Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

O let me follow in this dear embrace!'
She sank, and on his bosom hid her face.
Adam look'd up; his visage changed its hue,
Transform'd into an angel's at the view:

'I come!' he cried, with faith's full triumph fired, And in a sigh of ecstacy expired.

The light was vanish'd, and the vision fled;
We stood alone, the living with the dead;
The ruddy embers, glimmering round the room,
Display'd the corpse amidst the solemn gloom;
But o'er the scene a holy calm reposed,

The gate of heaven had open'd there, and closed.

"Eve's faithful arm still clasp'd her lifeless spouse;
Gently I shook it, from her trance to rouse;
She gave no answer; motionless and cold,
It fell like clay from my relaxing hold;
Alarm'd, I lifted up the locks of grey

That hid her cheek; her soul had pass'd away:
A beauteous corse she graced her partner's side;
Love bound their lives, and death could not divide."

THE EFFECT OF MUSIC ON CAIN. "I love thee, twilight! as thy shadows roll, The calm of evening steals upon my soul, Sublimely tender, solemnly serene, Still as the hour, enchanting as the scene. I love thee, twilight! for thy gleams impart Their dear, their dying influence to my heart, When o'er the harp of thought thy passing wind Awakens all the music of the mind, And joy and sorrow, as the spirit burns, And hope and memory sweep the chords by turns, While contemplation, on seraphic wings, Mounts with the flame of sacrifice, and sings. Twilight! I love thee; let thy glooms increase Till every feeling, every pulse is peace; Slow from the sky the light of day declines, Clearer within the dawn of glory shines, Revealing, in the hour of nature's rest, A world of wonders in the poet's breast: Deeper, O twilight! then thy shadows roll, An awful vision opens on my soul.

"On such an evening, so divinely calm, The woods all melody, the breezes balm, Down in a vale, where lucid waters stray'd, And mountain-cedars stretcht their downward

shade,

Jubal, the prince of song (in youth unknown)
Retired to commune with his harp alone;
For still he nursed it, like a secret thought,
Long cherish'd and to late perfection wrought,-
And still with cunning hand, and curious ear,
Enrich'd, ennobled, and enlarged its sphere,
Till he had compass'd, in that magic round,
A soul of harmony, a heaven of sound.
Then sang the minstrel, in his laurel bower,
Of nature's origin, and music's power.

He spake, and it was done;-Eternal night, At God's command, awaken'd into light;

He call'd the elements, earth, ocean, air,
He call'd them when they were not, and they were:
He look'd through space, and kindling o'er the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars came forth to meet his eye:
His spirit moved upon the desert earth,
And sudden life through all things swarm'd to birth;
Man from the dust he raised to rule the whole;
He breathed, and man became a living soul:
Through Eden's groves the Lord of Nature trod,
Upright and pure, the image of his God.

Thus were the heavens and all their host display'd,
In wisdom thus were earth's foundations laid;
The glorious scene a holy sabbath closed,
Amidst his works the Omnipotent reposed:
And while he view'd, and bless'd them from his seat,
All worlds, all beings worshipt at his feet:
The morning stars in choral concert sang,
The rolling deep with hallelujahs rang,
Adoring angels from their orbs rejoice,
The voice of music was Creation's voice.

"Alone along the lyre of nature sigh'd
The master-chord, to which no chord replied;
For man, while bliss and beauty reign'd around,
For man alone, no fellowship was found,
No fond companion, in whose dearer breast,
His heart, repining in his own, might rest;
For, born to love, the heart delights to roam,
A kindred bosom is its happiest home.
On earth's green lap, the father of mankind,
In mild dejection, thoughtfully reclined;
Soft o'er his eyes a sealing slumber crept,
And fancy soothed him while reflection slept.
ThenGod-who thus would make his counsel known,
Counsel that will'd not man to dwell alone,
Created woman with a smile of grace,
And left the smile that made her on her face.
The patriarch's eyelids open'd on his bride,
-The morn of beauty risen from his side!
He gazed with new-born rapture on her charms,
And love's first whispers won her to his arms.
Then, tuned through all the chords supremely sweet,
Exulting nature found her lyre complete,
And from the key of each harmonious sphere
Struck music worthy of her Maker's ear.'

"Here Jubal paused; for grim before him lay,
Couch'd like a lion watching for his prey,
With blood-red eye of fascinating fire,
Fix'd like the gazing serpent's on the lyre,

An awful form, that through the gloom appear'd,
Half brute, half human; whose terrific beard,
And hoary flakes of long dishevell'd hair,
Like eagle's plumage ruffled by the air,
Veil'd a sad wreck of grandeur and of grace;
Limbs worn and wounded; a majestic face,
Deep-plough'd by time, and ghastly pale with woes,
That goaded till remorse to madness rose.
Haunted by phantoms, he had fled his home,
With savage beasts in solitude to roam;
Wild as the waves, and wandering as the wind,
No art could tame him, and no chains could bind:
Already seven disastrous years had shed

Mildew and blast on his unshelter'd head;
His brain was smitten by the sun at noon,
His heart was wither'd by the cold night-moon.

""Twas Cain, the sire of nations;-Jubal knew
His kindred looks, and tremblingly withdrew;
He, darting like the blaze of sudden fire,
Leap'd o'er the space between, and grasp'd the lyre:
Sooner with life the struggling bard would part,
And ere the fiend could tear it from his heart,
He hurl'd his hand, with one tremendous stroke,
O'er all the strings; whence in a whirlwind broke
Such tones of terror, dissonance, despair,
As till that hour had never jarr'd in air.
Astonish'd into marble at the shock,
Backward stood Cain, unconscious as a rock,
Cold, breathless, motionless through all his frame;
But soon his visage quicken'd into flame,
When Jubal's hand the crashing jargon changed
To melting harmony, and nimbly ranged
From chord to chord, ascending sweet and clear,
Then rolling down in thunder on the ear;
With power the pulse of anguish to restrain,
And charm the evil spirit from the brain.

"Slowly recovering from that trance profound, Bewilder'd, touch'd, transported with the sound, Cain view'd himself, the bard, the earth, the sky, While wonder flash'd and faded in his eye, And reason, by alternate frenzy crost, Now seem'd restored, and now for ever lost. So shines the moon, by glimpses, through her shrouds,

When windy darkness rides upon the clouds, Till through the blue, serene, and silent night, She reigns in full tranquillity of light. Jubal, with eager hope, beheld the chace Of strange emotions hurrying o'er his face, And waked his noblest numbers, tocontroul The tide and tempest of the maniac's soul; Through many a maze of melody they flew, They rose like incense, they distill'd like dew, Pour'd through the sufferer's breast delicious balm, And soothed remembrance till remorse grew calm, Till Cain forsook the solitary wild, Led by the minstrel like a weaned child. O! had you seen him to his home restored, How young and old ran forth to meet their lord; How friends and kindred on his neck did fall, Weeping aloud, while Cain outwept them all: But hush!-thenceforward when recoiling care Lower'd on his brow, and sadden'd to despair, The lyre of Jubal, with divinest art, Repell'd the demon, and revived his heart. Thus song, the breath of heaven, had power to bind In chains of harmony the mightiest mind; Thus music's empire in the soul began, The first-born poet ruled the first-born man."

THE GIANT CHIEFTAIN. "When war, that self-inflicted scourge of man, His boldest crime and bitterest curse,-began;

[hurl'd,

As lions fierce, as forest-cedars tall,
And terrible as torrents in their fall,
Headlong from rocks through vales and vineyards
These men of prey laid waste the eastern world.
They taught their tributary hordes to wield [field,
The sword, red-flaming, through the death-strown
With strenuous arm the uprooted rock to throw,
Glance the light arrow from the bounding bow,
Whirl the broad shield to meet the darted stroke,
And stand to combat, like the unyielding oak.
Then eye from eye with fell suspicion turn'd,
In kindred breasts unnatural hatred burn'd;
Brother met brother in the lists of strife,
The son lay lurking for the father's life;
With rabid instinct, men who never knew
Each other's face before, each other slew;
All tribes, all nations learn'd the fatal art,
And every hand was arm'd to pierce a heart.
Nor man alone the giant's might subdued;
-The camel, wean'd from quiet solitude,
Grazed round their camps, or slow along the road,
Midst marching legions, bore the servile load.
With flying forelock and dishevell❜d mane,
They caught the wild steed prancing o'er the plain,
For war or pastime rein'd his fiery force;
Fleet as the wind he stretch'd along the course,
Or loudly neighing at the trumpet's sound,
With hoofs of thunder smote the indented ground.
The enormous elephant obey'd their will,
And, tamed to cruelty with direst skill,
Roar'd for the battle, when he felt the goad,
And his proud lord his sinewy neck bestrode,
Through crashing ranks resistless havoc bore,
And writhed his trunk, and bathed his tusks in gore.

“Thus while the giants trampled friends and foes, Amongst their tribe a mighty chieftain rose; His birth mysterious, but traditions tell What strange events his infancy befell.

"A Goatherd fed his flock on many a steep, Where Eden's rivers swell the southern deep; A melancholy man, who dwelt alone, Yet far abroad his evil fame was known, The first of woman born, that might presume To wake the dead bones mouldering in the tomb, And, from the gulph of uncreated night, Call phantoms of futurity to light. 'Twas said his voice could stay the falling flood, Eclipse the sun, and turn the moon to blood, Roll back the planets on their golden cars, And from the firmament unfix the stars. Spirits of fire and air, of sea and land, Came at his call, and flew at his command; His spells so potent, that his changing breath Open'd or shut the gates of life and death. O'er nature's powers he claim'd supreme controul, And held communion with all nature's soul: The name and place of every herb he knew, Its healing balsam, or pernicious dew: The meanest reptile, and the noblest birth Of ocean's caverns, or the living earth,

Obey'd his mandate:-Lord of all the rest, Man more than all his hidden art confess'd, Cringed to his face, consulted, and revered His oracles, detested him and fear'd.

"Once by the river, in a waking dream, He stood to watch the ever-running stream, In which, reflected upward to his eyes, He giddily look'd down upon the skies, For thus he feign'd in his ecstatic mood To summon divination from the flood. His steady view a floating object cross'd; His eye pursued it till the sight was lost.An outcast infant in a fragile bark! The river whirl'd the willow-woven ark Down tow'rds the deep; the tide returning bore The little voyager unharm'd to shore: Him in his cradle-ship securely bound With swathing skins at eve the Goatherd found. Nurst by that foster-sire, austere and rude, Midst rocks and glens, in savage solitude, Among the kids, the rescued foundling grew, Nutrition from whose shaggy dams he drew, Till baby-curls his broader temples crown'd, And torrid suns his flexile limbs embrown'd: Then as he sprang from green to florid age, And rose to giant stature, stage by stage, He roam'd the vallies with his browsing flock, And leapt in joy of youth from rock to rock, Climb'd the sharp precipice's steepest breast, To seize the eagle brooding on her nest, And rent his way through matted woods, to tear The skulking panther from his hidden lair. A trodden serpent, horrible and vast, Sprang on the heedless rover as he pass'd;

Limb lock'd o'er limb, with many a straitening fold Of orbs inextricably involved, he roll'd

On earth in vengeance, broke the twisted toils,
Strangled the hissing fiend, and wore the spoils.
With hardy exercise, and cruel art,

To nerve the frame, and petrify the heart,
The wizard train'd his pupil, from a span,
To thrice the bulk and majesty of man. [grace,
His limbs were sinewy strength; commanding
And dauntless spirit sparkled in his face;
His arm could pluck the lion from his prey,
And hold the horn'd rhinoceros at bay,
His feet o'er highest hills pursue the hind,
Or tire the ostrich buoyant on the wind.

"Yet 'twas the stripling's chief delight to brave The river's wrath, and wrestle with the wave; When torrent rains had swoln the furious tide, Light on the foamy surge he loved to ride; When calm and clear the stream was wont to flow, Fearless he dived to search the caves below. His childhood's story, often told, had wrought Sublimest hopes in his aspiring thought. -Once on a cedar, from its mountain throne Pluckt by the tempest forth he sail'd alone, And reach'd the gulph;-with eye of eager fire, And flushing cheek, he watch'd the shores retire,

Till sky and water wide around were spread;
-Straight to the sun he thought his voyage led,
With shouts of transport hail'd its setting light,
And follow'd all the long and lonely night:
But ere the morning-star expired, he found
His stranded bark once more on earthly ground.
Tears, wrung from secret shame, suffused his eyes,
When in the east he saw the sun arise: [burn'd
Pride quickly check'd them:-young ambition
For bolder enterprize, as he return'd.

"Through snares and deaths pursuing fame and power,

He scorn'd his flock from that adventurous hour,
And, leagued with monsters of congenial birth,
Began to scourge and subjugate the earth.
Meanwhile the sons of Cain, who till'd the soil,
By noble arts had learn'd to lighten toil;
Wisely their scatter'd knowledge he combined;
Yet had an hundred years matured his mind,
Ere with the strength that laid the forest low,
And skill that made the iron furnace glow,
His genius launch'd the keel, and sway'd the helm,
(His throne and sceptre on the watry realm,)
While from the tent of his expanded sail,
He eyed the heavens and flew before the gale,
The first of men whose courage knew to guide
The bounding vessel through the refluent tide.
Then swore the giant, in his pride of soul,
To range the universe from pole to pole,
Rule the remotest nations with his nod,
To live a hero, and to die a god."

ICE-BLINK AND AURORA BOREALIS.

'Tis sunset: to the firmament serene The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene: Broad in the cloudless west, a belt of gold Girds the blue hemisphere; above unroll'd The keen clear air grows palpable to sight, Embodied in a flush of crimson light, Through which the evening star, with milder gleam, Descends to meet her image in the stream. Far in the east, what spectacle unknown

Allures the eye to gaze on it alone?

-Amidst black rocks, that lift on either hand
Their countless peaks, and mark receding land;
Amidst a tortuous labyrinth of seas,
That shine around the arctic Cyclades;
Amidst a coast of dreariest continent,
In many a shapeless promontory rent;
-O'er rocks, seas, islands, promontories spread,
The Ice-Blink rears its undulated head,
On which the sun, beyond th' horizon shrined,
Hath left his richest garniture behind;
Piled on a hundred arches, ridge by ridge,
O'er fix'd and fluid strides the Alpine bridge,
Whose blocks of sapphire seem to mortal eye
Hewn from cerulean quarries of the sky;
With glacier-battlements, that crowd the spheres,
The slow creation of six thousand years,
Amidst immensity it towers sublime,

-Winter's eternal palace, built by Time:
All human structures by his touch are borne
Down to the dust;-mountains themselves are worn
With his light footsteps; here for ever grows,
Amid the region of unmelting snows,
A monument; where every flake that falls
Gives adamantine firmness to the walls.
The sun beholds no mirror in his race,
That shews a brighter image of his face;
The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest
Like signal fires on its illumined crest;

The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels,
And all its magic lights and shades reveals;
Beneath, the tide with idle fury raves

To undermine it through a thousand caves;
Rent from its roof, though thundering fragments oft
Plunge to the gulph, immoveable aloft,
From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land,
Its turrets heighten and its piers expand.

Midnight hath told his hour; the moon, yet young,
Hangs in the argent west her bow unstrung;
Larger and fairer, as her lustre fades,
Sparkle the stars amidst the deepening shades:
Jewels more rich than night's regalia gem
The distant Ice-Blink's spangled diadem;
Like a new morn from orient darkness, there
Phosphoric splendours kindle in mid air,

As though from heaven's self-opening portals came
Legions of spirits in an orb of flame,

-Flame, that from every point an arrow sends,
Far as the concave firmament extends:
Spun with the tissue of a million lines,
Glistening like gossamer the welkin shines:
The constellations in their pride look pale
Through the quick trembling brilliance of that veil:
Then suddenly converged, the meteors rush
O'er the wide south; one deep vermilion blush
O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood,
And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood;
Again the circuit of the pole they range,
Motion and figure every moment change,
Through all the colours of the rainbow run,
Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun;
Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight,
And the glad ocean dances in the light.

NORWEGIAN TRIBES.

Ages had seen the vigourous race, that sprung From Norway's stormy forelands, rock'd when young In ocean's cradle, hardening as they rose Like mountain-pines amidst perennial snows; -Ages had seen these sturdiest sons of Time Strike root and flourish in that ruffian clime, Commerce with lovelier lands and wealthier hold, Yet spurn the lures of luxury and gold; Beneath the umbrage of the Gallic vine, For moonlight snows and cavern-shelter pine; Turn from Campanian fields a lofty eye To gaze upon the glorious Alps, and sigh, Remembering Greenland; more and more endear'd, As far and farther from its shores they steer'd;

Greenland their world,—and all was strange beside;
Elsewhere they wander'd; here they lived and died.
At length a swarthy tribe, without a name,
Unknown the point of windward whence they came;
The power by which stupendous gulphs they cross'd,
Or compass'd wilds of everlasting frost,
Alike mysterious;-found their sudden way
To Greenland; pour'd along the western bay
Their straggling families; and seized the soil
For their domain, the ocean for their spoil.
Skraellings the Normans call'd these hordes in scorn,
That seem'd created on the spot,—though born
In trans-Atlantic climes, and thither brought
By paths as covert as the birth of thought;
They were at once;-the swallow-tribes in spring
Thus daily multiply upon the wing,
As if the air, their element of flight,
Brought forth new broods from darkness every night;
Slipt from the secret hand of Providence,
They come we see not how, nor know we whence.
A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock,
Hewn from the living marble of the rock,
Or sprung from mermaids, and in ocean's bed,
With orcs and seals, in sunless caverns bred,
They might have held, from unrecorded time,
Sole patrimony in that hideous clime,

So lithe their limbs, so fenced their frames to bear
The intensest rigours of the polar air;
Nimble, and muscular, and keen to run
The rein-deer down a circuit of the sun;
To climb the slippery cliffs, explore their cells,
And storm and sack the sea-birds' citadels;
In bands, through snows, the mother-bear to trace,
Slay with their darts the cubs in her embrace,
And while she lick'd their bleeding wounds, to brave
Her deadliest vengeance in her inmost cave:
Train'd with inimitable skill to float,
Each, balanced in his bubble of a boat,
With dexterous paddle steering through the spray,
With poised harpoon to strike his plunging prey,
As though the skiff, the seaman, oar, and dart
Were one compacted body, by one heart
With instinct, motion, pulse empower'd to ride,
A human Nautilus upon the tide;

Or with a fleet of Kayaks to assail

The desperation of the stranded whale,

When wedged 'twixt jagged rocks he writhes and In agony among the ebbing shoals,

[rolls

Lashing the waves to foam; until the flood,
From wounds, like geysers, seems a bath of blood,
Echo all night dumb-pealing to his roar,
Till morn beholds him slain along the shore.

INCOGNITA.

WRITTEN AT LEAMINGTON, IN 1817, ON VIEWING THE PICTURE OF AN UNKNOWN LADY.

"She was a phantom of delight."-WORDSWORTH. Image of one, who lived of yore!

Hail to that lovely mien,

Once quick and conscious;-now no more
On land or ocean seen!

[ocr errors]

Were all earth's breathing forms to pass
Before me in Agrippa's glass,
Many as fair as thou might be,

But oh! not one,-not one like thee.

Thou art no child of fancy;-thou
The very look dost wear,
That gave enchantment to a brow,
Wreathed with luxuriant hair;
Lips of the morn embathed in dew,
And eyes of evening's starry blue;
Of all who e'er enjoy'd the sun,
Thou art the image of but one.

And who was she, in virgin prime,
And May of womanhood,
Whose roses here, unpluck'd by time,

In shadowy tints have stood;
While many a winter's withering blast
Hath o'er the dark cold chamber pass'd,
In which her once-resplendent form
Slumber'd to dust beneath the storm?

Of gentle blood;-upon her birth
Consenting planets smiled,
And she had seen those days of mirth,
That frolic round the child;

To bridal bloom her strength had sprung,
Behold her beautiful and young!

Lives there a record, which hath told,

That she was wedded, widow'd, old?

How long her date, 'twere vain to guess:
The pencil's cunning art
Can but a single glance express,
One motion of the heart;

A smile, a blush,-a transient grace
Of air, and attitude, and face-
One passion's changing colour mix;
One moment's flight for ages fix.

Her joys and griefs, alike in vain,
Would fancy here recall;
Her throbs of ecstacy or pain
Lull'd in oblivion all;
With her, methinks, life's little hour
Pass'd like the fragrance of a flower,
That leaves upon the vernal wind
Sweetness we ne'er again may find.
Where dwelt she?-Ask yon aged tree,
Whose boughs embower the lawn,
=Whether the birds' wild minstrelsy
Awoke her here at dawn;
Whether beneath its youthful shade,
At noon, in infancy she play'd;
-If from the oak no answer come,
Of her all oracles are dumb.

The dead are like the stars by day;
-Withdrawn from mortal
eye,

But not extinct, they hold their way,

In glory through the sky:
Spirits, from bondage thus set free,
Vanish amidst immensity,

Where human thought, like human sight,
Fails to pursue their trackless flight.

Somewhere within created space,
Could I explore that round,
In bliss, or woe, there is a place,
Where she might still be found;
And oh! unless those eyes deceive,
I may, I must, I will believe,
That she, whose charms so meekly glow,
Is what she only seem❜d below-

An angel in that glorious realm,
Where God himself is king:
-But awe and fear, that overwhelm
Presumption, check my wing;
Nor dare imagination look
Upon the symbols of that book,
Wherein eternity enrolls

The judgments on departed souls.

Of her of whom these pictured lines
A faint resemblance form;
-Fair as the second rainbow shines

Aloof amid the storm;

Of her this" shadow of a shade"
Like its original must fade,
And she, forgotten when unseen,
Shall be as if she ne'er had been.

Ah! then, perchance, this dreaming strain, Of all that e'er I sung,

A lorn memorial may remain,

When silent lies my tongue, When shot the meteor of my fame, Lost the vain echo of my name, This leaf, this fallen leaf, may be The only trace of her and me.

With one who lived of old, my song

In lowly cadence rose;
To one who is unborn, belong

The accents of its close:

Ages to come, with courteous ear,

Some youth my warning voice may hear; And voices from the dead should be

The warnings of eternity.

When these weak lines thy presence greet, Reader! if I am blest,

Again, as spirits, may we meet

In glory and in rest:

If not, and I have lost my way,-
Here part we;-go not thou astray;
No tomb, no verse my story tell!
Once, and for ever, fare thee well.

« НазадПродовжити »