With voices mortal hoarse!
Th' infirmities they share in?
We cannot see thy blindness:
Who can discern
Being blind,
being weak,
We cannot feel thy weakness: being low,
We cannot mete thy baseness: being unwise, We cannot understand thy idiocy !
I MAY sing; but minstrel's singing
Ever ceaseth with his playing.
I may smile; but time is bringing
Thoughts for smiles to wear away in.
I may view thee, mutely loving;
But shall view thee so in dying!
I may sigh; but life's removing,
And with breathing endeth sighing!
Be it so!
When no song of mine comes near thee,
Will its memory fail to soften?
When no smile of mine can cheer thee,
Will thy smile be used as often?
When my looks the darkness boundeth,
Will thine own be lighted after?
When my sigh no longer soundeth,
Wilt thou list another's laughter?
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION.
WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound,
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling, interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground!
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air :
But if I did it, as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-one, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate Heaven
Heaving beneath him like a mother's breast,
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that nest!
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven;
Before the naughty world soon self-forgiven
For wronging him; and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights. Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory! Heaven is high-
Sing, poet with the sorrow! Earth is low.
The universe's inward voices cry
"Amen" to either song of joy and woe-
Sing, seraph,-poet,-sing on equally.
WHEN Some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
And I astonied fell, and could not pray,
A thought within me to myself did say,
"Is God less God, that thou art left undone?
Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun
As in that purple!"-But I answer, nay!
What child his filial heart in words can loose,
If he behold his tender father raise
The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose
But sob in silence with an upward gaze?—
And my great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
Discerns in speechless tears, both prayer and praise.
ALL are not taken! there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
-if I could find
But if it were not so
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where "dust to dust" the love from life disjoined— And if before those sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone, (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth) Crying, "Where are ye, O my loved and loving?" I know a Voice would sound, "Daughter, I AM. Can I suffice for HEAVEN, and not for earth?”
WHAT time I lay these rhymes anear thy feet,
Benignant friend! I will not proudly say
As better poets use, "These flowers I lay,"
Because I would not wrong thy roses sweet,
By spoiling so their name. And yet, repeat
Thou, overleaning them this springtime day,
With heart as wide to love as theirs to May,-
"Low-rooted verse may reach some heavenly heat,
Even like my blossoms, if as nature-true,
Though not as precious." Thou art unperplext,
Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the dew
And blow the natural airs; thou, who art next
To nature's self in cheering the world's view,
To preach a sermon on so known a text!
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY R. B.
WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud
Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind,
Then break against the rock, and show behind
The lowland valleys floating up to crowd
The sense, with beauty. He, with forehead bowed
And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
And very meek with inspirations proud,--
Takes here his rightful place as poet-priest
By the high-altar, singing prayer and prayer
To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free,
Our Haydon's hand hath flung out from the mist !
No portrait this, with Academic air-
This is the poet and his poetry.
My future will not copy fair my past
On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done,
Supernal Will! I would not fain be one
Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast
Upon the fulness of the heart, at last
Says no grace after meat.
My wine hath run
Indeed out of my cup, and there is none
To gather up the bread of my repast
Scattered and trampled ;-yet I find some good
In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up
Clear from the darkling ground,-content until
I sit with angels before better food.
Dear Christ! when Thy new vintage fills my cup,
This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.
I HAVE been in the meadows all the day,
And gathered there the nosegay that you see;
Singing within myself as bird or bee,
When such do field-work on a morn of May:
But now I look upon my flowers,-decay
Hath met them in my hands, more fatally,
Because more warmly clasped; and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields, and gather more?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I:
My heart is very tired-my strength is low-
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
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