Chapter IX

The poet's arms have wound thee,
He breathes upon thy brow,
He lifts thee upward in the glow
Of his great genius round thee,--
The childlike poet undefiled
Preserving evermore THE CHILD.

_MAN AND NATURE._

A sad man on a summer day
Did look upon the earth and say--

"Purple cloud the hill-top binding;
Folded hills the valleys wind in;
Valleys with fresh streams among you;
Streams with bosky trees along you;
Trees with many birds and blossoms;
Birds with music-trembling bosoms;
Blossoms dropping dews that wreathe you
To your fellow flowers beneath you;
Flowers that constellate on earth;
Earth that shakest to the mirth
Of the merry Titan Ocean,
All his shining hair in motion!
Why am I thus the only one
Who can be dark beneath the sun?"

But when the summer day was past,
He looked to heaven and smiled at last,
Self-answered so--
"Because, O cloud,
Pressing with thy crumpled shroud
Heavily on mountain top,--
Hills that almost seem to drop
Stricken with a misty death
To the valleys underneath,--
Valleys sighing with the torrent,--
Waters streaked with branches horrent,--
Branchless trees that shake your head
Wildly o'er your blossoms spread
Where the common flowers are found,--
Flowers with foreheads to the ground,--
Ground that shriekest while the sea
With his iron smiteth thee--
I am, besides, the only one
Who can be bright _without_ the sun."

_A SEA-SIDE WALK._

I.

We walked beside the sea
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory--like the princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
Uttered with burning breath, "Ho! victory!"
And sank adown, a heap of ashes pale:
So runs the Arab tale.

II.

The sky above us showed
A universal and unmoving cloud
On which the cliffs permitted us to see
Only the outline of their majesty,
As master-minds when gazed at by the crowd:
And shining with a gloom, the water grey
Swang in its moon-taught way.

III.

Nor moon, nor stars were out;
They did not dare to tread so soon about,
Though trembling, in the footsteps of the sun:
The light was neither night's nor day's, but one
Which, life-like, had a beauty in its doubt,
And silence's impassioned breathings round
Seemed wandering into sound.

IV.

O solemn-beating heart
Of nature! I have knowledge that thou art
Bound unto man's by cords he cannot sever;
And, what time they are slackened by him ever,
So to attest his own supernal part,
Still runneth thy vibration fast and strong
The slackened cord along:

V.

For though we never spoke
Of the grey water and the shaded rock,
Dark wave and stone unconsciously were fused
Into the plaintive speaking that we used
Of absent friends and memories unforsook;
And, had we seen each other's face, we had
Seen haply each was sad.

_THE SEA-MEW._

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO M. E. H.

I.

How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A little shade, the only one,
But shadows ever man pursue.

II.

Familiar with the waves and free
As if their own white foam were he,
His heart upon the heart of ocean
Lay learning all its mystic motion,
And throbbing to the throbbing sea.

III.

And such a brightness in his eye
As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nurst
A soul God gave him not at first,
To comprehend their majesty.

IV.

We were not cruel, yet did sunder
His white wing from the blue waves under,
And bound it, while his fearless eyes
Shone up to ours in calm surprise,
As deeming us some ocean wonder.

V.

We bore our ocean bird unto
A grassy place where he might view
The flowers that curtsey to the bees,
The waving of the tall green trees,
The falling of the silver dew.

VI.

But flowers of earth were pale to him
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim;
And when earth's dew around him lay
He thought of ocean's winged spray,
And his eye waxed sad and dim.

VII.

The green trees round him only made
A prison with their darksome shade;
And drooped his wing, and mourned he
For his own boundless glittering sea--
Albeit he knew not they could fade.

VIII.

Then One her gladsome face did bring,
Her gentle voice's murmuring,
In ocean's stead his heart to move
And teach him what was human love:
He thought it a strange, mournful thing.

IX.

He lay down in his grief to die,
(First looking to the sea-like sky
That hath no waves) because, alas!
Our human touch did on him pass,
And, with our touch, our agony.

_FELICIA HEMANS_

TO L. E. L.,

REFERRING TO HER MONODY ON THE POETESS.

I.

Thou bay-crowned living One that o'er the bay-crowned Dead art bowing,
And o'er the shadeless moveless brow the vital shadow throwing,
And o'er the sighless songless lips the wail and music wedding,
And dropping o'er the tranquil eyes the tears not of their shedding!--

II.

Take music from the silent Dead whose meaning is completer,
Reserve thy tears for living brows where all such tears are meeter,
And leave the violets in the grass to brighten where thou treadest,
No flowers for her! no need of flowers, albeit "bring flowers!" thou
saidest.

III.

Yes, flowers, to crown the "cup and lute," since both may come to
breaking,
Or flowers, to greet the "bride"--the heart's own beating works its
aching;
Or flowers, to soothe the "captive's" sight, from earth's free bosom
gathered,
Reminding of his earthly hope, then withering as it withered:

IV.

But bring not near the solemn corse a type of human seeming,
Lay only dust's stern verity upon the dust undreaming:
And while the calm perpetual stars shall look upon it solely,
Her sphered soul shall look on _them_ with eyes more bright and holy.

V.

Nor mourn, O living One, because her part in life was mourning:
Would she have lost the poet's fire for anguish of the burning?
The minstrel harp, for the strained string? the tripod, for the
afflated
Woe? or the vision, for those tears in which it shone dilated?

VI.

Perhaps she shuddered while the world's cold hand her brow was
wreathing,
But never wronged that mystic breath which breathed in all her
breathing,
Which drew, from rocky earth and man, abstractions high and moving,
Beauty, if not the beautiful, and love, if not the loving.

VII.

Such visionings have paled in sight; the Saviour she descrieth,
And little recks _who_ wreathed the brow which on His bosom lieth:
The whiteness of His innocence o'er all her garments, flowing,
There learneth she the sweet "new song" she will not mourn in knowing.

VIII.

Be happy, crowned and living One! and as thy dust decayeth
May thine own England say for thee what now for Her it sayeth--
"Albeit softly in our ears her silver song was ringing,
The foot-fall of her parting soul is softer than her singing."

_L. E. L.'S LAST QUESTION._

"Do you think of me as I think of you?"
(_From her poem written during the voyage to the Cape._)