Chapter LIX: Introduction (5)

And a burning flood of gem-like hues,
From a storied window pour’d,
There fell, there centred, to suffuse
The conqueror and his sword.

A flood of hues--but _one_ rich dye
O’er all supremely spread,
With a purple robe of royalty
Mantling the mighty dead.

Meet was that robe for _him_ whose name
Was a trumpet-note in war,
His pathway still the march of fame,
His eye the battle-star.

But faintly, tenderly was thrown,
From the colour’d light, one ray,
Where a low and pale memorial-stone
By the couch of glory lay.

Few were the fond words chisell’d _there_,
Mourning for parted worth;
But the very heart of love and prayer
Had given their sweetness forth.

They spoke of one whose life had been
As a hidden streamlet’s course,
Bearing on health and joy unseen
From its clear mountain-source:

Whose young, pure memory, lying deep
Midst rock, and wood, and hill,
Dwelt in the homes where poor men sleep,[429]
A soft light, meek and still:

Whose gentle voice, too early call’d
Unto Music’s land away,
Had won for God the earth’s, enthrall’d
By words of silvery sway.

These were _his_ victories--yet, enroll’d
In no high song of fame,
The pastor of the mountain-fold
Left but to heaven his name.

To heaven, and to the peasant’s hearth,
A blessed household-sound;
And finding lowly love on earth,
Enough, enough, he found!

Bright and more bright before me gleam’d
That sainted image still,
Till one sweet moonlight memory seem’d
The regal fane to fill.

Oh! how my silent spirit turn’d
From those proud trophies nigh!
How my full heart within me burn’d
Like _Him_ to live and die!

[428] Suggested by a passage in Captain Sherer’s “Notes and Reflections during a Ramble in Germany.”

[429]

“Love had he seen in huts where poor men lie.”
Wordsworth.

THE COTTAGE GIRL.

A child beside a hamlet’s fount at play,
Her fair face laughing at the sunny day;

A gush of waters tremulously bright,
Kindling the air to gladness with their light;
And a soft gloom beyond of summer trees,
Darkening the turf; and, shadow’d o’er by these,
A low, dim, woodland cottage--this was all!
What had the scene for memory to recall
With a fond look of love? What secret spell
With the heart’s pictures made its image dwell?

What but the spirit of the joyous child,
That freshly forth o’er stream and verdure smiled,
Casting upon the common things of earth
A brightness, born and gone with infant mirth!

THE BATTLE-FIELD.

I look’d on the field where the battle was spread,
When thousands stood forth in their glancing array;
And the beam from the steel of the valiant was shed
Through the dun-rolling clouds that o’ershadow’d the fray.

I saw the dark forest of lances appear,
As the ears of the harvest unnumber’d they stood;
I heard the stern shout as the foemen drew near,
Like the storm that lays low the proud pines of the wood.

Afar the harsh notes of the war-drum were roll’d,
Uprousing the wolf from the depth of his lair;
On high to the gust stream’d the banner’s red fold,
O’er the death-close of hate, and the scowl of despair.

I look’d on the field of contention again,
When the sabre was sheath’d and the tempest had past;
The wild weed and thistle grew rank on the plain,
And the fem softly sigh’d in the low, wailing blast.

Unmoved lay the lake in its hour of repose,
And bright shone the stars through the sky’s deepen’d blue;
And sweetly the song of the night-bird arose,
Where the fox-glove lay gemm’d with its pearl-drops of dew.

But where swept the ranks of that dark, frowning host,
As the ocean in might, as the storm-cloud in speed?
Where now are the thunders of victory’s boast--
The slayer’s dread wrath, and the strength of the steed?

Not a time-wasted cross, not a mouldering stone,
To mark the lone scene of their shame or their pride;
One grass-cover’d mound told the traveller alone
Where thousands lay down in their anguish, and died!

O Glory! behold thy famed guerdon’s extent:
For this, toil thy slaves through their earth-wasting lot--
A name like the mist, when the night-beams are spent;
A grave with its tenants unwept and forgot!

A PENITENT’S RETURN.

“Can guilt or misery ever enter here?
Ah, no! the spirit of domestic peace,
Though calm and gentle as the brooding dove,
And ever murmuring forth a quiet song,
Guards, powerful as the sword of cherubim,
The hallow’d porch. She hath a heavenly smile,
That sinks into the sullen soul of Vice,
And wins him o’er to virtue.”--Wilson.

My father’s house once more,
In its own moonlight beauty! Yet around,
Something, amidst the dewy calm profound,
Broods, never mark’d before!

Is it the brooding night?
Is it the shivery creeping on the air,
That makes the home so tranquil and so fair,
O’erwhelming to my sight?

All solemnised it seems,
And still’d, and darken’d in each time-worn hue,
Since the rich, clustering roses met my view,
As now, by starry gleams.

And this high elm, where last
I stood and linger’d--where my sisters made
Our mother’s bower--I deem’d not that it cast
So far and dark a shade!

How spirit-like a tone
Sighs through yon tree! My father’s place was there
At evening hours, while soft winds waved his hair!
Now those gray locks are gone!

My soul grows faint with fear!
Even as if angel-steps had mark’d the sod.
I tremble where I move--the voice of God
Is in the foliage here!

Is it indeed the night
That makes my home so awful? Faithless-hearted!
’Tis that from thine own bosom hath departed
The inborn, gladdening light!

No outward thing is changed;
Only the joy of purity is fled,
And, long from nature’s melodies estranged,
Thou hear’st their tones with dread.

Therefore the calm abode,
By thy dark spirit, is o’erhung with shade;
And therefore, in the leaves, the voice of God
Makes thy sick heart afraid!

The night-flowers round that door
Still breathe pure fragrance on the untainted air;
Thou, thou alone art worthy now no more
To pass, and rest thee there.

And must I turn away?--
Hark, hark!--it is my mother’s voice I hear--
Sadder than once it seem’d--yet soft and clear;--
Doth she not seem to pray?

My name!--I caught the sound!
Oh! blessed tone of love--the deep, the mild!
Mother! my mother! now receive thy child:
Take back the lost and found!

A THOUGHT OF PARADISE.

“We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live;
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud;
And, would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate, cold world allow’d
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,
Enveloping the earth;
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element.”--Coleridge.

Green spot of holy ground!
If thou couldst yet be found,
Far in deep woods, with all thy starry flowers;
If not one sullying breath
Of time, or change, or death,
Had touch’d the vernal glory of thy bowers;

Might our tired pilgrim-feet,
Worn by the desert’s heat,
On the bright freshness of thy turf repose?
Might our eyes wander there
Through heaven’s transparent air,
And rest on colours of the immortal rose?

Say, would thy balmy skies
And fountain-melodies
Our heritage of lost delight restore?
Could thy soft honey-dews
Through all our veins diffuse
The early, child-like, trustful sleep once more?

And might we, in the shade
By thy tall cedars made,
With angel-voices high communion hold?
Would their sweet, solemn tone
Give back the music gone,
Our Being’s harmony, so jarr’d of old?

Oh no!--thy sunny hours
Might come with blossom-showers,
All thy young leaves to spirit-lyres might thrill;
But _we_--should we not bring
Into thy realms of spring
The shadows of our souls to haunt us still?

What could _thy_ flowers and airs
Do for our earth-born cares?
Would the world’s chain melt off and leave us free?
No!--past each living stream,
Still would some fever-dream
Track the lorn wanderers, meet no more for thee!

Should we not shrink with fear
If angel-steps were near,
Feeling our burden’d souls within us die?
How might our passions brook
The still and searching look,
The star-like glance of seraph purity?

Thy golden-fruited grove
Was not for pining love;
Vain sadness would but dim thy crystal skies!
Oh! _thou_ wert but a part
Of what man’s exiled heart
Hath lost--the dower of _inborn_ Paradise!

LET US DEPART!

[It is mentioned by Josephus, that, a short time previous to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the priests, going by night into the inner court of the Temple to perform their sacred ministrations at the feast of Pentecost, felt a quaking, and heard a rushing noise, and, after that, a sound as of a great multitude saying, “Let us depart hence!”]

Night hung on Salem’s towers,
And a brooding hush profound
Lay where the Roman eagle shone
High o’er the tents around--

The tents that rose by thousands,
In the moonlight glimmering pale;
Like white waves of a frozen sea
Filling an Alpine vale.

And the Temple’s massy shadow
Fell broad, and dark, and still,
In peace--as if the Holy One
Yet watch’d his chosen hill.

But a fearful sound was heard
In that old fane’s deepest heart,
As if mighty wings rush’d by,
And a dread voice raised the cry,
“_Let us depart!_”

Within the fated city
E’en then fierce discord raved,
Though o’er night’s heaven the comet-sword
Its vengeful token waved.

There were shouts of kindred warfare
Through the dark streets ringing high,
Though every sign was full which told
Of the bloody vintage nigh;

Though the wild red spears and arrows
Of many a meteor host
Went flashing o’er the holy stars,
In the sky now seen, now lost.

And that fearful sound was heard
In the Temple’s deepest heart,
As if mighty wings rush’d by,
And a voice cried mournfully,
“_Let us depart!_”

But within the fated city
There was revelry that night--
The wine-cup and the timbrel note,
And the blaze of banquet-light.

The footsteps of the dancer
Went bounding through the hall,
And the music of the dulcimer
Summon’d to festival:

While the clash of brother-weapons
Made lightning in the air,
And the dying at the palace gates
Lay down in their despair;

And that fearful sound was heard
At the Temple’s thrilling heart,
As if mighty wings rush’d by,
And a dread voice raised the cry,
“_Let us depart!_”

ON A PICTURE OF CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS.

PAINTED BY VELASQUEZ.[430]

By the dark stillness brooding in the sky,
Holiest of sufferers! round thy path of woe,
And by the weight of mortal agony
Laid on thy drooping form and pale meek brow,
My heart was awed: the burden of thy pain
Sank on me with a mystery and a chain.

I look’d once more--and, as the virtue shed
Forth from thy robe of old, so fell a ray
Of victory from thy mien; and round thy head,
The halo, melting spirit-like away,
Seem’d of the very soul’s bright rising born,
To glorify all sorrow, shame, and scorn.

And upwards, through transparent darkness gleaming,
Gazed in mute reverence woman’s earnest eye,
Lit, as a vase whence inward light is streaming,
With quenchless faith, and deep love’s fervency,
Gathering, like incense round some dim-veil’d shrine,
About the form, so mournfully divine!

Oh! let thine image, as e’en then it rose,
Live in my soul for ever, calm and clear,
Making itself a temple of repose,
Beyond the breath of human hope or fear!
A holy place, where through all storms may lie
One living beam of dayspring from on high.

[430] This picture is in the possession of the Viscount Harberton, Merrion Square, Dublin.

COMMUNINGS WITH THOUGHT.

“Could we but keep our spirits to that height,
We might be happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal.”--Byron.

Return, my thoughts--come home!
Ye wild and wing’d! what do ye o’er the deep?
And wherefore thus the abyss of time o’ersweep,
As birds the ocean-foam?

Swifter than shooting-star,
Swifter than lances of the northern-light,
Upspringing through the purple heaven of night,
Hath been your course afar!

Through the bright battle-clime,
Where laurel boughs make dim the Grecian streams,
And reeds are whispering of heroic themes,
By temples of old time:

Through the north’s ancient halls,
Where banners thrill’d of yore--where harp-strings rung;
But grass waves now o’er those that fought and sung,
Hearth-light hath left their walls!

Through forests old and dim,
Where o’er the leaves dread magic seems to brood;
And sometimes on the haunted solitude
Rises the pilgrim’s hymn:

Or where some fountain lies,
With lotus-cups through orient spice-woods gleaming!
There have ye been, ye wanderers! idly dreaming
Of man’s lost paradise!

Return, my thoughts--return!
Cares wait your presence in life’s daily track,
And voices, not of music, call you back--
Harsh voices, cold and stem!

Oh, no! return ye not!
Still farther, loftier, let your soarings be!
Go, bring me strength from journeyings bright and free,
O’er many a haunted spot.

Go! seek the martyr’s grave,
Midst the old mountains, and the deserts vast;
Or, through the ruin’d cities of the past,
Follow the wise and brave!

Go! visit cell and shrine,
Where woman hath endured!--thro’ wrong, thro’ scorn,
Uncheer’d by fame, yet silently upborne
By promptings more divine!

Go, shoot the gulf of death!
Track the pure spirit where no chain can bind,
Where the heart’s boundless love its rest may find,
Where the storm sends no breath!
Higher, and yet more high--!
Shake off the cumbering chain which earth would lay
On your victorious wings--mount, mount! Your way
Is through eternity!

THE WATER-LILY.

“The Water-Lilies, that are serene in the calm clear water, but no less serene among the black and scowling waves.”--Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.

Oh! beautiful thou art,
Thou sculpture-like and stately river-queen!
Crowning the depths, as with the light serene
Of a pure heart.

Bright lily of the wave!
Rising in fearless grace with every swell,
Thou seem’st as if a spirit meekly brave
Dwelt in thy cell:

Lifting alike thy head
Of placid beauty, feminine yet free,
Whether with foam or pictured azure spread
The waters be.

What is like thee, fair flower,
The gentle and the firm! thus bearing up
To the blue sky that alabaster cup,
As to the shower?

Oh! love is most like thee,
The love of woman! quivering to the blast
Through every nerve, yet rooted deep and fast,
Midst life’s dark sea.

And faith--oh, is not faith
Like thee, too, lily! springing into light,
Still buoyantly, above the billows’ might,
Through the storm’s breath?

Yes! link’d with such high thought,
Flower! let thine image in my bosom lie;
Till something there of its own purity
And peace be wrought--

Something yet more divine
Than the clear, pearly, virgin lustre shed
Forth from thy breast upon the river’s bed.
As from a shrine.

THE SONG OF PENITENCE.[431]

UNFINISHED.

[We learn from the Rev. R. P. Graves, that “The Song of Penitence,” if it had been finished in time, was intended for insertion among the “Scenes and Hymns of Life.”]

He pass’d from earth
Without his fame,--the calm, pure, starry fame
He might have won, to guide on radiantly
Full many a noble soul,--he sought it not;
And e’en like brief and barren lightning pass’d
The wayward child of genius. And the songs
Which his wild spirit, in the pride of life,
Had shower’d forth recklessly, as ocean-waves
Fling up their treasures mingled with dark weed,
They died before him;--they were winged seed
Scatter’d afar, and, falling on the rock
Of the world’s heart, had perish’d. One alone,
One fervent, mournful, supplicating strain,
The deep beseeching of a stricken breast,
Survived the vainly-gifted. In the souls
Of the kind few that loved him, with a love
Faithful to even its disappointed hope,
That song of tears found root, and by their hearths
Full oft, in low and reverential tones,
Fill’d with the piety of tenderness,
Is murmur’d to their children, when his name
On some faint harp-string of remembrance falls,
Far from the world’s rude voices, far away.
Oh! hear, and judge him gently; ’twas his last.

I come alone, and faint I come--
To nature’s arms I flee;
The green woods take their wanderer home,
But Thou, O Father! may I turn to thee?

The earliest odour of the flower,
The bird’s first song is thine;
Father in heaven! my dayspring’s hour
Pour’d its vain incense on another shrine.

Therefore my childhood’s once-loved scene
Around me faded lies;
Therefore, remembering what hath been,
I ask, is this mine early paradise?

It is, it is--but Thou art gone;
Or if the trembling shade
Breathe yet of thee, with alter’d tone
Thy solemn whisper shakes a heart dismay’d.

[431] Suggested by the late Mrs Fletcher’s story of _The Lost Life_, published in the _Amulet_ for 1830.

TROUBADOUR SONG.

They rear’d no trophy o’er his grave,
They hade no requiem flow;
What left they there to tell the brave
That a warrior sleeps below?

A shiver’d spear, a cloven shield,
A helm with its white plume torn,
And a blood-stain’d turf on the fatal field,
Where a chief to his rest was borne.

He lies not where his fathers sleep,
But who hath a tomb more proud?
For the Syrian wilds his record keep,
And a banner is his shroud.

THE ENGLISH BOY.

“Go, call thy sons; instruct them what a debt
They owe their ancestors; and make them swear
To pay it, by transmitting down entire
Those sacred rights to which themselves were born.”
Akenside.

Look from the ancient mountains down,
My noble English boy!
Thy country’s fields around thee gleam
In sunlight and in joy.

Ages have roll’d since foeman’s march
Pass’d o’er that old, firm sod;
For well the land hath fealty held
To freedom and to God!

Gaze proudly on, my English boy!
And let thy kindling mind
Drink in the spirit of high thought
From every chainless wind!

There, in the shadow of old Time,
The halls beneath thee lie
Which pour’d forth to the fields of yore
Our England’s chivalry.

How bravely and how solemnly
They stand, midst oak and yew!
Whence Cressy’s yeomen haply framed
The bow, in battle true.

And round their walls the good swords hang
Whose faith knew no alloy,
And shields of knighthood, pure from stain:
Gaze on, my English boy!

Gaze where the hamlet’s ivied church
Gleams by the antique elm,
Or where the minster lifts the cross
High through the air’s blue realm.

Martyrs have shower’d their free heart’s blood
That England’s prayer might rise,
From those gray fanes of thoughtful years,
Unfetter’d, to the skies.

Along their aisles, beneath their trees,
This earth’s most glorious dust,
Once fired with valour, wisdom, song,
Is laid in holy trust.

Gaze on--gaze farther, farther yet--
My gallant English boy!
Yon blue sea bears thy country’s flag,
The billows’ pride and joy!

Those waves in many a fight have closed
Above her faithful dead;
That red-cross flag victoriously
Hath floated o’er their bed.

They perish’d--this green turf to keep
By hostile tread unstain’d,
These knightly halls inviolate,
Those churches unprofaned.

And high and clear their memory’s light
Along our shore is set,
And many an answering beacon-fire
Shall there be kindled yet!

Lift up thy heart, my English boy!
And pray, like _them_ to stand,
Should God so summon _thee_, to guard
The altars of the land.

TO THE BLUE ANEMONE.

Flower of starry clearness bright!
Quivering urn of colour’d light!
Hast thou drawn thy cup’s rich dye
From the intenseness of the sky?
From a long, long fervent gaze
Through the year’s first golden days,
Up that blue and silent deep,
Where, like things of sculptured sleep,
Alabaster clouds repose,
With the sunshine on their snows?
Thither was thy heart’s love turning,
Like a censer ever burning,
Till the purple heavens in thee
Set their smile, Anemone?

Or can those warm tints be caught
Each from some quick glow of thought?
So much of bright _soul_ there seems
In thy bendings and thy gleams,
So much thy sweet life resembles
That which feels, and weeps, and trembles,
I could deem thee spirit-fill’d,
As a reed by music thrill’d,
When thy being I behold
To each loving breath unfold,
Or, like woman’s willowy form,
Shrink before the gathering storm!
I could ask a _voice_ from thee,
Delicate Anemone!

Flower! thou seem’st not born to die
With thy radiant purity,
But to melt in air away,
Mingling with the soft Spring-day,
When the crystal heavens are still,
And faint azure veils each hill,
And the lime-leaf doth not move,
Save to songs that stir the grove,
And earth all glorified is seen,
As imaged in some lake serene;
--Then thy vanishing should be,
Pure and meek Anemone!

Flower! the laurel still may shed
Brightness round the victor’s head;
And the rose in beauty’s hair
Still its festal glory wear;
And the willow-leaves drop o’er
Brows which love sustains no more:
But by living rays refined,
Thou, the trembler of the wind,
Thou the spiritual flower,
Sentient of each breeze and shower,
Thou, rejoicing in the skies,
And transpierced with all their dyes;
Breathing vase, with light o’erflowing,
Gem-like to thy centre glowing,
Thou the poet’s type shalt be,
Flower of soul, Anemone!

SCENES AND PASSAGES FROM GOETHE.

SCENES FROM “TASSO.”

[One of the many literary projects contemplated by Mrs Hemans at this time, was a series of German studies, consisting of translations of scenes and passages from some of the most celebrated German authors, introduced and connected by illustrative remarks. The only one of these papers which she ever completed, was that on Goethe’s “Tasso,” published in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for January 1834; a paper which well deserves attention, as it embodies so much of her individual feeling with respect to the high and sacred mission of the Poet; as well as regarding that mysterious analogy between the outer world of nature and the inner world of the heart, which it was so peculiarly the tendency of her writings to develop.--_Memoir_, pp. 272-3.]

The dramatic poem of “Tasso,” though presenting no changeful pageants of many-coloured life--no combination of stirring incidents, nor conflict of tempestuous passions--is yet rich in interest for those who find--

“The still, sad music of humanity,
... of ample power
To chasten and subdue.”

It is a picture of the struggle between elements which never can assimilate--powers whose dominion is over spheres essentially adverse; between the spirit of poetry and the spirit of the world. Why is it that this collision is almost invariably fatal to the gentler and the holier nature? Some master-minds have, indeed, winged their way through the tumults of crowded life, like the sea-bird cleaving the storm from which its pinions come forth unstained; but there needs a celestial panoply, with which few indeed are gifted, to bear the heirs of genius not only unwounded, but unsoiled, through the battle; and too frequently the result of the poet’s lingering afar from his better home has been mental degradation and untimely death. Let us not be understood as requiring for his wellbeing an absolute seclusion from the world and its interests. _His_ nature, if the abiding-place of the true light be indeed within him, is endowed above all others with the tenderest and most widely-embracing sympathies. Not alone from “the things of the everlasting hills,” from the storms or the silence of midnight skies, will he seek the grandeur and the beauty which have their central residence in a far more majestic temple. Mountains, and rivers, and mighty woods, the cathedrals of nature--these will have their part in his pictures; but their colouring and shadows will not be wholly the gift of rising or departed suns, nor of the night with all her stars; it will be a varying suffusion from the life within, from the glowing clouds of thought and feeling, which mantle with their changeful drapery all external creation.

----“We receive but what we give,
And in _our_ life alone does nature live.”

Let the poet bear into the recesses of woods and shadowy hills a heart full-fraught with the sympathies which will have been fostered by intercourse with his kind--a memory covered with the secret inscriptions which joy and sorrow fail not indelibly to write: then will the voice of every stream respond to him in tones of gladness or melancholy, accordant with those of his own soul, and he himself, by the might of feelings intensely human, may breathe the living spirit of the oracle into the resounding cavern or the whispering oak. We thus admit it essential to his high office, that the chambers of imagery in the heart of the poet must be filled with materials moulded from the sorrows, the affections, the fiery trials, and immortal longings of the human soul. Where love, and faith, and anguish, meet and contend--where the tones of prayer are wrung from the suffering spirit--_there_ lie his veins of treasure; there are the sweet waters ready to flow from the stricken rock. But he will not seek them through the gaudy and hurrying masque of artificial life; he will not be the fettered Samson to make sport for the sons and daughters of fashion. Whilst he shuns no brotherly communion with his kind, he will ever reserve to his nature the power of _self_-communion--silent hours for

“The harvest of the quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart,”

and inviolate retreats in the depths of his being--fountains lone and still, upon which only the eye of Heaven shines down in its hallowed serenity. So have those who make us “heirs of truth and freedom by immortal lays,” ever preserved the calm, intellectual ether in which they live and move from the taint of worldly infection; and it appears the object of Goethe, in the work before us, to make the gifted spirit sadder and wiser by the contemplation of one, which, having sold its birthright, and stooped from its “privacy of glorious light,” is forced into perpetual contact with things essentially of the earth earthy. Dante has spoken of what the Italian poets must have learned but too feelingly under their protecting princes--the bitter taste of another’s bread, the weary steps by which the stairs of another’s house are ascended; but it is suffering of a more spiritual nature which is here portrayed. Would that the courtly patronage, at the shrine of which the Italian muse has so often waved her censer, had imposed no severer tasks upon its votaries than the fashioning of the snow statue which it required from the genius of Michael Angelo! The story of Tasso is fraught with yet deeper meaning, though it is not from the period of his most agonising trials that the materials of Goethe’s work are drawn. The poet is here introduced to us as a youth at the court of Ferrara; visionary, enthusiastic, keenly alive to the splendour of the gorgeous world around him, throwing himself passionately upon the current of every newly-excited feeling; a creature of sudden lights and shadows, of restless strivings after ideal perfection, of exultations and of agonies. Why is it that the being thus exhibited as endowed with all these trembling capacities for joy and pain, with noble aspirations and fervid eloquence, fails to excite a more reverential interest, a more tender admiration? He is wanting in dignity, in the sustaining consciousness of his own high mission; he has no city of refuge within himself, and thus--

“Every little living nerve,
That from bitter words doth swerve,”

has the power to shake his whole soul from its pride of place. He is thus borne down by the cold, triumphant worldliness of the courtier Antonio, from the collision with whom, and the mistaken endeavour of Tasso’s friends to reconcile natures dissimilar as the sylph and gnome of fanciful creations, the conflicting elements of the piece are chiefly derived. There are impressive lessons to be drawn from the contemplation of these scenes, though, perhaps, it is not quite thus that we could have wished _him_ delineated who “poured his spirit over Palestine;” and it is occasionally almost too painful to behold the high-minded Tasso, recognised by his country as _superior with the sword and the pen to all men_, struggling in so ignoble an arena, and finally overpowered by so unworthy an antagonist. This world is indeed “too much with us,” and but too powerful is often its withering breath upon the ethereal natures of love, devotion, and enthusiasm, which, in other regions,

“May bear bright, golden flowers, but not in this soil.”

Yet who has not known victorious moments, in which the lightly-armed genii of ridicule have quailed!--the conventional forms of life have shrunk as a shrivelled scroll before the Ithuriel touch of some generous feeling, some high and overshadowing passion suddenly aroused from the inmost recesses of the folded soul, and striking the electric chain which mysteriously connects all humanity? We could have wished that some such thrilling moment had been here introduced by the mighty master of Germany--something to relieve the too continuous impression of inherent weakness in the cause of the vanquished--something of a transmuting power in the soul of Tasso, to glorify the clouds which accumulate around it--to turn them into “contingencies of pomp” by the interpenetration of its own celestial light. Yet we approach with reverence the work of a noble hand; and, whilst entering upon our task of translation, we acknowledge, in humility, the feebleness of all endeavour to pour into the vase of another language the exquisitely subtle spirit of Goethe’s poetry--to transplant and naturalise the delicate felicities of thought and expression by which this piece is so eminently distinguished.

The visionary rapture which takes possession of Tasso upon being crowned with laurel by the Princess Leonora d’Este, the object of an affection which the youthful poet has scarcely yet acknowledged to himself, is thus portrayed in one of the earlier scenes:--

“Let me then bear the burden of my bliss
To some deep grove that oft hath veil’d my grief;
There let me roam in solitude: no eye
Shall then recall the triumph undeserved.
And if some shining fountain suddenly
On its clear mirror to my sight should give
The form of one who, strangely, brightly crown’d,
Seems musing in the blue reflected heaven,
As it streams down through rocks and parted trees,
Then will I dream that on the enchanted wave
I see Elysium pictured! I will ask
_Who_ is the bless’d departed one?--the youth
From long past ages with his glorious wreath?
Who shall reveal his name?--who speak his worth?
Oh! that another and another there
Might press, with him to hold bright communing!
Might I but see the minstrels and the chiefs
Of the old time on that pure fountain-side.
For evermore inseparably link’d
As they were link’d in life! Not steel to steel
Is bound more closely by the magnet’s power
Than the same striving after lofty things
Doth bind the bard and warrior. Homer’s life
Was self-forgetfulness--he pour’d it forth,
One rich libation to another’s fame:
And Alexander through th’ Elysian grove
To seek Achilles and his poet flies.
Might I behold their meeting!”

But he is a reed shaken with the wind. Antonio reaches the Court of Ferrara at this crisis, in all the importance of a successful negotiation with the Vatican. He strikes down the wing of the poet’s delicate imagination with the arrows of a careless irony, and Tasso is for a time completely dazzled and overpowered by the worldly science of the skilful diplomatist. The deeper wisdom of his own simplicity is yet veiled from his eyes. Life seems to pass before him, as portrayed by the discourse of Antonio, like a mighty triumphal procession, in the exulting movements and clarion-sounds of which he alone has no share; and at last the forms of beauty, peopling his own spiritual world, seem to dissolve into clouds, even into faint shadows of clouds, before the strong glare of the external world, leaving his imagination as a desolate house, whence light and music have departed. He thus pours forth, when alone with the Princess Leonora, the impressions produced upon him by Antonio’s descriptions:--

They still disturb my heart--
Still do they crowd my soul tumultuously--
The troubling images of that vast world,
Which--living, restless, fearful as it is--
Yet, at the bidding of one master-mind,
E’en as commanded by a demigod,
Seems to fulfil its course. With eagerness,
Yea, with a strange delight, my soul drank in
The strong words of the experienced; but, alas!
The more I listen’d, still the more I sank
In mine own eyes; I seem’d to die away
As into some faint echo of the rocks--
A shadowy sound--a nothing!

There is something of a very touching beauty in the character of the Princess Leonora d’Este. She does not, indeed, resemble some of the lovely beings delineated by Shakspeare--the females, “graceful without design, and unforeseeing,” in whom, even under the pressure of heaviest calamity, it is easy to discern the existence of the sunny and gladsome nature which would spring up with fawn-like buoyancy were but the crushing weight withdrawn. The spirit of Leonora has been at once elevated and subdued by early trial: high thoughts, like messengers from heaven, have been its visitants in the solitude of the sick-chamber; and looking upon life and creation, as it were, through the softening veil of remembered suffering, it has settled into such majestic loveliness as the Italian painters delight to shadow forth on the calm brow of their Madonna. Its very tenderness is self-resignation; its inner existence serene, yet sad--“a being breathing thoughtful breath.” She is worshipped by the poet as his tutelary angel, and her secret affection for him might almost become that character. It has all the deep devotedness of a woman’s heart, with the still purity of a seraphic guardian, taking no part in the passionate dreams of earthly happiness. She feels his genius with a reverential appreciation; she watches over it with a religious tenderness, for ever interposing to screen its unfolding powers from every ruder breath. She rejoices in his presence as a flower filling its cup with gladness from the morning light; yet, preferring _his_ wellbeing to all earthly things, she would meekly offer up, for the knowledge of his distant happiness, even the fulness of that only and unutterable joy. A deep feeling of woman’s lot on earth--the lot of endurance and of sacrifice--seems ever present to her soul, and speaks characteristically in these lines, with which she replies to a wish of Tasso’s for the return of the golden age:--

When earth has men to reverence female _hearts_,
To know the treasure of rich truth and love,
Set deep within a high-soul’d woman’s breast;
When the remembrance of our summer prime
Keeps brightly in man’s heart a holy place;
When the keen glance that pierces through so much
Looks also tenderly through that dim veil
By time or sickness hung round drooping forms,
When the possession, stilling every wish,
Draws not desire away to other wealth--
A brighter dayspring then for _us_ may dawn,
Then may _we_ solemnise our golden age.

A character thus meditative, affectionate, and self-secluding, would naturally be peculiarly sensitive to the secret intimations of coming sorrow. Forebodings of evil arise in her mind from the antipathy so apparent between Tasso and Antonio; and, after learning that the cold, keen irony of the latter has irritated the poet almost to frenzy, she thus, to her friend Leonora de Sanvitale, reproaches herself for not having listened to the monitory whispers of her soul:--

Alas! that we so slowly learn to heed
The secret signs and omens of the breast!
An oracle speaks low within our hearts--
Low, still, yet clear, its prophet-voice forewarns
What to pursue, what shun.
...
Yes! my whole soul misgave me silently
When he and Tasso met.

She admits to her friend the necessity for his departure from Ferrara; but thus reverts, with fondly-clinging remembrance, to the time when he first became known to her:--

Oh! mark’d and singled was the hour when first
He met mine eye! Sickness and grief just then
Had pass’d away: from long, long suffering freed,
I lifted up my brow, and silently
Gazed upon life again. The sunny day,
The sweet looks of my kindred, made a light
Of gladness round me, and my freshen’d heart
Drank the rich, healing balm of hope once more.
Then onward, through the glowing world, I dared
To send my glance, and many a kind, bright shape
There beckon’d from afar. Then first the youth,
Led by a sister’s hand, before me stood,
And my soul clung to him e’en then, O friend!
To cling for evermore.

_Leo._ Lament it not,
My princess!--to have known heaven’s gifted ones
Is to have gather’d into the full soul
Inalienable wealth!

_Prin._ Oh, precious things!
The richly graced, the exquisite, are things
To fear, to love with trembling! Beautiful
Is the pure flame when on thy hearth it shines,
When in the friendly torch it gives thee light,
How gracious and how calm!--but, once unchain’d,
Lo! ruin sweeps along its fatal path!

She then announces her determination to make the sacrifice of his society, in which alone her being seems to find its full completion.

Alas, dear friend! my soul indeed is fix’d--
Let him depart! Yet cannot I but feel
Even now the sadness of long days to come--
The cold void left me by a lost delight!
No more shall sunrise from my opening eye
Chase his bright image glorified in dreams;
Glad hope to see him shall no longer stir
With joyous flutterings my scarce-waken’d soul;
And vainly, vainly, through yon garden bowers,
Amidst the dewy shadows, my first look
Shall seek his form! How blissful was the thought
With him to share each golden evening’s peace!
How grew the longing, hour by hour, to read
His spirit yet more deeply! Day by day
How my own being, tuned to happiness,
Gave forth a voice of finer harmony!--
Now is the twilight-gloom around me fallen:
The festal day, the sun’s magnificence,
All riches of this many-colour’d world,
What are they now?--dim, soulless, desolate!
Veil’d in the cloud that sinks upon my heart.
Once was each day a life!--each care was mute,
Even the low boding hush’d within the soul;
And the smooth waters of a gliding stream,
Without the rudder’s aid, bore lightly on
Our fairy bark of joy!

Her companion endeavours, but in vain, to console her.

_Leon._ If the kind words of friendship cannot soothe,
The still, sweet influences of this fair world
Shall win thee back unconsciously to peace.

_Prin._ Yes! beautiful it is, the glowing world!
So many a joy keeps flitting to and fro
In all its paths, and ever, ever seems
One step, _but_ one, removed; till our fond thirst
For the still fading fountain, step by step,
Lures to the grave! So seldom do we find
What seem’d by Nature moulded for our love,
And for our bliss endow’d--or, _if_ we find,
So seldom to our yearning hearts can hold!
That which once freely made itself our own
Bursts from us!--that which eagerly we press’d
We coldly loose! A treasure may be ours,
Only we know it not, or know, perchance,
Unconscious of its worth!

But the dark clouds are gathering within the spirit of Tasso itself, and the devotedness of affection would in vain avert their lightnings by the sacrifice of all its own pure enjoyments. In the solitary confinement to which the Duke has sentenced him, as a punishment for his duel with Antonio, his jealous imagination, like that of the self-torturing Rousseau, pictures the whole world as arrayed in one conspiracy against him, and he doubts even of _her_ truth and gentleness whose watching thoughts are all for his welfare. The following passages affectingly mark the progress of the dark despondency which finally overwhelms him, though the concluding lines of the last are brightened by a ray of those immortal hopes, the light of which we could have desired to recognise more frequently in this deeply thoughtful work.

PRESENTIMENT OF HIS RUIN.

Alas! too well I feel, too true a voice
Within me whispers, that the Mighty Power
Which, on sustaining wings of strength and joy,
Bears up the healthful spirit, will but cast
Mine to the earth--will rend me utterly!----
I must away!

ON A FRIEND’S DECLARING HERSELF UNABLE TO RECOGNISE HIM.

Rightly thou speak’st--I am myself no more;
And yet in worth not less than I have been.
Seems this a dark, strange riddle? Yet,’tis none!
The gentle moon that gladdens thee by night--
Thine eye, thy spirit irresistibly
Winning with beams of love--mark! how it floats
Through the day’s glare, a pale and powerless cloud!
I am o’ercome by the full blaze of noon;
Ye know me, and I know myself no more!

ON BEING ADVISED TO REFRAIN FROM COMPOSITION.

Vainly, too vainly, ’gainst the power I strive,
Which, night and day, comes rushing through my soul!
Without that pouring forth of thought and song
My life is life no more!
Wilt thou forbid the silkworm to spin on,
When hourly, with the labour’d line, he draws
Nearer to death. In vain!--the costly web
Must from his inmost being still be wrought,
Till he lies wrapp’d in his consummate shroud.
Oh! that a gracious God to us may give
The lot of that bless’d worm!--to spread free wings,
And burst exultingly on brighter life,
In a new realm of sunshine!

He is at last released, and admitted into the presence of the Princess Leonora, to take his leave of her before commencing a distant journey. Notwithstanding his previous doubts of her interest in him, he is overcome by the pitying tenderness of her manner, and breaks into a strain of passionate gratitude and enthusiasm:--

Thou art the same pure angel, as when first
Thy radiance cross’d my path! Forgive, forgive,
If for a moment, in his blind despair,
The mortal’s troubled glance hath read thee wrong!
Once more he knows thee! His expanding soul
Flows forth to worship thee for evermore,
And his full heart dissolves in tenderness.
...
Is it false light which draws me on to thee?
Is it delirium?--Is it thought inspired,
And grasping first high truth divinely clear?
Yes! ’tis even so--the feeling which alone
Can make me bless’d on earth!

The wildness of his ecstasy at last terrifies his gentle protectress from him; he is forsaken by all as a being lost in hopeless delusion, and, being left alone tn the insulting pity of Antonio, his strength of heart is utterly subdued: he passionately bewails his weakness, and even casts down his spirit almost in wondering admiration before the calm self-collectedness of his enemy, who himself seems at last almost melted by the extremity of the poet’s desolation, as thus poured forth:--

Can I then image no high-hearted man
Whose pangs and conflicts have surpass’d mine own,
That my vex’d soul might win sustaining power
From thoughts of _him_? I cannot!--all is lost!
One thing alone remains, one mournful boon:
Nature on us, her suffering children, showers
The gift of tears--the impassion’d cry of grief,
When man can bear no more;--and with _my_ woe,
With mine above all others, hath been link’d
Sad music, piercing eloquence, to pour
All, all its fulness forth! To me a God
Hath given strong utterance for mine agony,
When others, in their deep despair, are mute!
...
Thou standest calm and still, thou noble man!
I seem before thee as the troubled wave:
But oh! be thoughtful!--in thy lofty strength
Exult thou not! By nature’s might alike
That rock was fix’d, that quivering wave was made
The sensitive of storm! She sends her blasts--
The living water flies--it quakes and swells,
And bows down tremblingly with breaking foam;
Yet once that mirror gave the bright sun back
In calm transparence--once the gentle stars
Lay still upon its undulating breast!
Now the sweet peace is gone--the glory now
Departed from the wave! I know myself
No more in these dark perils, and no more
I blush to lose that knowledge. From the bark
Is wrench’d the rudder, and through all its frame
The quivering vessel groans. Beneath my feet
The rocking earth gives way--to thee I cling--
I grasp thee with mine arms. In wild despair
So doth the struggling sailor clasp the rock
Whereon he perishes!

And thus painfully ends this celebrated drama, the catastrophe being that of the spiritual wreck within, unmingled with the terrors drawn from outward circumstances and change. The majestic lines in which Byron has embodied the thoughts of the captive Tasso, will form a fine contrast and relief to the music of despair with which Goethe’s work is closed:--

“All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have baffled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon-wall;
And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;
And revell’d among men and things divine,
And pour’d my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for Him,
The God who was on earth and is in heaven;
For He hath strengthen’d me in heart and limb.
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven,
I have employ’d my penance to record
How Salem’s shrine was won, and how adored.”

SCENES FROM “IPHIGENIA.”

A FRAGMENT.

There is a charm of antique grace, of the majestic repose resulting from a faultless symmetry, about the whole of this composition, which inclines us to rank it as among the most consummate works of art ever achieved by the master-mind of its author. The perfection of its design and finish is analogous to that of a Grecian temple, seen as the crown of some old classic height, with all its pure outlines--all the delicate proportions of its airy pillars--brought into bold relief by the golden sunshine, and against the unclouded blue of its native heavens. Complete within itself, the harmonious edifice is thus also to the mind and eye of the beholder; they are filled, and desire no more--they even feel that more would be but encumbrance upon the fine adjustment of the well-ordered parts constituting the graceful whole. It sends no vague dreams to wander through infinity, such as are excited by a Gothic minster, where the slight pinnacles striving upward, like the free but still baffled thought of the architect--the clustering pillars and high arches imitating the bold combinations of mysterious forests--the many-branching cells, and long visionary aisles, of which waving torchlight or uncertain glimpses of the moon seem the fittest illumination--ever suggest ideas of some conception in the originally moulding mind, far more vast than the means allotted to human accomplishment--of struggling endeavour, and painfully submitted will. Akin to the spirit of such creations is that of the awful but irregular Faust, and other works of Goethe, in which the restless questionings, the lofty aspirations, and dark misgivings of the human soul, are perpetually called up to “come like shadows, so depart,” across the stormy splendours of the scene; and the mind is engaged in ceaseless conflict with the interminable mysteries of life. It is otherwise with the work before us: overshadowed, as it were, by the dark wings of the inflexible Destiny which hovers above the children of Tantalus, the spirit of the imaginary personages, as well as of the reader, here moves acquiescently _within_ the prescribed circle of events, and is seldom tempted beyond, to plunge into the abyss of general speculations upon the lot of humanity.

* * * * *

I.

JOY OF PYLADES ON HEARING HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE.

O sweetest voice! O bless’d familiar sound
Of mother-words heard in the stranger’s land!
I see the blue hills of my native shore,
The far blue hills again! those cordial tones,
Before the captive bid them freshly rise
For ever welcome! Oh, by this deep joy,
Know the true son of Greece!

II.

EXCLAMATIONS OF IPHIGENIA ON SEEING HER BROTHER.

Oh, hear me! look upon me! How my heart,
After long desolation, now unfolds
Unto this new delight, to kiss thy head,
Thou dearest, dearest one of all on earth!
To clasp thee with my arms, which were but thrown
On the void winds before! Oh, give me way!
Give my soul’s rapture way! The eternal fount
Leaps not more brightly forth from cliff to cliff
Of high Parnassus, down the golden vale,
Than the strong joy bursts gushing from my heart,
And swells around me to a flood of bliss--
Orestes!--O my brother!

III.

LOT OF MAN AND WOMAN COMPARED BY IPHIGENIA.

Man by the battle’s hour immortalised
May fall, yet leave his name to living song;
But of forsaken woman’s countless tears,
What recks the after-world? The poet’s voice
Tells naught of all the slow, sad, weary days,
And long, long nights, through which the lonely soul
Pour’d itself forth, consumed itself away,
In passionate adjurings, vain desires,
And ceaseless weepings for the early lost,
The loved and vanish’d!

IV.

LONGING OF ORESTES FOR REPOSE.

One draught from Lethe’s flood!--reach me one draught,
One last cool goblet fill’d with dewy peace!
Soon will the spasm of life departing leave
My bosom free! Soon shall my spirit flow
Along the deep waves of forgetfulness,
Calmly and silently! away to you,
Ye dead! Ye dwellers of the eternal cloud!
Take home the son of earth, and let him steep
His o’erworn senses in your dim repose
For evermore.

V.

CONTINUATION OF ORESTES’ SOLILOQUY.

Hark! in the trembling leaves
Mysterious whispers: hark! a rushing sound
Sweeps through yon twilight depth!--e’en now they come,
They throng to greet their guest! And who are they
Rejoicing each with each in stately joy,
As a king’s children gather’d for the hour
Of some high festival! Exultingly,
And kindred-like, and godlike, on they pass--
The glorious, wandering shapes! aged and young,
Proud men and royal women! Lo! my race--
My sire’s ancestral race!

RECORDS OF THE SPRING OF 1834.

[These sonnets, written in the months of April, May, and June, were intended, together with the Records of the Autumn of 1834, to form a continuation of the series entitled “Sonnets, Devotional and Memorial.”]

A VERNAL THOUGHT.

O festal Spring! midst thy victorious glow,
Far-spreading o’er the kindled woods and plains,
And streams, that bound to meet thee from their chains,
Well might there lurk the shadow of a woe
For human hearts, and in the exulting flow
Of thy rich songs a melancholy tone,
Were we of mould all earthly--_we_ alone,
Sever’d from thy great spell, and doom’d to go
Farther, still farther, from our sunny time,
Never to feel the breathings of our prime,
Never to flower again! But we, O Spring!
Cheer’d by deep spirit-whispers not of earth,
Press to the regions of thy heavenly birth,
As here thy flowers and birds press on to bloom and sing.

TO THE SKY.

Far from the rustlings of the poplar-bough,
Which o’er my opening life wild music made,
Far from the green hills with their heathery glow
And flashing streams whereby my childhood play’d;
In the dim city, midst the sounding flow
Of restless life, to thee in love I turn
O thou rich Sky! and from thy splendours learn
How song-birds come and part, flowers wane and blow.
With thee all shapes of glory find their home,
And thou hast taught me well, majestic dome!
By stars, by sunsets, by soft clouds which rove
Thy blue expanse, or sleep in silvery rest,
That Nature’s God hath left _no_ spot unbless’d
With founts of beauty for the eye of love.

ON RECORDS OF IMMATURE GENIUS.[432]

Oh! judge in thoughtful tenderness of those
Who, richly dower’d for life, are call’d to die
Ere the soul’s flame, through storms, hath won repose
In truth’s divinest ether, still and high!
Let their mind’s riches claim a trustful sigh!
Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain,
First notes of some yet struggling harmony,
By the strong rush, the crowding joy and pain
Of many inspirations met, and held
From its true sphere,--oh! soon it might have swell’d
Majestically forth! Nor doubt that He,
Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve
Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve
Their grand consummate hymn, from passion-gusts made free!

[432] Written after reading some of the earlier poems of the late Mrs Tighe, which had been lent her in manuscript.

ON WATCHING THE FLIGHT OF A SKYLARK.

Upward and upward still!--in pearly light
The clouds are steep’d! the vernal spirit sighs
With bliss in every wind, and crystal skies
Woo thee, O bird! to thy celestial height.
Bird, piercing heaven with music! thy free flight
Hath meaning for all bosoms; most of all
For those wherein the rapture and the might
Of poesy lie deep, and strive, and burn,
For their high place. O heirs of genius! learn
From the sky’s bird your way! No joy may fill
Your hearts, no gift of holy strength be won
To bless your songs, ye children of the sun!
Save by the unswerving flight, upward and upward still!

A THOUGHT OF THE SEA.