On them a brother's grace of God's own bound- The bells are swinging,
Let them immortal wake
Among the deathless flowers of Paradise, Where angel songs of welcome with surprise This their last sleep may break,
And to celestial joy their kindred souls invite.
There can come no sorrow;
The brow shall know no shade, the eye no tears, Forever young, through heaven's eternal years In one unfading morrow,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter, Till all are ringing,
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing; And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear ; Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy's distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near. Sounds these of deepest silence born, Like night made visible by morn;
Nor sin nor age nor pain their cherub beauty So silent that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart, And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.
The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day's harsh din ; Then boldly ventures out,
And looks about,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricky, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin. And still the curtains swing, But noiselessly;
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone. Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright-beaming stars That through the casement shone.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
FROM "QUEEN MAB."
How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon, With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn When, throned on ocean's wave, It blushes o'er the world: Yet both so passing wonderful!
Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchers Seized on her sinless soul?
Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline which is fair
As breathing marble, perish? Must putrefaction's breath Leave nothing of this heavenly sight But loathsomeness and ruin? Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it only a sweet slumber Stealing o'er sensation,
Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness? Will Ianthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy, Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life, and rapture from her smile?
Yes! she will wake again, Although her glowing limbs are motionless, And silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger's rage, Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. Her dewy eyes are closed,
And on their lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, The baby Sleep is pillowed:
Her golden tresses shade
The bosom's stainless pride,
A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky; I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees, And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away: Without thee what is all the morning's wealth ? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
OUR life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence : sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity; They pass like spirits of the past, they speak Like sibyls of the future; they have power, The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; They make us what we were not, — what they will, And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanished shadows. - Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind?- The mind can make Substances, and people planets of its own
| With being brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed Perchance in sleep, - for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of a mild declivity, the last As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, Not by the sport of nature, but of man : These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing, the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself, - but the boy gazed on her; And both were young, and one was beautiful ; And both were young, yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him; he had looked Upon it till it could not pass away; He had no breath, no being, but in hers; She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words; she was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, Which colored all his objects; - he had ceased To live within himself: she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously, Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share : Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother, but no more; 't was much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him; Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race. It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not, and why?
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned ; Within an antique oratory stood The boy of whom I spake ; he was alone, And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 't were
With a convulsion, - then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written, but he shed no tears, And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet; as he paused, The lady of his love re-entered there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet She knew she was by him beloved; she knew- For quickly comes such knowledge that his
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded, as it came ; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed From out the massy gate of that old Hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt With strange and dusky aspects; he was not Himself like what he had been; on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain; and a man, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumbered around: And they were canopied by the blue sky,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
Time taught him a deep answer-when she loved So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, Another; even now she loved another, And on the summit of that hill she stood, Looking afar if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. There was an ancient mansion, and before
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better in her home, A thousand leagues from his, - her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty,
but behold! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. What could her grief be?—--she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be?—she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which preyed Upon her mind — a specter of the past.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was returned. I saw him stand Before an altar with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The starlight of his boyhood; - ;-as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock That in the antique oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then As in that hour- -a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reeled around him; he could
Not that which was, nor that which should have been,
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back And thrust themselves between him and the light; What business had they there at such a time?
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love;- O, she was changed, As by the sickness of the soul! her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, They had not their own luster, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things, And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight familiar were to hers. And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift; What is it but the telescope of truth, Which strips the distance of its fantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real!
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Through that which had been death to many men, And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the universe He held his dialogues; and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries; To him the book of Night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and a secret. Be it so.
WOULD Wisdom for herself be wooed, And wake the foolish from his dream, She must be glad as well as good,
And must not only be but seem. Beauty and joy are hers by right;
And, knowing this, I wonder less That she's so scorned, when falsely dight In misery and ugliness.
What's that which Heaven to man endears, And that which eyes no sooner see Than the heart says, with floods of tears, "Ah! that's the thing which I would be"! Not childhood, full of fears and fret;
Not youth, impatient to disown
Those visions high which to forget
FROM "QUEEN MAB."
BEHOLD, the Fairy cried, Palmyra's ruined palaces!
Behold where grandeur frowned! Behold where pleasure smiled! What now remains?— the memory
Of senselessness and shame, What is immortal there? Nothing, it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently
The remnant of its fame. Monarchs and conquerors there Proud over prostrate millions trod, The earthquakes of the human race; Like them, forgotten when the ruin That marks their shock is past. Beside the eternal Nile
The pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way: Those pyramids shall fall;
Yea, not a stone shall stand to tell The spot whereon they stood;
How strange is human pride!
I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn And perishes ere noon,
Is an unbounded world,
I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel, and live, like man ; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
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