as in a pall
589 Down the great gulf’s eternal fall.
590 No sun came forth again; but gray
591 As the still rocks on which I lay
592 Bleaching at last, endured the day.
593 O’er me the hard sky, massy-paven,
594 Seemed to be dropping crags from heaven
595 To make Earth dust, and hurricanes
596 Let scatter on her their whistling manes.
597 So, with his ensigns wet, Monsoon
598 Swept o’er the Mountains of the Moon,
599 Dreadfully calling cloud on cloud
600 From the deep South, that in thick crowd,
601 Swoln with the summons, bellying ran
602 To burst their rude strength in the van,
603 Till mass o’er mass enormous hurled
604 Heavily toppling stood the world!
605 Such terror vain Ambition waits
606 Still on the high tops he would tread:
607 Stand fast, ye thunder-shaken gates,
608 Against the rain-flood, o’er my head
609 Beating like ocean on his bed!
610 O let me wing unshent again
611 To sweet Earth’s lowest, lowliest plain;
612 Then let the rushing deluge sweep
613 Her proudest pinnacles to the deep!
614 Desert paths of the dry streams!
615 Swifter than the torrent teems
616 Scourged by South winds, as I flee
617 Spread your gray sands firm for me!
618 Pendant cliffs with sheltering brow
619 Shade me from destruction now!
620 Rocky steps of giant stride
621 Descending Afric, down your side,
622 Your unhewn smoothness let me slide!
623 Air! O air, with thickening breath
624 Stay me not in the gripe of Death!
625 Back by the blown locks who doth still
626 Pull me to his cruel will;
627 Let me into thy sightless sea
628 Like the poor minnow from the shark,
629 From those fell jaws that gape for me,
630 Plunge into deepest abysses dark!
631 Welcome dusky, unsunned dells,
632 Roofed with savage trees o’erblown,
633 Caverns in whose dripping cells
634 Hermit Sadness sits alone!
635 Eldern forests, whispering dim
636 Secrets in your dread Sanhedrim,
637 And nodding fate on those below;
638 Fearless thro’ such inquest grim,
639 Rustling your mossy beards I go,
640 Fathomless falls for wild Despair!
641 Gulfs intransible of deep air!
642 Gladly from yon tempest I
643 To your terrible shelter fly.
644 Welcome, rocky vaults and rude
645 Cave-continued for the flood
646 That rolls his serpent-strength between,
647 Hissing beside me tho’ unseen,
648 Thro’ his vast ambush subterrene;
649 Chasms with cragged teeth beset,
650 Swallow me deeper, deeper yet!
651 Lowliest path is least unsure,
652 Most sublime, most insecure!
653 Fond Earth, within her parent breast
654 Finds us, weak little ones, safe room,
655 And thither pain or care opprest,
656 Sooner or later as their doom
657 All creep for refuge and for rest.
658 Shadowy aisles of pillared trees
659 Now my errant fancy please,
660 Dim cathedral walks like these;
661 Nave by numerous transepts crost,
662 Each in his own long darkness lost,
663 Cloister and chancel, thick embossed
664 Their roofs with pendant foliage, thro’
665 Whose fretted branchwork richly pours
666 The sun, in golden order due,
667 His bright mosaic on the floors.
668 Spreading now the darksome bourne,
669 Into warm twilight I return,
670 Still by these umbrageous eaves
671 Sheltered; and where the thinner leaves,
672 With verdant panes, too bright illume,
673 Glance and pass forward into gloom
674 Thro’ the dim-green air I hear
675 Only the rush of waters near,
676 Or see their spray a moment gleam,
677 Watermotes in the passing beam.
678 By that visionary shore
679 Steep channel of continual roar,
680 Billowy duct of flowing thunder,
681 That wallows the rooted woodland under,
682 Wandering I, in dizzy wonder,
683 Tread the hollow crust that caves
684 The rueful Erebus of waves
685 Beneath me surging. Blind I roam
686 The wilderness. O gentle Eve!
687 Pale daughter of the Day, receive
688 My greeting glad! — All hail, thou dome
689 Of God’s great Temple, lit so bright
690 With lamps of ever-living light,
691 Kept trim within those censers rare
692 By Virgins quiring to their care,
693 Voice-joined, tho’ separate in far air.
694 Awful Night! thy sombre plumes,
695 Shadowed athwart the moonlight pale,
696 Make this rock-bestudded vale
697 Gleam like an antique place of tombs,
698 With lustre cold that chills the gale.
699 Grateful now to fallen me
700 This deep tranquillity!
701 Here in folded silence fast
702 Shall I fix myself at last,
703 Till I grow by age as grey
704 As the rocks, and stiff as they,
705 Making ever here my own
706 Statue and monumental stone!
707 Cliff, of smoothest front sublime,
708 Tablet for that old storier Time!
709 What huge aboriginal sons
710 Of Earth, beat down by vengeful waves,
711 Sleep beneath these obliterate stones
712 In unmeasurable graves?
713 What mystic word inscribed can show
714 His terrible might who sleeps below? —
715 Sinews resolved to wreaths of sand!
716 Seams of white dust his bony frame!
717 His place on Glory’s scroll doth stand
718 Blank — or filled up with others’ fame!
719 Yet was he one that Pelion-high
720 Clomb perchance the difficult sky
721 Pelion on Oeta and Ossa heaved
722 Till of sight and sense bereaved,
723 Storm or sun stricken as I!
724 Ay, and shall Adam’s pigmy sperm
725 Think to reach that sacred sphere
726 Which, from high-battled hills infirm,
727 No Briarean arms came near;
728 Or think that his small memory dear,
729 Writ in the sands, shall aye survive,
730 While the eternal headstones here
731 Keep no giant name alive?
732 The sands of thy own life, Renown,
733 Run between two creations down,
734 Few centuries apart! What need
735 Glorious thought, or word, or deed,
736 When all mortal grandeur must
737 Lie with oblivion in the dust?
738 Then hie on to humble lands!
739 On, still onward let me roam,
740 O’er sea-broad Sahara sands,
741 By the cataract’s grizzled foam,
742 Where live-bounding he doth come,
743 Headlong Niger! down the rocks,
744 Swept with his dishevelled locks,
745 Sable turned to silver flocks,
746 Like dark rain to driven snow,
747 When the blasts hibernal blow!
748 Now my steps as mute proceed
749 By his solitary roll
750 Winding round each desert knoll
751 As a gay enamelled mead,
752 With its yellow-blossom reed
753 Single bright thing that doth breed
754 There; and rushy tufts of grass
755 Only sighing as we pass:
756 This wide waste of air unstirred
757 By the voice of bee or bird,
758 Even the soaring eagle’s scream
759 Far off, like music in a dream
760 Imaged to the ear, is heard.
761 Strange pleasure in such wild to wander
762 Following murmurless Meander,
763 That loses his own serpent folds
764 Oft within the sabulous wolds.
765 May not I, ere these be crost,
766 Grave of all things living, be lost,
767 Now that in this inky lake,
768 Dry Afric’s mediterranean,
769 Unsailed sea, the Mountain Snake
770 Buries his sightless head again?
771 Yet whate’er my soul inspire,
772 Purple sweet instinct with fire,
773 Or that late delirious draught,
774 Which from lunar wells I quaffed,
775 Still I turn where sand and sky
776 Spread in blank boundlessness to mine eye.
777 Thou, night-shaded Fountain! pure
778 Essence of darkness, deep distilled,
779 ’Tis thou that hast my soul, most sure,
780 With thy sad infusion filled!
781 Else wherefore love I thus to tread
782 O’er the dust of Nature dead,
783 Buried in her own ashes gray,
784 Without one offspring of her womb
785 To strew her even a leafy tomb?
786 Wherefore love I thus to stray,
787 Finding joy in the lone wild,
788 Like Desertion’s only child,
789 That in the sunburnt, silent air
790 Builds his crumbling castles there
791 And builds and plays with his despair?
792 Solitude as deep and wide,
793 Treeless and herbless, never trod
794 Gray Triton underneath the tide,
795 Wandering the tawny barrens broad.
796 All is dumb, and the dead sands
797 Lie in long warps on both hands,
798 Furrows incult or barely sown,
799 Like desecrate lands, with salt alone,
800 Seed of sterility! — O more fleet
801 Must be my Arimaspian feet
802 To ’scape this dragon of the air,
803 Winding me round with sulphury flare,
804 Than the wild ostrich as she glides
805 Sheer onward with unpanting sides!
806 Lo! in the mute mid wilderness,
807 What wondrous creature, of no kind,
808 His burning lair doth largely press,
809 Gaze fixt, and feeding on the wind?
810 His fell is of the desert dye,
811 And tissue adust, dun-yellow and dry,
812 Compact of living sands; his eye
813 Black luminary, soft and mild,
814 With its dark lustre cools the wild.
815 From his stately forehead springs,
816 Piercing to heaven, a radiant horn!
817 Lo, the compeer of lion-kings,
818 The steed self-armed, the Unicorn!
819 Ever heard of, never seen,
820 With a main of sands between
821 Him and approach; his lonely pride
822 To course his arid arena wide,
823 Free as the hurricane, or lie here,
824 Lord of his couch as his career!
825 Wherefore should this foot profane
826 His sanctuary, still domain?
827 Let me turn, ere eye so bland
828 Perchance be fire-shot, like heaven’s brand,
829 To wither my boldness! Northward now,
830 Behind the white star on his brow
831 Glittering straight against the Sun,
832 Far athwart his lair I run.
833 What marvellous things I saw besides,
834 Wandering heaven’s wide furnace thro’,
835 With floor of burning sands, and sides
836 And glowing cope of glassy blue,
837 Ne’er could mortal tongue nor ear
838 Intelligibly tell or hear!
839 Enow to have seen and sung of those
840 Beauteous chimeras, called in scorn,
841 Single of species both, and born
842 Mid among mankind, that but knows
843 The Phœnix and the Unicorn
844 Ev’n now, as dim-seen thro’ a horn!
845 Both symbols of proud solitude,
846 One of melancholy gladness,
847 One of most majestic sadness,
848 And therefore to such neighbourhood
849 I won, by sympathetic madness,
850 Where let no other steps intrude!
851 Across the desert’s shrivelled scroll
852 I past, myself almost to sands
853 Crumbling, to make another knoll
854 Amidst the numberless of those lands.
855 Welcome! Before my bloodshot eyes,
856 Steed of the East, a camel stands,
857 Mourning his fallen lord that dies.
858 Now, as forth his spirit flies,
859 Ship of the Desert! bear me on,
860 O’er this wavy-bosomed lea,
861 That solid seemed and staid anon,
862 But now looks surging like a sea. —
863 On she bore me, as the blast
864 Whirling a leaf, to where in calm
865 A little fount poured dropping-fast
866 On dying Nature’s heart its balm.
867 Deep we sucked the spongy moss,
868 And cropt for dates the sheltering palm,
869 Then with fleetest amble cross
870 Like desert, fed upon like alm.
871 That most vital beverage still,
872 Tho’ near exhaust, preserved me till
873 Now the broad Barbaric shore
874 Spread its havens to my view,
875 And mine ear rung with ocean’s roar,
876 And mine eye glistened with its blue!
877 Till I found me once again
878 By the ever-murmuring main,
879 Listening across the distant foam
880 My native church bells ring me home.
881 Alas! why leave I not this toil
882 Thro’ stranger lands, for mine own soil?
883 Far from ambition’s worthless coil,
884 From all this wide world’s wearying moil, —
885 Why leave I not this busy broil,
886 For mine own clime, for mine own soil,
887 My calm, dear, humble, native soil!
888 There to lay me down at peace
889 In my own first nothingness?
Nepenthe: A Poem in Two Cantos: By George Darley: With an Introduction by R. A. Streatfeild, Elkin Mathews, London, 1897.