These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was gore. | |
CLXVII | |
1495 | Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, |
A long low distant murmur of dread sound, | |
Such as arises when a nation bleeds | |
With some deep and immedicable wound; | |
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground, | |
1500 | The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief |
Seems royal still, though with her head discrown’d, | |
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief | |
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. | |
CLXVIII | |
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? | |
1505 | Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? |
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low | |
Some less majestic, less beloved head? | |
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, | |
The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy, | |
1510 | Death hush’d that pang for ever: with thee fled |
The present happiness and promised joy | |
Which fill’d the imperial isles so full it seem’d to cloy. | |
CLXIX | |
Peasants bring forth in safety. – Can it be, | |
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored! | |
1515 | Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, |
And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard | |
Her many griefs for O | |
Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head | |
Beheld her Iris. – Thou, too, lonely lord, | |
1520 | And desolate consort – vainly wert thou wed! |
The husband of a year! the father of the dead! | |
CLXX | |
Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; | |
Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust | |
The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid | |
1525 | The love of millions! How we did intrust |
Futurity to her! and, though it must | |
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem’d | |
Our children should obey her child, and bless’d | |
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d | |
1530 | Like stars to shepherds’ eyes: – ’twas but a meteor beam’d. |
CLXXI | |
Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well: | |
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue | |
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, | |
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung | |
1535 | Its knell in princely ears, ’till the o’erstung |
Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate | |
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung | |
Against their blind omnipotence a weight | |
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, – | |
CLXXII | |
1540 | These might have been her destiny; but no, |
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, | |
Good without effort, great without a foe; | |
But now a bride and mother – and now | |
How many ties did that stern moment tear! | |
1545 | From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast |
Is link’d the electric chain of that despair, | |
Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and opprest | |
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best. | |
CLXXIII | |
Lo, Nemi! navell’d in the woody hills | |
1550 | So far, that the uprooting wind which tears |
The oak from his foundation, and which spills | |
The ocean o’er its boundary, and bears | |
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares | |
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake; | |
1555 | And, calm as cherish’d hate, its surface wears |
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, | |
All coil’d into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. | |
CLXXIV | |
And near Albano’s scarce divided waves | |
Shine from a sister valley; – and afar | |
1560 | The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves |
The Latian coast where sprang the Epic war, | |
‘Arms and the Man,’ whose re-ascending star | |
Rose o’er an empire: — but beneath thy right | |
Tully reposed from Rome; – and where yon bar | |
1565 | Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight |
The Sabine farm was till’d, the weary bard’s delight. | |
CLXXV | |
But I forget. – My Pilgrim’s shrine is won, | |
And he and I must part, — so let it be, — | |
His task and mine alike are nearly done; | |
1570 | Yet once more let us look upon the sea; |
The midland ocean breaks on him and me, | |
And from the Alban Mount we now behold | |
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we | |
Beheld it last by Calpe’s rock unfold | |
1575 | Those waves, we follow’d on till the dark Euxine roll’d |
CLXXVI | |
Upon the blue Symplegades: long years – | |
Long, though not very many, since have done | |
Their work on both; some suffering and some tears | |
Have left us nearly where we had begun: | |
1580 | Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run, |
We have had our reward – and it is here; | |
That we can yet feel gladden’d by the sun, | |
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear | |
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. | |
CLXXVII | |
1585 | Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, |
With one fair Spirit for my minister, | |
That I might all forget the human race, | |
And, hating no one, love but only her! | |
Ye Elements! – in whose ennobling stir | |
1590 | I feel myself exalted – Can ye not |
Accord me such a being? Do I err | |
In deeming such inhabit many a spot? | |
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. | |
CLXXVIII | |
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, | |
1595 | There is a rapture on the lonely shore, |
There is society, where none intrudes, | |
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: | |
I love not Man the less, but Nature more, | |
From these our interviews, in which I steal | |
1600 | From all I may be, or have been before, |
To mingle with the Universe and feel | |
What I can ne’er express, yet can not all conceal. | |
CLXXIX | |
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll! | |
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; | |
1605 | Man marks the earth with ruin – his control |
Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain | |
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain | |
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own, | |
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, | |
1610 | He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, |
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown. | |
CLXXX | |
His steps are not upon thy paths, – thy fields | |
Are not a spoil for him, – thou dost arise | |
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields | |
1615 | For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise, |
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, | |
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray | |
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies | |
His petty hope in some near port or bay, | |
1620 | And dashest him again to earth: – there let him lay. |
CLXXXI | |
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls | |
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, | |
And monarchs tremble in their capitals, | |
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make | |
1625 | Their clay creator the vain title take |
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; | |
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, | |
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar | |
Alike the Armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. | |
CLXXXII | |
1630 | Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — |
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? | |
Thy waters wasted them while they were free, | |
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey | |
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay | |
1635 | Has dried up realms to deserts: – not so thou, |
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves’ play – | |
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow – | |
Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now. | |
CLXXXIII |