A Classic Crime Collection (38 page)

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

For I have revelled when the sun was bright

I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light

And loveliness—have left my very heart

In climes of mine imagining, apart

From mine own home, with beings that have been

Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour

From my remembrance shall not pass—some power

Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

Came o’er me in the night, and left behind

Its image on my spirit—or the moon

Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was

That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass.

I have been
happy, though in a dream.

I have been happy—and I love the theme

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life

As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings

To the delirious eye, more lovely things

Of Paradise and Love—and all my own!—

Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

S
ILENCE
¹

There are some qualities—some incorporate things,

That have a double life, which thus is made

A type of that twin entity which springs

From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.

There is a twofold
Silence
—sea and shore—

Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,

Newly with grass o’ergrown; some solemn graces,

Some human memories and tearful lore,

Render him terrorless; his name’s “No More.”

He is the corporate
²
Silence: dread him not!

No power hath he of evil in himself;

But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)

Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,

That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod

No foot of man), commend thyself to God!

E
LDORADO
¹

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—

This knight so bold—

And o’er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow—

“Shadow,” said he,

“Where can it be—

This land of Eldorado?”

“Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,
²

Down
the Valley of the Shadow,
³

Ride, boldly ride,”

The shade replied,—

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

I
SRAFEL
^*
1

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

“Whose heart-strings are a lute”;

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell)

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamored moon

Blushes with love,

While,
to listen, the red levin
²

(With the rapid Pleiads,
³
even,

Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir

And the other listening things)

That Israfeli’s fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings—

The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty—

Where Love’
s a grown-up God
⁴
—

Where the Houri
⁵
glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.

Therefore, thou art not wrong,

Israfeli, who despisest

An unimpassioned song;

To thee the laurels belong,

Best bard, because the wisest!

Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit—

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,

With the fervor of thy lute—

Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this

Is a world of sweets and sours;

Our flowers are merely—flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell

Where Israfel

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

F
OR
A
NNIE
¹

Thank Heaven! the crisis—

The danger is past,

And the lingering illness

Is over at last—

And the fever called “Living”

Is conquered at last.

Sadly I know

I am shorn of my strength,

And no muscle I move

As I lie at full length—

But no matter!—I feel

I am better at length.

And I rest so composed,

Now, in my bed,

That any beholder

Might fancy me dead—

Might start at beholding me,

Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,

The sighing and sobbing,

Are quieted now,

With that horrible throbbing

At heart:—ah, that horrible,

Horrible throbbing!

The sickness—the nausea—

The pitiless pain—

Have ceased, with the fever

That maddened my brain—

With the fever called “Living”

That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures

That
torture the worst

Has abated—the terrible

Torture of thirst

For the naphthaline
²
river

Of Passion accurst:—

I have drunk of a water

That quenches all thirst:—

Of a water that flows,

With a lullaby sound,

From a spring but a very few

Feet under ground—

From a cavern not very far

Down under ground.

And ah! let it never

Be foolishly said

That my room it is gloomy

And narrow my bed;

For man never slept

In a different bed—

And, to
sleep,
you must slumber

In just such a bed.

My tantalized
³
spirit

Here blandly reposes,

Forgetting, or never

Regretting, its roses—

Its old agitations

Of myrtles and roses:

For now, while so quietly

Lying, it fancies

A holier odor

About it, of pansies—

A rosemary odor,

Commingled with pansies—

With rue
⁴
and the beautiful

Puritan pansies.

And so it lies happily,

Bathing in many

A dream of the truth

And the beauty of Annie—

Drowned in a bath

Of the tresses of Annie.

She tenderly kissed me,

She fondly caressed,

And then I fell gently

To sleep on her breast—

Deeply to sleep

From the heaven of her breast.

When the light was extinguished

She covered me warm,

And she prayed to the angels

To keep me from harm—

To
the queen of the angels
⁵

To shield me from harm.

And I lie so composedly,

Now in my bed,

(Knowing her love,)

That you fancy me dead—

And I rest so contentedly,

Now in my bed,

(With her love at my breast,)

That you fancy me dead—

That you shudder to look at me,

Thinking me dead:—

But my heart is brighter

Than all of the many

Stars in the sky,

For it sparkles with Annie—

It glows with the light

Of the love of my Annie—

With the thought of the light

Of the eyes of my Annie.

S
ONNET
—T
O
S
CIENCE
¹

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou not
dragged Diana from her car?
²

And driven the Hamadryad
³
from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast
thou not torn the Naiad
⁴
from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

A D
REAM
¹

In visions of the dark night

I have dreamed of joy departed;

But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day

To him whose eyes are cast

On things around him, with a ray

Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream, that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding,

Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night,

So trembled from afar—

What could there be more purely bright

In
Truth’s day-star?
²

T
O
————
¹

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds,

Are lips—and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words—

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined

Then desolately fall,

O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall—

Thy heart—
thy
heart!—I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day

Of the truth that gold can never buy—

Of the baubles that it may.

R
OMANCE
¹

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake

To me a painted paroquet
²

Hath been—a most familiar bird—

Taught me my alphabet to say,

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings—

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away—forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

S
PIRITS OF THE
D
EAD
¹

Thy soul shall find itself alone

’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness, for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee, and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.

The night, tho’ clear, shall frown,

And the stars shall not look down

From their high thrones in the Heaven

With light like Hope to mortals given;

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee forever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish—

Now are visions ne’er to vanish;

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more—like dew-drops from the grass.

The breeze—the breath of God—is still,

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token,—

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries!

T
O
H
ELEN
¹

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean
²
barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad
³
airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand!

The agate
⁴
lamp within thy hand,

Ah! Psyche,
⁵
from the regions which

Are Holy Land!

E
VENING
S
TAR
¹

’Twas noontide of summer,

And midtime of night,

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, through the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

’Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.