Ye have been holy, O founts and floods ?
Ye of the ancient and solemn woods,
Ye that are born of the valleys deep,
With the water-flowers on your breast asleep,
And ye that gush from the sounding caves—
Hallowed have been your waves.
Hallowed by man in his dreams of old,
Unto beings not of this mortal mould,
Viewless and deathless, and wondrous powers,
Whose voice he heard in his lonely hours,
And sought with its fancied sound to still
The heart earth could not fill.
Therefore the flowers of bright summers gone,
O'er your sweet waters, ye streams, were thrown;
Thousands of gifts to the sunny sea
Have ye swept along, in your wanderings free,
And thrilled to the murmur of many a vow-
Where all is silent now?
But the wild sweet tales, that with elves and fays
Peopled your banks in the olden days,
And the memory left by departed love,
To your antique founts in glen and grove,
And the glory born of the poet's dreams-
These are your charms, bright streams!
Now is the time of your flowery rites
Gone by with its dances and young delights;
From your marble urns ye have burst away,
From your chapel-cells to the laughing day;
Low lie your altars with moss o'ergrown,
And the woods again are lone.
Yet holy still be your living springs,
Haunts of all gentle and gladsome things!
Holy, to converse with nature's lore,
That gives the worn spirit its youth once more,
And to silent thoughts of the love divine,
Making the heart a shrine !
Oh! sur des ailes, dans les nues,
Laissez moi fuir! laissez moi fuir!
Loin des régions inconnues
C'est assez rêver et languir!
Laissez moi fuir vers d'autres mondes,
C'est assez, dans les nuits profondes,
Suivre un phare, chercher un mot,
C'est assez de songe et de doute.
Cette voix, que d'en bas j'ecoute,
Peut-être on l'entend mieux là-haut.
Allons! des ailes ou des voiles !
Allons! un vaisseau tout armé !
Je veux voir les autres étoiles
Et la croix du sud enflammé.
Peut-être dans cette autre terre
Trouve-t-on la clef du mystère
Caché sous l'ordre universel;
Et peut-être aux fils de la lyre
Est-il plus facile de lire
Dans cette autre page du ciel!
Gods, as some say, or the abodes of gods,
As others hold, or simply lamps of night,
Worlds, or the light of worlds, I know nor care not.
I see their brilliancy and feel their beauty-
When they shine on my grave I shall know neither."
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms, and watery depths; all these have vanished,
They live no longer in the faith of reason!
But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,
And to yon starry world they now are gone,
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend; and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
"Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that's fair!
What tho' the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Tho' nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,
In the faith that looks thro' death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forbode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born day
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows, can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
THE SONG OF THE OLDEN TIME.
There's a song of the olden time,
Falling sad o'er the ear
Like the dream of some village chime
Which in youth we loved to hear.
And even amidst the grand and gay,
When music tries her gentlest art;
I never hear so sweet a lay,
Or one that hangs so round my heart,
As that song of the olden time,
Falling sad o'er the ear,
Like the dream of some village chime,
Which in youth we loved to hear.
And when all of this life is gone,-
Ev'n the hope, lingering now,
Like the last of the leaves left on
Autumn's sere and faded bough,-
"Twill seem as still those friends were near,
Who loved me in youth's early day,
If in that parting hour I hear
The same sweet notes, and die away,-
To that song of the olden time.
Breathed, like Hope's farewell strain,
To say, in some brighter clime,
Life and youth will shine again.
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