Her new-born Numa thou – with reign, alas! too brief. | |
CXV | |
Egeria! sweet creation of some heart | |
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair | |
As thine ideal breast; whate’er thou art | |
1030 | Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air, |
The nympholepsy of some fond despair; | |
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, | |
Who found a more than common votary there | |
Too much adoring; whatso’er thy birth, | |
1035 | Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. |
CXVI | |
The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled | |
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face | |
Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, | |
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, | |
1040 | Whose green, wild margin now no more erase |
Art’s works; nor must the delicate waters sleep, | |
Prison’d in marble, bubbling from the base | |
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap | |
The rill runs o’er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep | |
CXVII | |
1045 | Fantastically tangled; the green hills |
Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass | |
The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills | |
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass; | |
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, | |
1050 | Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes |
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; | |
The sweetness of the violet’s deep blue eyes, | |
Kiss’d by the breath of heaven, seems colour’d by its skies. |
CXVIII | |
Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, | |
1055 | Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating |
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; | |
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting | |
With her most starry canopy, and seating | |
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel? | |
1060 | This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting |
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell | |
Haunted by holy Love – the earliest oracle! | |
CXIX | |
And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, | |
Blend a celestial with a human heart; | |
1065 | And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, |
Share with immortal transports? could thine art | |
Make them indeed immortal, and impart | |
The purity of heaven to earthly joys, | |
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart – | |
1070 | The dull satiety which all destroys — |
And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? | |
CXX | |
Alas! our young affections run to waste, | |
Or water but the desert; whence arise | |
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, | |
1075 | Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, |
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, | |
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants | |
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies | |
O’er the world’s wilderness, and vainly pants | |
1080 | For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. |
CXXI | |
Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art – | |
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, | |
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, | |
But never yet hath seen, nor e’er shall see | |
1085 | The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; |
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, | |
Even with its own desiring phantasy, | |
And to a thought such shape and image given, | |
As haunts the unquench’d soul — parch’d — wearied — wrung — and riven. | |
CXXII | |
1090 | Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, |
And fevers into false creation: – where, | |
Where are the forms the sculptor’s soul hath seized? | |
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? | |
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare | |
1095 | Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, |
The unreach’d Paradise of our despair, | |
Which o’er-informs the pencil and the pen, | |
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? | |
CXXIII | |
Who loves, raves – ’tis youth’s frenzy – but the cure | |
1100 | Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds |
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure | |
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind’s | |
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds | |
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, | |
1105 | Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; |
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, | |
Seems ever near the prize – wealthiest when most undone. | |
CXXIV | |
We wither from our youth, we gasp away – | |
Sick – sick; unfound the boon – unslaked the thirst, | |
1110 | Though to the last, in verge of our decay, |
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first – | |
But all too late, – so are we doubly curst. | |
Love, fame, ambition, avarice – ’tis the same, | |
Each idle – and all ill – and none the worst – | |
1115 | For all are meteors with a different name, |
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. | |
CXXV | |
Few — none — find what they love or could have loved, | |
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong | |
Necessity of loving, have removed | |
1120 | Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, |
Envenom’d with irrevocable wrong; | |
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god | |
And miscreator, makes and helps along | |
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, | |
1125 | Whose touch turns Hope to dust, – the dust we all have trod. |
CXXVI | |
Our life is a false nature – ’tis not in | |
The harmony of things, - this hard decree, | |
This uneradicable taint of sin, | |
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, | |
1130 | Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be |
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew – | |
Disease, death, bondage – all the woes we see – | |
And worse, the woes we see not – which throb through | |
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. | |
CXXVII | |
1135Yet let us ponder boldly – ’tis a base | |
Abandonment of reason to resign | |
Our right of thought – our last and only place | |
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine: | |
Though from our birth the faculty divine | |
1140 | Is chain’d and tortured – cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, |
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine | |
Too brightly on the unprepared mind, | |
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. | |
CXXVIII | |
Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, | |
1145 | Collecting the chief trophies of her line, |
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, | |
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine | |
As ’twere its natural torches, for divine | |
Should be the light which streams here, to illume | |
1150 | This long-explored but still exhaustless mine |
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom | |
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume | |
CXXIX | |
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, | |
Floats o’er this vast and wondrous monument, | |
1155 | And shadows forth its glory. There is given |
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, | |
A spirit’s feeling, and where he hath leant | |
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power | |
And magic in the ruin’d battlement | |
1160 | For which the palace of the present hour |
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. | |
CXXX | |
Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, | |
Adorner of the ruin, comforter | |
And only healer when the heart hath bled – | |
1165 | Time! the corrector where our judgments err, |
The test of truth, love, – sole philosopher, | |
For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift, | |
Which never loses though it doth defer — | |
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift | |
1170 | My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: |
CXXXI | |
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine | |
And temple more divinely desolate, | |
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, | |
Ruins of years – though few, yet full of fate: – | |
1175 | If thou hast ever seen me too elate, |
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne | |
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate | |
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn | |
This iron in my soul in vain – shall | |
CXXXII | |
1180 | And thou, who never yet of human wrong |
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! | |
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long – | |
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, | |
And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss | |
1185 | For that unnatural retribution – just, |
Had it but been from hands less near – in this | |
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust! | |
Dost thou not hear my heart? – Awake! thou shalt, and must. | |
CXXXIII | |
It is not that I may not have incurr’d | |
1190 | For my ancestral faults or mine the wound |
I bleed withal, and, had it been conferr’d | |
With a just weapon, it had flow’d unbound; | |
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground; | |
To thee I do devote it – | |
1195 | The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found, |
Which if | |
But let that pass – I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake | |
CXXXIV | |
And if my voice break forth, ’tis not that now | |
I shrink from what is suffer’d: let him speak |