Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom; What dost thou in this living tomb ? Forgive me, masters of the mind! So much unlearnt, so much resign'd- Not as their friend, or child, I speak! For both were faiths, and both are gone. Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, Till I possess my soul again; Till free my thoughts before me roll, For the world cries your faith is now Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme- Ah, if it be pass'd, take away, But--if you cannot give us ease- Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are, though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more. Our fathers water'd with their tears For what avail'd it, all the noise What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart, Through Europe to the Etolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own? What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze Inheritors of thy distress Have restless hearts one throb the less? Or are we easier, to have read, From the fierce tempest of thine age Ye slumber in your silent grave !— Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; Allow them! We admire with awe 1Standing alone, under the title: To Marguerite. There are in the English language three elegiac poems so great that they eclipse and efface all the elegiac poetry we know; all of Italian, all of Greek. It is only because the latest born is yet new to us that it can seem strange or rash to say so. The Thyrsis of Mr. Arnold makes a third with Lycidas and Adonais.... Thyrsis, like Lycidas, has a quiet and tender undertone which gives it something of sacred." (Swinburne.) The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley The Vale, the three lone weirs, the This winter-eve is warm, Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring, The tender purple spray on copse and briars! And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening. Lovely all times she lies, lovely tonight!- Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power Befalls me wandering through this upland dim. Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour; Now seldom come I, since I came with him. That single elm-tree bright Against the west-I miss it! is it gone? We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead; While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here, But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick; And with the country-folk acquaintance made By barn in threshing-time, by newbuilt rick. Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd. Ah me! this many a year My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday! Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart Into the world and wave of men de part; But Thyrsis of his own will went away. It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest. He loved each simple joy the country yields, He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, For that a shadow lour'd on the fields, Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head. He went his piping took a troubled sound Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; He could not wait their passing, he is dead. June, So. some tempestuous morn in early [is o'er, When the year's primal burst of bloom Before the roses and the longest day[floor When garden-walks and all the grassy With blossoms red and white of fallen May And chestnut-flowers are strewnSo have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I! Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snap dragon, Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell, And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming garden trees, And the full moon, and the white evening-star. |