THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night Against the Turk, whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales. O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892).
WRITTEN IN EDINBURGH
EVEN thus, methinks, a city reared should be, Yea, an imperial city, that might hold Five times a hundred noble towns in fee, And either with their might of Babel old, Or the rich Roman pomp of empery Might stand compare, highest in arts enrolled, Highest in arms; brave tenement for the free, Who never couch to thrones, or sin for gold. Thus should her towers be raised ·
Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, As if to vindicate 'mid choicest seats
Of art, abiding Nature's majesty;
And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage Chainless alike, and teaching Liberty.
Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833).
METHINKS I have passed through some dreadful door, Shutting off summer and its sunniest glades
From a dark waste of marsh and ruinous shades: And in that sunlit past, one day before All other days is crimson to the core;
That day of days when hand in hand became Encircling arms, and with an effluent flame Of terrible surprise, we knew love's lore. The rose-red ear that then my hand caressed, Those smiles bewildered, that low voice so sweet, The truant threads of silk about the brow Dishevelled, when our burning lips were pressed Together, and the temple-pulses beat!
THE UNIVERSE VOID
REVOLVING Worlds, revolving systems, yea, Revolving firmaments, nor there we end: Systems of firmaments revolving, send Our thought across the Infinite astray, Gasping and lost and terrified, the day Of life, the goodly interests of home, Shrivelled to nothing; that unbounded dome Pealing still on, in blind fatality.
No rest is there for our soul's wingèd feet,
She must return for shelter to her ark ·
The body, fair, frail, death-born, incomplete,
And let her bring this truth back from the dark: Life is self-centred, man is nature's god;
Space, time, are but the walls of his abode.
THE HUMAN FLOWER
In the old void of unrecorded time, In long, slow æons of the voiceless past, A seed from out the weltering fire-mist cast, Took root a struggling plant that from its prime Through rudiments uncouth, through rock and slime, Grew, changing form and issue- and clinging fast, Stretched its aspiring tendrils till at last
Shaped like a spirit it began to climb Beyond its rugged stem, with leaf and bud Still burgeoning to greet the sunlit air That clothed its regal top with love and power, And compassed it as with a heavenly flood Until it burst in boom beyond compare,
The world's consummate, peerless human flower. Christopher P. Cranch (1813–1892).
I HAVE known cities with the strong-armed Rhine Clasping their mouldering quays in lordly sweep; And lingered where the Marne's low waters shine Through Tyrian Frankfort; and been fain to weep 'Mid the green cliffs where pale Mosella laves That Roman sepulchre, imperial Treves.
Ghent boasts her street, and Bruges her moonlight square; And holy Mechlin, Rome of Flanders, stands,
Like a queen mother, on her spacious lands; And Antwerp shoots her glowing spire in air. Yet have I seen no place, by inland brook, Hill-top, or plain, or trim arcaded bowers, That carries age so nobly in its look, As Oxford with the sun upon its towers.
Frederick William Faber (1814-1863).
TO A FLOWER ON THE SKIRTS OF MONT BLANC
WITH heart not yet half-rested from Mont Blanc, O'er thee, small flower, my wearied eyes I bent, And rested on that humbler vision long. Is there less beauty in thy purple tent
Outspread, perchance a boundless firmament O'er viewless myriads which beneath thee throng, Than in that mount whose sides, with ruin hung, Frown o'er black glens and gorges thunder-rent? Is there less mystery? Wisely if we ponder, Thine is the mightier marvel. Life in thee Is strong as in cherubic wings that wander, Seeking the limits of Infinity;-
Life, life to be transmitted, not to expire Till yonder snowy vault shall melt in fire.
Aubrey de Vere the Younger (1814-1902).
I SAW the Master of the Sun. He stood
High in his luminous car, himself more bright; An Archer of immeasurable might:
On his left shoulder hung his quivered load; Spurned by his Steeds the eastern mountains glowed; Forward his eager eye, and brow of light
He bent; and, while both hands that arch embowed, Shaft after shaft pursued the flying Night. No wings profaned that god-like form: around His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd Of locks hung glistening: while such perfect sound Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome Thrilled as a dew drop; and each passing cloud Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.
Aubrey de Vere the Younger.
THOUGH TO THE VILEST THINGS BENEATH THE MOON 1
THOUGH to the vilest things beneath the moon For poor Ease' sake I give away my heart, And for the moment's sympathy let part My sense and sight of truth, Thy precious boon, My painful earnings, lost, all lost, as soon Almost as gained; and though aside I start, Belie Thee daily, hourly, still Thou art, Art surely as in heaven the sun at noon; How much so e'er I sin, what e'er I do Of evil, still the sky above is blue, The stars look down in beauty as before: It is enough to walk as best we may,
To walk, and, sighing, dream of that blest day When ill we cannot quell shall be no more.
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).
Our love is not a fading, earthly flower:
Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise.
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green: Our summer hearts make summer's fulness where No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie; Love-whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).
1 Reprinted from Poems, by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company.
« ÎnapoiContinuă » |