Chapter II: Introduction: To Eidolon (1)

Hazlitt says, one cannot "make an allegory go on all fours," it must to a certain degree be obscure and shadowy, like the images which the traveller in the desert sees mirrored on the heavens, wherein he can trace but a dreamy resemblance to the reality beneath. It therefore seems to me advisable to give a solution of the "Eidolon," the symbol, which follows, that the purpose of the poem may at once be evident.

In "Eidolon" I have attempted to symbol the course of a Poet's mind from a state wherein thought is disordered, barren and uncultivated, to that which is ordered and swayed by the true Spirit of Poetry, and holds its perfect creed.

I have therefore laid the scene on a desert island, whence, as from the isolation of his own mind, he reflects upon the concerns of life. At first he is a poet only by birthright '_Poeta nascitur_.' He has the poet's inherent love for the Beautiful, his keen susceptibility of all that is lovely in outward nature, but these are only the blossoms which have fallen upon him from the Tree of Life, the fruit is yet untasted. He has looked at the evil of the world alone, and seeing how much "the time is out of joint" has become misanthropic, and turns his back alike on the evil and the good.

Then comes Night, the stillness of the soul, with starlight breaking through the gloom. He gazes on other worlds, and pictures there the perfection he sighs for, but cannot find in this. Thus by the conception of a higher and nobler existence acquiring some impetus towards its realization.

We then find him lying in the sunshine with the beauties of Nature around him, whose silent teaching works upon him till the true SPIRIT OF POETRY speaks _within his soul_, and combats the misanthropy and weakness of the sensuous MAN, showing him that Action is the end of Life, not mere indulgence in abstract and visionary rhapsodies.

In the next scene he makes further advances, for the spirit of Poetry shows him that the beauty for which he has sought amongst the stars of heaven lies really at his feet; that Earth, too, is a star capable of equal brightness with those on which he gazes. He is thus brought from the Ideal to the Real.

The fifth scene emblems the influence of Love on the soul. It is the nurse of Poetry, and Sorrow is the pang which stimulates the divine germ into active vitality. Had he been entirely happy, and the course of his love run smooth, he would have been content to enjoy life in ease and idleness.

Next we find him looking broadly on life, on its utmost ills as well as its beauties, but not with the eye of the misanthrope, but of the Physician who searches out disease that he may find the remedy, and though the soul still sighs for the serenity and placid delight of the ideal life, the world of Thought, the glorious principle of Poetry prevails, and he sacrifices self-ease, feeling that he has a nobler mission than to dream through life, and that here he must labour ere he can earn the right to rest.

Thus in the last scene the SPIRIT and the MAN have become one--he is _truly_ a Poet. His prayer maintains the direct and divine inspiration of the Poet-Priest.

The action in short is the conflict of two principles within the breast, the False and the True, ending in the extinction of error and the triumph of truth.

EIDOLON,
OR
THE COURSE OF A SOUL.

SCENE. _A desert Island. The sea-shore._

MAN.

How lonely were I in this solitude,
This atom of creation which yon wave,
White with the fury of a thousand years,
Might gulf into oblivion, if the soul
Knew circumscription. Far as eye can reach
Around me lies a wild and watery waste,
With every billow sentinel to keep
Its prisoner fetter'd to his ocean cell--
What were it but a plunge--an instant strife--
Then liberty snatch'd from the clutch of Death
The Tyrant, who with mystic terror grinds
Men into slaves--But he who thinks _is_ free,
And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven,
Now rushing with wild joy around the belt
Of whirling Saturn, then away through space
Till he and all his radiant brotherhood
Dwindle to fire-flies round the brow of Night.
Thought is the great creator under God,
Begotten of his breathing, that can raise
Shapes from the dust and give them Beauty's soul;
And though my empire be a continent,
Squared down from leagues to inches, what of that?
The mind contains a world within its frame
Which Fancy peoples o'er with radiant forms,
Replete with life and spirit excellence.
O! there is glory in the thought that now
I stand absolved from all the chilling forms
And falsities of life, that like frail reeds
Pierce the blind palms of those that lean on them,
And from the springs of my own being draw
All strength, and hope, and joyance, all that makes
Lone meditations sweet, and schools the heart
For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world
We seem like babes that cannot walk alone,
But fasten on the skirts of other men,
Their creeds, conclusions, and vain phantasies,
Too languid, or too weak to poize ourselves;
But here the crutch is shattered at a blow,
Dependence made a thing for winds to blast,
And paraphrase in bitter mockery.

From this retreat, as from a cloister calm,
I dream upon the busy haunts of men
As things that touch me not. An empire riven,
A monarchy o'erthrown, here seem to me
Importless as a foam-bell's death. The world
And all its revolutions are now less
Within my chronicles, than is the ken
Of a star's orbit on the fines of space;
But like a mariner saved from the wreck
On this calm spot I stand, unscathed, secure
From the rough throbbings of the sea of strife,
And woe, and clamour, wherewith this world's life
Ebbs and declines unto the printless shore
Of death. O! blessed change, if there were one
To love me in this solitude, and make
Life beautiful. My soul is wearied out
With earth's fierce warfare, and its selfish ease;
The slights and coldness of the hollow crowds
That are its arbiters; the changeful face,
The upstart arrogance of base-born fools,
Who crown them with their golden dross, and deem
_That_ the all-potent badge of sovereignty.

O thou, my heart! hast thou not framed for life
A golden palace in all solitude,
Whither the strains of quiet melodies
Float on the breath of memory, like songs
From the dim bosom of the evening woods,
Peopling its chambers with sweet poesy?
Hast thou not called the sunshine from the morn
To circle thee with a pure spirit life,
And with the softness of its tender arms
Clasp thee in the embrace of heav'nly love?
Hast thou not heard the music of the stars,
In the calm stillness of the summer night,
And read their jewell'd pages o'er and o'er,
Like the bright inspirations of a bard,
Till glowing strophes rung within thy soul
Of glad Orion and clear Pleiades?
Hast thou not seen the silv'ry moonshine thrill
Upon the dusky mantle of the night,
Like radiant glances through a maiden's veil,
Till shaken thence they fell in a pure shower
O'er flood and field and bosky wilderness,
Wreathing earth with the glory of a saint?

O! thus to dwell far from the stir of life,
Far from its pleasures and its miseries,
Far from the panting cry of man's desire,
That waileth upward in hoarse discontent,
And here to list but to that liquid voice
That riseth in the spirit, and whose flow
Is like a rivulet from Paradise--
To hear the wanderings of divine thought
Within the soul, like the low ebb and flow
Of waters in the blue-deep ocean caves,
Forming itself a speech and melody
Sweeter than words unto the aching sense--
To stand alone with Nature where man's step
Hath never bowed a grass-blade 'neath its weight,
Nor hath the sound of his rude utterance
Broken the pauses of the wild-bird's song;
And thus in its unpeopled solitude
To be the spirit of this universe,
Centering thought and reason in one frame,
And in the majesty of quenchless soul,
Rising unto the stature of a man,
_That_ is to make life glorious and great,
Dissolving matter in the spiritual,
As the green pine dissolveth into flame;
Not on the breath of popular applause
That is the spectre of all nothingness;
Not on the fawning of a servile crew,
Who kiss the hem of fortune's purple robe,
And lick the dust before prosperity,
Waiting the cogging of the downward scale,
To turn from slaves to bravos in the dark;
Not on the favours of the politic,
Who in the smile of honour, Persian-like,
Pamper the pampered from their banquet halls,
But to his starving cry, when fortune frowns,
Mutter their falsehoods through the bolted gate;
But in the brightness of the inner soul,
The placitude of peace and holy thought,
The joyous lightness of the spirit's wings,
Sweeping with equal strokes the azure sky
Of Present, Past, and wide Futurity;
In the high tidemarks on the sands of life,
Where thought hath swept her purifying wave,
Bearing the treasures of the unsearched deep
To swell the riches of humanity.
_That_ is a happiness apart from man
To aid, to sympathise with, or destroy;
In its calm solitude alike secure
From the broad adulation of the weak,
And the strained condescension of the great,
Both insults to the mighty soul within,
That is not prized but for its golden shrine.
Here there is that which makes the spirit free
And noble in the measure of its strength,
Untrammelled by conventionalities
That make the very light of heaven take worth
According to the casement it shines through.

O solitude! thy blessed power hath swept
All earthly passions from my soul like weeds
That choke the issues of eternal love.
What now to me are hatred and revenge?
Thoughts that if fleeting through the mind would fall
Like unknown birds upon a foreign shore,
Strange, wonderful; where no false hearts are nigh
To poison life with variance and strife.
O holy Nature! thou art only love
And peace and universal unity,
From thy sweet bosom springeth up no seed
Of bitterness and sorrow, that like thorns
Cling to the vesture of mortality,
Piercing the spirit through with cruel woe.
With thee my soul could dwell for evermore,
Expanding all good feelings day by day,
Till, at the last, like roses in full bloom
The blossoms fall from pure maturity.
Pride! Here no scale of inches is set up
For man to strain his littleness against,
But o'er me hangs the majesty of heaven,
Bright with the glory of the noontide sun;
Beneath, the Earth, that whispers "Thou art dust,
"Gat like a child forth from my fertile womb,
"And bone of my bone, thus, flesh of my flesh!"
Thou glorious firmament that like God's love
Enfoldest all creation utterly,
Making the pathway of the wheeling spheres
A splendour, and a triumph, and a joy,
That on the brightness of thine azure breast
Settest the constellated stars like gems,
To flash the glory of thy loveliness
Through all the fulness of unmeasured space.
Can madness in its raving cast a thought
To soar unto thy blessed perfectness,
Nor stand subdued with reverence and awe
In contemplation of the Infinite?
O Earth! thou Mother and true Monitress!
Can thy frail children close their ears for aye
'Gainst the deep-hearted warnings of thy voice?
In the wild whirl of life the tones may die
Amid the clangour of contending foes,
But here, as in the stillness of the night,
Thy solemn teaching falleth on the soul
To the vibration of the low heart-beat.
Then what is there to charm me back to life?
To wrestle with the guilty and the vain,
And lose identity amid the crowd
Who struggle onward after base desire.
This quiet scene doth teach me how to weigh
Your pleasures and your vanities aright;
To hold as dross the honour that is flung
Around man like a winter covering,
Which the same hand can pluck away again,
And leave the outcast shivering in the blast.
There is no honour saving that within,
Which none, nor man, nor Death itself can snatch,
But which falls from the spirit in its flight
Like a prophetic mantle upon Time.

Pleasure! O World! in thine insanity
Thou sinkest Soul into a poor buffoon,
Garbed in tinsel and false ornament
To play its antics on the stage of life,
A thing for fools to laugh at in their mirth.
Thou sat'st thy lust upon the sapless husks
That strew the highways of this pilgrimage,
Closing thine eyes unto their emptiness,
And out of folly turning sour to sweet.
Hast thou the joy that nature's converse sheds
Thro' all the pulses of the quiet soul?
The gentle calm that like a whispered song
Steals o'er the sense with sweetest languishment?
Hast thou the magic of the Beautiful,
Wreathing about thy spirit evermore,
In sunshine and in shadow; when the stars
Gather around the azure dome of heaven,
And the pale moon glides like a virgin bride
Humbly behind the footsteps of her love:
When the sweet morn dawns on the sleeping world
To bring reality to visions bright;
And on the curtain of dissolving mist
Arches the many-tinted sign of heaven?
Hast thou the minstrelsie of the wild woods,
Clear-tided strains floating along the sky,
Swelling, subsiding, like a silvery sea
Beneath the dulcet breathing of the south?
Hast thou that essence of all joyousness--
The glorious independence of the soul--
That spurneth man's usurped tyranny,
The power of wealth, and hapless circumstance,
And, sweeping on its own unaided wings,
Measures the circuit of the boundless sky?
What is thy wealth, that fadeth in the use,
And all the pomp and vanity it buys,
To the rich treasure of undying thought,
Encreasing evermore, till like a dower
It benizon humanity for aye?
All thy poor gold resolveth into dust
Before the test of such a scene as this:
Can it charm forth the blossom of a flower
Ere summer bids it with her gentle smile?
Can it restore the verdure to the leaf
When yellow Autumn marks it for her own?
Or, in the noontide bid the dew-shower rise
To fill one rosy chalice to the brim?
Go! gild thee with it, worldling, as thou wilt,
Yet all thy pains will leave thee but a fool!

Ay! there is love to beckon me away
And lead me to a fountain of delight,
Gliding before me in its purity,
Like some bright angel guiding souls to heaven.
O Love! have I not drained thee to the dregs,
Thy pleasures and thy sorrows equally;
Clinging unto thee as the Arab doth
To his low fountain in the wilderness?
Have I not gazed into thy tender eyes
And read the secret of thy holiness,
Cleansing my soul in humbleness and faith,
To shrine thee in thy fulness evermore?
Have I not clasped thee in my frenzied arms
And heard thy heart-beats answer back to mine,
Fainter and fainter till the deep voice stilled
In the eternal silence of the grave?
O be to me henceforth but some sweet dream
Illumining the sky of Memory:
A fixed star of everlasting light
To pilot me along the sea of life,
And keep the bearings of the spirit true.
Visit me in imagination's train,
The sweetest and the fairest child of Thought,
Till thro' my being, as thro' columned aisles
When incense from the altar upward wreaths,
There float the fragrance of thy breath divine.
Circle my soul in its far wanderings
Thro' spirit lands and empyrean heights,
Where though it sink in wide bewilderment,
Thou wilt enfold it in thy dewy arms,
And pillow it to strength and fearlessness!
Be to me like a heaven beyond all Time,
Dreamt of, and worshipped in this pilgrimage--
The habitation of all pure desire,
Solace of sorrow, and the home of rest,
Where I may lay me from life's troublous way,
And feel Eternity rise in my soul!
No, World! the cords that bound me unto thee
Are snapt in sunder ne'er to join again,
Thy voice is waning fainter on mine ear,
And thine allurements powerless and vain.
There springeth up within me a new want,
A perfect yearning for the spiritual,
That shaketh from its pinions all the cares
And interests of earth, like cleaving dust
That clogs its upward winging to the skies.
Wend onward, as thou wilt in weal or woe,
Swell the rude triumph of thy battle march,
Spread thy gay banners broadly to the wind,
And let thy clarions ring among the spheres;
Laurel thy heroes and thy favourites,
And pluck the crowns again from off their brows;
Worship thy follies, and thine empty gains,
And barter life for mammon--gold for dross.
Here let me lie upon the rear of Time,
Unheeded, unremembered, and alone,
Like a quick seed dropt by a flying dove,
That groweth unto blossom and to fruit!

SCENE. _Night._

MAN.

How still are all things now in earth and heaven!
From the green-tided woods no rippling stir
Breaks on the shore of silence; the sweet birds
That sing, like naiads from the crystal deeps,
Amid the murmurous coverts, now are mute
As dreams of faded happiness, and life
Seems calmly slumb'ring in the arms of death.
The far waves alone are rocking in unrest,
With moonlight flashing o'er them, but their sound
Dies in their own wild bosom, like a song
Murmuring in the spirit of a man.
Thus is a poet's soul!--around it hangs
The darkness of this world's reality,
Its cares and struggles and necessities;
But in its firmament for ever shines
The starlight of divine imaginings,
Shedding upon the waves of restless feeling,
And aspirations for the undefined,
The glory of a cloudless hemisphere.

O Stars! that gaze upon me from on high,
Like angels from the gates of Paradise,
That weave your myriads in a golden chain
To bind creation with the Beautiful,
As locks are interrun with precious gems
To deck a queen out for her royalty:
Hear me, ye bright ones, for a poet's love,
And let light fall upon my swelling soul,
To crest each rising thought with purity!
There was a time--in youth, ere yet the sands
Of life clogged 'neath satiety, but ran
Lighter than blithe rills down a mountain's side;
There was a time, when in my soul a voice
Rang faintly like a huntsman's horn afar,
Sounding along a forest; and I arose,
And listed, as the bounding Antelope
Starts at the echo of a falling bough.
Louder it grew, and clearer--"Search for it!"
What?--It melted from me, but the voice still came.
Then up I gat, and to the pressing world
Sped on the wings of passion, striving on
Thro' pleasure and thro' pain, alike unchecked.
Then, what were lets to me? Amongst the strong
I wrestled for ambition's upper seats--
Clung to the slippery shrouds of policy--
And in my fury prayed for eagle's wings
To poize me in the shadow of the sun.
At wealth I grasped as a poor crippled wretch
Grasps at the crutch that steadies him along;
Yet not for it but for the power it brought,
For, Timon-like, within my heart of hearts
I cursed the yellow dust I trampled on.
But by the wayside I sat down and wept
As a child weeps above some shattered toy.
Oh Misery! to climb the steep of life
Led by a phantom without form or truth--
To find reality still rising up
To crush hope's fabrics with relentless force.
All was a fiction, but the voice said "Search!"
And glory flashed before me like a wisp,
Dazzling me on to bloodshed, and to strife.

Upon the field I stood with Victory,
And Death in all its ghastliness--Around
The dim watchfires stood like a burning wall
Betwixt the dead and living. On that night
Ye saw me, ye pure ministers of heaven,--
Shone on my anguish and my bitter tears.
Then, when the mangled forms of fellow-men,
With hideous passion stiff upon their lips,
Blanch'd 'neath the twilight of your glimmering!
Oh! there lay one beside me--a mere youth--
Whose dying hands had pressed unto his lips
A long fair tress, through which his dying sigh
Crept, as in happier days perchance did love's.
Witness, ye stars, of my abasement then,
Judged and condemned by that poor lover's pledge,
Lying there like a messenger of heaven,
Breathing of peace and love, mid deadly hate.
Glory! thou mirage on this desert life,
Charming the weary on to water springs
That shrivel up to barrenness ere reach'd!
Thou shadow of a shadow that departs
As the eye scans its bodiless outlines!
Thou golden-imaged Ruin and Despair!
When this earth cracks, like a poor blasted rock,
Before the burning of Almighty wrath,
Thy pallid spectre shall rise up to judge
The wretched victims that did trust in thee!

"O Heaven!" I said, "lead me to love and peace;
Love, that makes all things calm and beautiful,
And like the sun, e'en in its setting, flings
A glory o'er the cloudy peaks of Time.
Peace--that doth hush the throbbing voice of life,
Till through the stillness of the Poet's soul,
The echoes of Seraphic harmonies
Float like a spirit through the blue eterne."
I said--"I will sit neath the ancient woods,
And list unto the voices of the winds
Coming from far o'er spirit lands, and full
With stolen snatches of their utterance."
I said--"I will lay bare my soul unto the sun,
And let its glory rest there till it charm
Forth from its womb, as flowers from the cold ground,
All lovely thoughts and high imaginings
That shed sweet perfume o'er the waste of life.
And when the sickle of autumnal time
Gathereth in the harvest of ripe thought,
Nourish and strengthen long futurity."

Then as an eagle fleeth to his crag
High in the stillness of the dim cloudland,
Fled I from man into the trackless woods,
To sate my soul with quietude and song.
Then, too, ye saw me, ye pure orbs of heaven,
And sent your blessed radiance to my heart
In the still twilight of my calm content!
Then came an answer to the unseen voice--
"O holy calmness of the inner soul!
Treasure of treasures! sweetness of all sense!
Athwart the smoothness of whose liquid tide
Floateth the spirit of eternal love,
Tracing a pathway to the All-Divine!
Thine is the perfectness of earthly bliss,
The brimming of life's chalice o'er with peace,
Till thro' all thought and feeling, the pure draught
Sheddeth its gladness and serenity.
Thine is a joyance passing utterance,
A deep delight, that like the songs of heaven,
Swell through its fulness, but are mute without.
Thou art the goal of most sublime desire,
The haven that all longing seeketh for,
Where, shaded from the storms and blasts of life,
The bark glides gently down the stream of Time."

How cloudless is this azure firmament!
Brighter than all the dreams of sinless youth!
Deeper than the deep heart of woman's love!
Now as I gaze upon each shining star,
What visions steal upon me with its rays,
Of that which makes its glorious excellence!
Can there be revelation of high truths
But through the channels of weak sense alone,
Thus like a fountain filt'ring thro' the clay.
Or doth the soul hold converse spiritual
With powers unseen that fill the universe,
Receiving, as by intuition, things
That man attains not by intelligence?
Is not the spirit perfect in itself,
Unmingled with the base alloy of earth
That prisons it within this narrow sphere?
Hath it not apprehension natural,
Attributive as immortality,
Unshackled by an organ that will die
Beneath the friction of a few short years?
O there is blindness on us in this life,
That seeth not the things which lie around,
E'en in the circuit of our littleness!
But death will loose the scales from off our eyes,
And smite our fleshly dwelling place in twain;
Freeing the spirit, till with joyous wings
It cleave the limits of immensity.
Yet _now_ the soul will shake its fetters off,
And yearn unto the freedom of the skies,
Like a poor bird whose life is liberty.

Yon star, methinks, must be a glorious world,
Where Nature hath a spiritual life
And bloometh on in Spring perpetual,
Unsatiating in its loveliness.
Verdure of herb and leafy plenitude
Spread o'er it like a vesture, and the glow
Of sunlit waters smiling from afar,
Half as in fancy, half reality.
The skies above it glassy and serene
As the reflection of its own repose,
And every new alternation of the light
Shedding new beauties on the scene below.
Thus far in fashion, kin to Earth as Time
Beareth the impress of Eternity,
But differing henceforth as the gentle dove
Doth from the vulture on its carrion:
The dwellers on this paradisal sphere
Methinks, must be of glorious lineament,
Clad with the brightness of eternal youth,
And buoyant with internal blessedness.
Spirits that shining with untarnished light,
Radiate, and make matter luminous,
Filling the eyes with sweet felicity,
And love, and peace, and all emotions pure.
No sorrow there to make the vision dim,
And wash the mellow ripeness from the cheek;
No guilty deed to brand the heart with shame,
And write its direful sentence on the brow;
No rankling venom struggling through the veins,
And blasting all the kindliness within,
Till like a torrent bursting o'er restraint,
It spread its desolation on mankind;
But a pure regnant holiness and love,
Directing impulse with most queenly sway
To ends of tenderness and charity;
A nature purified by fellowship
With angels and bright ministers of Heaven,
That wander thither from their homes above
On missions of benignity and grace.
And in this pleasaunce, as by holy need,
There reigneth deep communion of soul,
That frameth as it were one atmosphere
Of joy, and hope, and blessedness for all;
No selfish pleasures fluttering before
To woo satanic emulation forth,
But all combining for one common weal,
Moved still by sympathetic influence.

How passing beautiful must they not be,
Thus dower'd with Virtue's highest attributes,
That from the spiritual springeth up
A living fount of light and loveliness.
Soul is the life of Beauty, as the sun
Is of the universe it luminates.
O what were matter, fashioned ne'er so fair,
But for the beaming of that quenchless light
That plays around it, like the radiance
Of heaven's own glory stamped upon its work?
What were the charm of the soft arching brow
White as the snow-flake 'neath its golden braid?
What were the dimpled cheek with roseate shades
Spread o'er it like the budding of a flower,
The lips' ripe crimson, and the melting eye,
Unbrightened by the sunshine from within,
The emanations of seraphic thought,
And full emotion, kindling into life
Light, grace, the temple that they glorify?
Oh Death! when thou dost bear the soul away
The charm is shattered--the illusion gone!
Ay, they are beautiful, and as bright forms
Make fair the mirrors that they image in,
So are their courses glorious and glad.
Still doth their swelling harmony ascend
In thrilling cadence to the gates of heaven,
Making the air about them sweet with joy,
As summer's breath with floral incense fumes;
And every echo learns the words of love,
And wonders at its sweet deliciousness,
Repeating o'er and o'er the honied tones
Till they infuse into their secret souls.

O ye bright orbs! your shining would be dimmed
By sin and all its pallid consequence,
Till scarce a glimmer fluttered on the sky
To 'lume the dreamer to your sadden'd sphere.
But ye have held your priceless birthright sure,
And walk among the panoply of heaven,
Clear and true-hearted as the sons of God.
Yet may we gaze upon you from afar
As the unstained gaze on the innocent,
Lovely and peerless in their purity,
Smitten and wondering with humbleness
Of that which is your everlasting dower;
Quenching within us pride and earthliness
Before the glance of your serenity;
Aspiring ever for the spirit life,
That casting off this fleshly tenement,
With all its weakness and infirmities,
Entereth on the cycle of the just,
Unstained, immortal, glorious and strong!

SCENE. _A Grove--Noontide._

MAN.

There is no place so sweet as the greenwoods
In summer, heaven and earth awake with sounds
Melodial; the ripple of the breeze
Amongst the sun-green leaves, and pliant boughs,
Just like the rustle of young summer's dress;
The songs of birds, and the low mystic hum
Of bees amongst their floral treasuries;
Sweetest of all, the cool and liquid tones
Of brooks--nature's true-hearted bards, who draw
Bright inspirations from a pebbled ridge,
And frame them into sweetest melody.
There's poetry in every pendent leaf
If we could read them truly; but our hearts
Grow strange to nature's language in the world,
Nor can translate their heaven lore. Ev'ry change
From bud to full-blown ripeness, thence again
To sereness and decay, is as the flow
Of a short tale, whose moral is life's history.
The woods were made for poets and all dreamers,
Men who philosophize Time's hour-glass down,
And younger grow, till with the last shot sand--
They die. The very leaves are fanciful,
And write their maxims on the sward in sun
And shadow. Here I'll lay me down and dream
An hour away amongst these violets!
O my heart joys to gaze upon the sky
Gleaming athwart green leaves, like happiness
Above the gloom and shadow of the world!
Then, thought first feels its attribute divine,
And like a callow eagle spreads its wings,
And makes its rest amid the lumin'd heavens.
The lark sings poized above me in the sun,
Like Moslem in his gilded minaret
Calling the faithful unto matin prayer.
There would my spirit follow thee, sweet bird,
Ling'ring for ever in the midway air,
Earth shrouded 'neath me by ascending mists,
And sunny-crested cloudlets, like the base
Of bright Imagination's airy halls,
Whose roof is the star-fretted empyrean:
Thence let the world hear my full gushing joy,
And thrill at pleasures they can never know,
Hear the sweet tumult of my throbbing breast,
Like a clear spring of joyance bubbling up
And overflowing time and space with streams;
Whilst I, wrapt in my own high blessedness,
Drain the sweet nectar shareless and alone.

SPIRIT.

The lark is beauteous in its skiey home,
Amid the confluence of heaven's brightest rays
Singing for heaven and earth undying hymns
Of beauty, and deep-hearted tenderness;
But more, when sinking on its own sweet song,
It flutter, jubilant, to its soft nest
Couched in the lowly bosom of the earth.
And so it is with life. Man may build up
A pillar of misanthropy and self,
Raising him, statue-like, above his kind,
And emulate the monumental stone
In coldness and stern-browed indifference,
But in the paths of love, and sympathy,
And lowly charity, true glory lies,
The substance of all joy and happiness.
Let not thy spirit spurn man's fellowship,
And force the stream of kindness up life's steep,
Till, 'mid the rocky peaks of Thought it flow
Unmargined by the verdant bloom of Act.
Shun Self! 'tis like the worm a rosy bud
Folds in its young embraces till it gnaw
The heart out. Nature's is no volume writ
For his interpreting who measures still
Her wisdom by the inverted standard rule
Of his own barrenness and blind conceit.
There's not a flower but with its own sweet breath
Cries out on selfishness, the while it gives
Its fragrant treasures to the summer air;
And not a bird within the greenwood shade,
The burden of whose gentle minstrelsie
Is not of love and open-hearted joy.
The blest of earth are they whose sympathies
Are free to all as streams by the wayside,
Cheering, sustaining by their limpid tide,
The weary and the footsore of the earth.

O summer sunshine! floating round all things,
Meadow and hill and leafy coverture,
Steeping all Nature in most sweet delight,
Till upward from the bosom of the earth,
Before so cold and blank and unadorned,
Spring fairest flowers to gladden and adore--
That fillest the blue vault of heaven with smiles
As of a mother smiling on her child,
Pure, holy, without guile or artifice,
Melting the spirit of each fleeting cloud
From darkness unto beauty and soft grace--
Thou art the emblem of that perfect love
That sheddeth joy around it evermore,
And from whose sweetness rise all gentle thoughts
As scent from vernal flowers; that in the heart
Waketh all goodness by a magic spell,
As the fine touch of blindness makes a page
Start into instant light and eloquence.
Cherish thou kindness ever, for this life
Would be most blissful if its sunshine came
To strengthen on Endeavour to its aim.

MAN.

Methinks there is no blessedness in life
More full than that which springs in solitude;
A fount unruffled by the outer world,
Unmingled with its honey or its gall;
But welling through the spirit silently,
Like a pure rill within a garden's bounds.
Let my life float, like the sad Indian's lamp,
Along the waves of Time, unpiloted
Save by the breath of heaven, and the stirred tide,
Till when its course be run it sink to rest
Beyond the ken and fathoming of man;
Let me not be a legend mouthed about
By empty gossips o'er their clinking cups,
Who tell the last sad tale and with a smack
Turn to the merits of the passing wine.
'Twere something to be wept for by the young
And beautiful, but tears are things that dry
Sooner than dew upon the waking flowers,
Leaving the heart e'en gladder for their flow.
O could my life subside into a dream
Rising amid the stillness of calm sleep,
Filling the soul with radiant images
Of love, and grace, and beauty, all serene
And shadowless as yon blue sky is now!--
Would that the outward shows and forms of things
Could melt away from cold reality
To the warm brightness of the spiritual,
Losing the grossness of this present world,
As a fair face doth mirror'd in a glass--
And thus, reposing in seraphic trance,
Let the few years of earth's existence pass,
Like minutes in the quietness of sleep,
And waken to the glorious dawn of Heaven,
Refreshed, and scatheless from mortality.

SPIRIT.

Thy wish, attain'd, would brand thee deep with shame;
Life was not made to rust in idle sloth
Until the canker eat its gloss away,
But like a falchion to grow bright with use,
And hew a passage to eternal bliss!
Canst thou stand 'fore that glory of the sun,
That like God's beacon on Eternity
Wakeneth up Creation unto Act,
And sheddeth strength and hope, to cheer them on,
Yet rebel-wise cast down thine untried arms,
Ere foes assail thee, or thy work be done?
No, there's a power within the soul that yearns
For action, as the lark for liberty,
Pursuing ever with insatiate thirst
And aspiration, some unsubstant aim.
There is assertion of the rule divine,
That rest must follow labour as the night
Closeth the turmoil of the wakeful day;
Then let the bright sun lead thee like a king
With dauntless heart to struggle and o'ercome,
Uncheck'd by mischance or poor discontent,
That shrivels up a monarch to a clown,
And rends his purple into beggar's rags.
Let no alluring plea of sensuous ease
Draw thee away from honour's rugged path,
Till sleep fall on thee from the wings of death,
And bear thee to sweet dreams and Paradise!

MAN.

How sweet it is to read fair Nature o'er
Reclining thus upon her gentle breast,
Like a young child that in her mother's face
Traceth the motions of deep tenderness,
Listing the murmurs of strange melodies
That wander ever round her fresh and clear,
Whence the sweet singers of our earth have caught
Rapt harmonies and echoed them for aye!
What study is like Nature's lumined page,
So glorious with perfect excellence,
That like the flowing of a mighty wind
It fills the crevices and deeps of soul!

No upper chamber and no midnight oil
For me, to throw dim light upon the scroll,
Whose feeble pedantry dulls down the soul
From high imaginings to senseless words;
But for my lamp I'll have the summer sun
Set in the brightness of the firmament;
My chamber shall be canopied by heaven,
Gemmed by the glory of the fixed stars,
And round it floating evermore the breath
Of nascent flowers, and fragrant greenery:
And for my books, all lovely things in Earth
And air, and heaven, all seasons and all times.
The Spring shall bring me all the thoughts of youth,
Its budding hopes and buoyant happiness;
'Twill sing me lays of tenderness and love,
That are the first sweet flowers of childhood's days,
And win me back to purity and joy
With the untainted current of its breath.
Summer will be the volume of the heart,
Expanded with the strength of growing life,
Swelling with full brimm'd feeling evermore,
And power and passion longing to be forth;
'Twill tell of life quick with the seed of thought,
Rising incessant into bud and bloom,
And shedding hope and promise over Time,
Like the sweet breath that tells the mariner
Of fragrant shores fast rising in his course.
Then Autumn, glorious with accomplishment,
The harvest and the fruitage of the past,
Stored with the gladness and the gain of life,
Or sadden'd by its unproductiveness;
And Winter like a prophecy would come
To warn me of the end that draweth nigh.
Each falling leaf that flutter'd from its bough,
Pale with the sereness of keen-biting frosts,
Would teach me that the ties of earth must loose,
One after one, the interests and joys
That made life's excellent completeness up,
Until the trunk, stripped of its verdant dress,
Stand in the naked dreadfulness of death.
Thus will my soul learn wisdom true and deep,
Not in the school of petty prejudice,
Where truth is measured out by interest,
And duty shrinks into expediency;
Not in the volumes of pedantic fools,
Who bind up knowledge, mummy-like, with terms,
That sunder'd, the enclosure turns to dust;
Not in the false philosophy of man,
Who speculates on causes and effects,
Yet thrusts his hand into the scorching flame,
And wonders that it singeth in the act--
But from her teaching who can never err,
The Pure, the Beautiful, the Mother mind,
That in the fulness of her unsearch'd soul,
Shrineth all knowledge and all loveliness!

SPIRIT.

Ay! there are lessons of true wisdom writ
In every page of Nature, from the flower
Man treads beneath him as he wanders past,
The humblest and the weakest thing of earth,
Yet with its sweet breath rising on the air
To make the fragrance of the summer full,
Up to the rattle of the thunder cloud,
The voice of heaven heard rolling through the spheres
Till earth is dumb and stricken at the sound;
Then let thy heart lean to them reverently,
Knowing that action is the end of thought;
And thus from Nature bring thou precepts still
To guide thee nobly through this pilgrim world!
One deed wrought out in holiness and love
Is richer than all vain imaginings!
Let then her lore fulfil thee evermore,
And like high inspiration send thee forth
To prophecy aloud unto mankind
Of love, and peace, and verity sublime.
Let not disaster daunt thee, nor reproach,
No feeble yelpings of the toothless curs
That follow on the heels of all who walk
The highways of this world in faithfulness,
And strength, but like a wild swan on the wave
Let every billow swelling round thy breast
Raise thee in spirit nigher unto heaven!

SCENE. _A Grove--Sunset._

MAN.

O, Earth is beautiful! In such a scene
The everlasting curse that sin entailed
Strikes on the heart by contrast, as though heaven
Rolled back its portals till the holy wrath
Of God burst on Creation. All is still
Save the rapt nightingale, that sings to rest
Earth's warring multitudes, and this bright rill
Whose voice is eloquent as poesy.
The very breeze is hush'd that stirr'd the leaves
To pleasure, and the golden clouds float on
As though an angel steered them o'er the plain
Of heaven. It is a blessed thing to feel
The melody of silence in the woods,
When outer life is hushed, and in the heart
The echo of its murmurous sweetness sounds,
As in the pauses of a song the harp
Still vibrates. 'Tis a test by which the soul
Lies open unto Nature, for its frame,
Impure or guilty, unto discord turns
Those tones of peace and harmony. Perchance
These woods ne'er heard the voice of man till now,
Nor know the motion of his jarring thoughts.
I feel the weight of judgment o'er my head
If, Adam-like, I bring the brand of guilt
On this unfallen Paradise. In sooth
This scene is rich in Eden loveliness,
And peace, and the rude din of jabbering crowds
Unheard as when Earth's generations yet
Lay in the womb of Time. How soft the air
Breathes with the scent of flow'rs, o'er which the dew
Hangs like a charm of sweetness! Ah, fair Earth!
'Tis sad to die and leave thee e'en for heaven;
Yet the blue sky above is glorious,
And brings the spirit visions of bright scenes
Yet lovelier than this. There is a veil
Of dreamy beauty o'er it, from whose woof
The mystic star-eyes glimmer like a bride's.
In such an hour peace steals upon the soul,
Like the soft twilight o'er the toiling world;
There is no room for passion--strife would blush
As at the chiding of a gentle glance.

SPIRIT.

Eve brings forth bright thoughts from the soul, like stars
From the blue heavens. Its sweet serenity
Is as a boon of mercy from above,
Restoring rest unto a toil-doomed world.
Dost thou not turn from this to the pure calm
Of Heaven as by a spell?

MAN.

Ay! yonder cloud,
Bright with the last faint glances of the sun,
Bears my soul thither.

SPIRIT.

All the Beautiful
Points like the pilot-flower, magnetically,
To Heaven, where beauty is accomplish'd. Earth
Is but the reproduction of one form,
Whose perfectness is heaven, and thus the mind,
Unblinded by the blighting mist of sin,
Sees emblems of its everlasting hope
In Nature's loveliness. This quiet hour
When the calm'd heart cries truce unto itself,
And lays the weapons of resentment down,
And bitterness and anger, yields the bliss
That in completeness is the bliss of Heaven.
The Earth is ne'er so sweet as when it seems
By intuition to the soul like Heaven,
And in the spirit earthliness dissolves
Like mist before the sunshine.

MAN.

There's a power
Within the soul that makes it yearn to soar
Up to the Infinite, and, eagle-like,
Bask in the unveiled glory of the sun;
But this frame clogs its aspirations all,
Like gyves that press the struggling captive down.
Tell me of other worlds?

SPIRIT.

There is a world
Bright as yon star that flecks the wing of night,
And sheds its glory o'er the Universe,
Made up of such pure loveliness within,
That like a gem it glistens through the crust,
And makes heaven luminous. A chasten'd sound
Of never failing melody still floats
About it, like an ocean, undulating
To the sweet breath of summer scented airs,
From hill to dale and leafy-tufted woods,
That catch the humours of the golden sun,
And deck them in his livery. There falls
From the soft twilight gloom of sparry grots,
And crystal pillar'd caverns, many a stream
That breaks in light and music on the soul,
And like a diamond-sandall'd spirit glides
In beauty through the land, margined by flowers
That mirror in its tide, and seem like stars
In heaven. There are flowers everywhere, in vale
Hill-side and woodland, in the sun and shade,
That whether dreams be on them, or they wake,
Send evermore sweet incense to the heavens.
Sun-crested mountains, softened into grace
By the blue tints of distance, lend new charms
To verdant swarded valleys, in whose lap
As in a mother's bosom, waters lie
And ripple to the wooing of the winds.
The very clouds that scan the blue of heaven,
Fused sometimes by the sunshine as with soul,
Or flaked by the light fancies of the gale,
Form to the vision labyrinths of grace
And beauty, that melt into space, and spread
A hemisphere of magic o'er the orb--
And thro' this world at morning, noon, and night,
A dreamy sweetness wanders, varying
From blessing unto blessing, that the sense
Of pleasure dull not with satiety.

MAN.

And it is habited?

SPIRIT.

By beings framed
After the model of all perfectness.
In some the majesty of strength sublime,
Rejoicing on the nervous power of life
Like the broad noontide sun, with glances bold
And open as the soul lies unto God,
And brows that thought wreathes with a glorious crown
Of fadeless immortality, which shines
Like lightning, playing round the arc of heaven.
And some there are as gentle and as fair
As flowers made animate, whose motions are
More graceful than the sweep of evening gales
O'er moonlit waters; and whose beauty fills
The air they breathe with sweetness, and to life
Is what the sunshine is to summer. All
Are filled with deathless spirits, capable
Of joy, and love, and holiness, that make,
Together, heaven's felicity. The strong,
Tho' they be trenched round with mighty thoughts,
Without one breach for weakness, in their souls
Feel the sweet want for love's pure tenderness,
That, like the dew, may soothe the eagle's breast,
And send it soaring nigher to the sun.
Thus to their lives they graft the fragile blossom,
Whose sweetness is an amulet to lay
Life's else perturbed spirit; so that all
Have oneness of necessity and good.

MAN.

O! I can compass spirit that could grasp
A star and dash it from its orbit, till
It flew through space eternally, and whelmed
Myriads of spheres in flaming ruin, yet
Cannot consummate that which is so light,
One hour's emancipation from this clod
To wander thro' such worlds. Which brightest orb
In heaven's wide treasury shines in thy tale?

SPIRIT.

Listen! e'en in this paradise there works
A mighty power of evil, conjured there
By acts of foreknown consequence. This rears
A standard of rebellion against God,
And whirls a giddy tide of interest
And pleasure to suck souls unto itself,
The centre--dashing sorrow like salt foam
To sterilize humanity. Yet still
There is a virtue, given to make its guiles
Shrink into ruin, like a withered leaf,
And pass the spirit scatheless. 'Tis a strife
Of spirit against spirit, whose result
Of loss or gain fashions eternity.

MAN.

O! it is fine to brace the spirit up,
To struggle with its foes, and feel it swell
Till it could shake a thousand demons off
As lightly as a lion doth the drops
That eve sheds on him. There's no joy like that
Of danger met, and danger overcome.
The soul is like a sword that rusts to lie
Inglorious in its scabbard, but will flash
Bright as the lightning in the battle field.
Spirit! will death transport to such a world?

SPIRIT.

Thou art upon it--It is earth--Itself
All lovely, but man's soul so warped and blind
He scarce can see her beauty, but still scans
The stars of heaven for that which lies displayed
Beneath his feet. The heart rears phantoms up
To overthrow reality, and make
Intention stand for Act. 'Tis well to boast
Of spirit warfare in another sphere,
Yet like a craven slight the trumpet call
That bids man up and strive in this. In life
There is a struggle evermore, wherein
The spirit grapples with such subtle foes,
That victory is glory infinite.
No crumbling stone to whet ambition on,
That 'neath the sapping of one wave of Time,
Melts to the substance of oblivion.
It is nobility to walk through life
With a stout heart and cheerful courage on--
To look on sorrow with undaunted mien,
And smile away the fears that trouble brings--
To bear unto the stricken solace sweet
As water to the wounded, and to be
A strength and an assurance to the weak.
Ay! life, like matter, is atomic, and
Man blows unto the winds what multiplied
Makes up the universe. This radiant earth,
Which, in its penitential moods the heart
Feels were a paradise if guilt were not,
Sprung from the womb of space, in perfectness
Co-equal with the fairest orb that holds
Vice-royalty in heaven for the sun;
Form, substance, seeming, and that vivid charm
Which is the soul of matter like in each.
Mind differs only, making fair seem dull
With what it glances through, and thus yon star
Viewed with man's callous nature, would resolve
Into reality as cold as Earth.

O Earth! thou Beauty! and thou Wonderful!
That from thy bosom like a living womb
Bringest all forms of loveliness and grace
Into the gladness of the summer air--
That givest to the winds that are the breath
And heaving of thy passion, winged thoughts
To root, seed-like, into the ground, and spring,
Bud, blossom, nourish'd ever by young showers,
And moon-distilled dews, until they make
Thine utterance odorous. That from thy soul,
As from an unseen presence of divinest light,
Dartest into the spirit subtle rays
That quicken life to blessing, as the breath
Of being stirreth the inanimate,
Making existence joy, and love, and power.
O woods! and rustling forests! Ye that send
Soft murmurs ever to the ends of heaven,
And from your breast, as from a poet's soul,
Issue all sweetest melodies of birds
And leafy eloquence. O springs! and streams!
Blithe hearted wanderers throughout the earth,
Tracing your footsteps still with flowers that rise
Like stars beneath the feet of Night. O hills!
O mighty mountains! round whose hoary brows
Gather the mystic clouds of heaven, like thoughts
Of unimagined wisdom, that are rocked
To slumber by the deep-songed hurricanes,
Sons of Destruction, and whose waking voice
Is the eternal thunder. O wide ocean!
Swelling for ever with the mighty throes
Of Nature's agony and ceaseless Act;
Emblem of Time and of Eternity!
Time the great worker, the Implacable,
That with the roll of human will and deed,
And hopes, and joys, and shatter'd purposes
Dashes relentless on! Eternity--
The Pauseless, the Insatiate! the gulf
Whereto all motion, all existence flows,
Enters and ends. O sunshine! and cool shade,
And all that makes earth beautiful and sweet!
Soft moonlight! life's pure maidenhood, whose dreams
Are gleams of antenatal blessedness,
Witness for Earth's equality, and bid
The sister orbs of heaven cry "Hail!" to her.

MAN.

O Mother Earth! methinks I hear a voice
Sound 'mid the surging of the stars of heaven,
Like a clear trump athwart the mighty roar
Of falling waters.

"Oh thou beautiful,
"Frail daughter of Immensity! that hangest
"Upon the bosom of dim night, at once
"A glory, and a brightness, and a shame--
"That from the urn of everlasting love
"Drinkest of light and immortality,
"Like a fair child in waywardness and mirth,
"Triumphing in her loveliness; the swell
"Of thy rapt harmonies is mute in heaven,
"That once rang through the arches of all space,
"A wonder and an ecstasy; but still
"Thy path is with the glorious and pure,
"Spanning the empyrean with a jewelled zone,
"Making heaven beautiful, and with thy grace
"Charming to goodness, though thou act it not.
"Arise, O lovely fondling of the skies!
"Wake from the silence of thy fallen doom,
"Breathe forth thy sweetness to the longing air;
"The angels are about thee evermore,
"Like watchers o'er a stricken one, that hold
"A glass to catch the life-mist from her lips.
"Arise! and don thy bridal vestments pure,
"And lead the train of heaven to the morn!
"Art thou not beautiful, Daughter of Heaven?--
"Beautiful as a bride before the sun,
"Gliding along the blue serene of space,
"Pensive and glorious; showering soft light
"Upon the path of heaven, as from the eyes
"Of downward-glancing cherubim. Arise!
"Stand in the light of lights, and bare thy soul
"Unto the searching of the undimmed spheres!"

O, Spirit! are there angels hovering now
In the dim ocean of this twilight air?

SPIRIT.