"But would'st thou remembered be, Make me thy vow;
This verse that flows gushingly,
Telleth thee how
Linking thy hand in mine,
Listen to me,
So not a thought of thine
Dieth with thee-
"Rifle thy pulsing heart
Of the gift, love made;
Bid thine eye's light depart;
Let thy cheek fade !
Give me the slumber deep,
Which night-long seems;
Give me the joys that creep
Into thy dreams!
"Give me thy youthful years,
Merriest that fly—
So the word, spoke in tears,
Liveth for aye!
So thy sepulchral stone,
Nations may raise—
What time thy soul hath known
The worth of praise!"
She did not sing this chant to me,
Though I was sitting by;
But I listened to it with chainèd breath,
That had no power to sigh.
And ever as the chant went on,
Its measure changed to wail;
And ever as the lips sang on,
Her face did grow more pale.
Paler and paler-till anon
A fear came o'er my soul;
For the flesh curled up from her bones, Like to a blasted scroll!
THE forest made my home-the voiceful streams
My minstrel throng: the everlasting hills,—
Which marry with the firmament, and cry
Unto the brazen thunder, "Come away,
Come from thy secret place, and try our strength,"
Enwrapped me with their solemn arms.
Here, light
Grew pale as darkness, scarèd by the shade
O' the forest Titans. Here, in piney state,
Reigned Night, the Æthiopian queen, and crowned
The charmed brow of Solitude, her spouse.
A sign was on creation. You beheld
All things encoloured in a sulph'rous hue,
As day were sick with fear. The haggard clouds
O'erhung the utter lifelessness of air;
The top boughs of the forest, all aghast,
Stared in the face of Heaven; the deep-mouthed wind,
That hath a voice to bay the armèd sea,
Fled with a low cry like a beaten hound;
And only that askance the shadows, flew
Some open-beakèd birds in wilderment,
Naught stirred abroad. All dumb did Nature seem,
In expectation of the coming storm.
It came in power. You soon might hear afar
The footsteps of the martial thunder sound
Over the mountain battlements; the sky
Being deep-stained with hues fantastical,
Red like to blood, and yellow like to fire,
And black like plumes at funerals; overhead
You might behold the lightning faintly gleam
Amid the clouds which thrill and gape aside,
And straight again shut up their solemn jaws,
As if to interpose between Heaven's wrath
And Earth's despair. Interposition brief!
Darkness is gathering out her mighty pall
Above us, and the pent-up rain is loosed,
Down trampling in its fierce delirium.
Was not my spirit gladdened as with wine,
To hear the iron rain, and view the mark
Of battle on the banner of the clouds?
Did I not hearken for the battle-cry,
And rush along the bowing woods to meet
The riding Tempest-skyey cataracts
Hissing around him with rebellion vain?
Yea! and I lifted up my glorying voice
In an 66
All hail;" when, wildly resonant,
As brazen chariots rushing from the war,
As passioned waters gushing from the rock,
As thousand crashèd woods, the thunder cried :
And at his cry the forest tops were shook
As by the woodman's axe; and far and near
Staggered the mountains with a muttered dread
All hail unto the lightning! hurriedly
His lurid arms are glaring through the air,
Making the face of Heaven to show like hell!
Let him go breathe his sulphur stench about,
And, pale with death's own mission, lord the storm!
Again the gleam-the glare: I turned to hail
Death's mission: at my feet there lay the dead!
The dead—the dead lay there! I could not view
(For Night espoused the storm, and made all dark)
Its features, but the lightning in his course
Shivered above a white and corpse-like heap,
Stretched in the path, as if to show its prey,
And have a triumph ere he passed. Then I
Crouched down upon the ground, and groped about
Until I touched that thing of flesh, rain-drenched,
And chill, and soft. Nathless, I did refrain
My soul from natural horror! I did lift
The heavy head, half-bedded in the clay,
Unto my knee; and passed my fingers o'er
The wet face, touching every lineament,
Until I found the brow; and chafed its chill,
To know if life yet lingered in its pulse.
And while I was so busied, there did leap,
From out the entrails of the firmament,
The lightning, who his white unblenching breath
Blew in the dead man's face, discovering it
As by a staring day. I knew that face-
His, who did hate me-his, whom I did hate!
I shrunk not-spake not-sprang not from the ground!
But felt my lips shake without cry or breath,
And mine heart wrestle in my breast to still
The tossing of its pulses; and a cold,
Instead of living blood, o'ercreep my brow.
Albeit such darkness brooded all around,
I had dread knowledge that the open eyes
Of that dead man were glaring up at mine,
With their unwinking, unexpressive stare;
And mine I could not shut nor turn away.
The man was my familiar. I had borne
Those eyes to scowl on me their living hate,
Better than I could bear their deadliness:
I had endured the curses of those lips,
Far better than their silence. Oh, constrained
And awful silence !-awful peace of death!
There is an answering to all questioning,
That one word-death. Our bitterness can throw
No look upon the face of death, and live.
The burning thoughts that erst my soul illumed,
Were quenched at once; as tapers in a pit
Wherein the vapour-witches weirdly reign
In charge of darkness. Farewell all the past!
It was out-blotted from my memory's eyes,
When clay's cold silence pleaded for its sin.
Farewell the elemental war! farewell
The clashing of the shielded clouds-the cry
Of scathed echoes! I no longer knew
Silence from sound, but wandered far away
Into the deep Eleusis of mine heart,
To learn its secret things. When armèd foes
Meet on one deck with impulse violent,
The vessel quakes thro' all her oaken ribs,
And shivers in the sea; so with mine heart:
For there had battled in her solitudes,
Contrary spirits; sympathy with power,
And stooping unto power;—the energy
And passiveness,—the thunder and the death!
Within me was a nameless thought it closed
The Janus of my soul on echoing hinge,
And said "Peace!" with a voice like War's.
And trembled at its voice: it gave a key,
Empowered to open out all mysteries
Of soul and flesh; of man, who doth begin,
But endeth not; of life, and after life.
Day came at last: her light showed grey and sad,
As hatched by tempest, and could scarce prevail
Over the shaggy forest to imprint
Its outline on the sky-expressionless,
Almost sans shadow as sans radiance:
An idiocy of light. I wakened from
My deep unslumb'ring dream, but uttered naught.
My living I uncoupled from the dead,
And looked out, 'mid the swart and sluggish air,
For place to make a grave.
A mighty tree
Above me, his gigantic arms outstretched,
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