Chapter XI

Who now watch and weep,
And their vigil keep,
Till they faint for expectation;
Till their dim eyes shape
Temple tower and cape
From the cloud and the exhalation.

SAIS.

An awful statue, by a veil half-hid,
At Sais stands. One came, to whom was known
All lore committed to Etruscan stone,
And all sweet voices, that dull time has chid
To silence now, by antique Pyramid,
Skirting the desert, heard; and what the deep
May in its dimly-lighted chambers keep,
Where Genii groan beneath the seal-bound lid.
He dared to raise that yet unlifted veil
With hands not pure, but never might unfold
What there he saw--madness, the shadow, fell
On his few days, ere yet he went to dwell
With night’s eternal people, and his tale
Has thus remained, and will remain, untold.

SONNET.

I stood beside a pool, from whence ascended,
Mounting the platforms of the cloudy wind,
A stately hern--its soaring I attended,
Till it grew dim, and I with watching blind--
When, lo! a shaft of arrowy light descended
Upon its darkness and its dim attire:
It straightway kindled then, and was afire,
And with the unconsuming radiance blended.
A bird, a cloud, flecking the sunny air,
It had its golden dwelling mid the lightning
Of those empyreal domes, and it might there
Have dwelt for ever, glorified and brightning,
But that its wings were weak--so it became
A dusky speck again, that _was_ a wingèd flame.

RECOLLECTIONS OF BURGOS.

Most like some agèd king it seemed to me,
Who had survived his old regality,
Poor and deposed, but keeping still his state,
In all he had before of truly great;
With no vain wishes and no vain regret,
But his enforcèd leisure soothing yet
With meditation calm and books and prayer;
For all was sober and majestic there--
The old Castilian, with close finger tips
Pressing his folded mantle to his lips;
The dim cathedral’s cross-surmounted pile,
With carved recess, and cool and shadowy aisle,
And had not from dark hoods peered darker eyes,
All fitted well for meditation wise--
The walks of poplar by the river’s side,
That wound by many a straggling channel wide;
And seats of stone, where one might sit and weave
Visions, till well-nigh tempted to believe
That life had few things better to be done,
And many worse, than resting in the sun
To lose the hours, and wilfully to dim
Our half-shut eyes, and veil them till might swim
The pageant by us, smoothly as the stream
And unremembered pageant of a dream.

A castle crowned a neighbouring hillock’s crest,
But now the moat was level with the rest;
And all was fallen of this place of power,
All heaped with formless stone, save one round tower,
And here and there a gateway low and old,
Figured with antique shape of warrior bold.
And then behind this eminence the sun
Would drop serenely, long ere day was done;
And one who climbed that height might see again
A second setting o’er the fertile plain
Beyond the town, and glittering in his beam,
Wind far away that poplar-skirted stream.

TO A FRIEND.

Thou that hast travelled far away,
In lands beyond the sea,
Wilt understand me, when I say
What there has come to me.

In chambers dim thou wilt have wrought,
With no one by, to cheer,
And trod the downward paths of thought,
In solitude and fear;

Nor till the weary day was o’er,
Into the air have fled
From thought which could delight no more,
From books whose power was dead;

What time perchance the drooping day
With burning vapour fills
The deep recesses far away
Of all the golden hills:

Or later, when the twilight blends
All hues, or when the moon
Into the ocean depths descends,
A wavering column, down.

Then hast not thou in spirit leapt,
Emerging from thy gloom,
Like one who unawares o’erstept
The barriers of a tomb.

And in thine exultation cried--
Of gladness having fill,
And in it being glorified--
“The world is beauteous still!”

TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL EXILES OF 1823.

[WRITTEN IN 1829.]

Wise are ye in a wisdom vainly sought
Thro’ all the records of the historic page;
It is not to be learned by lengthened age,
Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought:
By suffering and endurance ye have bought
A knowledge of the thousand links that bind
The highest with the lowest of our kind,
And how the indissoluble chain is wrought.
Ye fell by your own mercy once--beware,
When your lots leap again from fortune’s urn,
An heavier error--to be pardoned less.
Yours be it to the nations to declare
That years of pain and disappointment turn
Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.

TO THE SAME.

Like nightly watchers from a palace tower,
In hope and faith and patience strong to wait
The beacons on the hills, which should relate
How some fenced city of deceit and power
Had fallen--ye have stood for many an hour,
Till your first hope’s high movements must be dead,
And if with new ye have not cheered and fed
Your bosoms, dim despair may be your dower.
Yet not for all--tho’ yet no fire may crest
The mountains, or light up their beacons sere--
Your eminent commission so far wrong,
Or so much flatter the oppressors’ rest,
As to give o’er your watching, for so long
As ye shall hope, ’tis reason they must fear.

SONNET.

The moments that we rescue and redeem
From the bare desert and the waste of years,
To fertilize, it may be with our tears,
Yet so that for time after they shall teem
With better than rank weeds, and wear a gleam
Of visionary light, and on the wind
Fling odours from the fields long left behind,
These and their fruit to us can never seem
Indifferent things, and therefore do I look
Not without gentle sadness upon thee,
And liken thy outgoing, O my book,
To the impatience of a little brook,
Which might with flowers have lingered pleasantly,
Yet toils to perish in the mighty sea.

ON AN EARLY DEATH.

I.

Ah me! of them from whom the good have hope,
Of them whom virtue for her liegemen claims,
How many the world tames,
That with its evil they quite cease to cope,
And their first fealty sworn to beauty and truth
Break early; and amid their sinful youth
Make shipwreck of all high and glorious aims.
How few the fierce and fiery trial stand,
To be as weapons tempered and approved
For an almighty hand.

How few of all the streamlets that were moved,
Do ever unto clearness run again,
And therefore is it marvellous to us,
When of these weapons one is broken thus,
When of these fountains one would seem in vain
Renewed in clearness, and is staunched before
It has had leave to spread fresh streams the desert o’er.

II.

Ah me! that by so frail and feeble thread
Our life is holden--that not life alone,
But all that life has won
May in an hour be gathered to the dead;
The slow additions that build up the mind,
The skill that by temptation we have bought
And suffering, and whatever has been taught
By lengthened years and converse with our kind,
That all may cease together--and the tree
Reared to its height by many a slow degree,
And by the dews the sunshine and the showers
Of many springs, an instant may lay low,
With all its living towers,
And all the fruit mature of growth and slow,
Which on the trees of wisdom leisurely must grow.

III.

Alas! it is another thing to wail,
That when the foremost runners sink and fail,
They cannot pass their torch or forward place
To them that are behind them in their race,
But their extinguished torches must be laid
Together with them in the dust of death:
That when the wise and the true-hearted fade,
So little of themselves they can bequeath
To us, who yet are in the race of life,
For labour and for toil, for weariness and strife.