Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble homie, Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, The swift and silent lizard of the stones!
But hold!-these dark, these perishing arcades, These mouldering plinths, these sad and blacken'd shafts,
These vague entablatures, this broken frieze, These shatter'd cornices, this wreck, this ruin, These stones-alas! these gray stones, are they
All of the proud and the colossal left By the corrosive hours, to fate and me? "Not all," the echoes answer me, 66 not all, Prophetic sounds, and loud, arise for ever From us, and from all ruin, to the wise, As melody from Memnon to the sun.
We rule the hearts of mightiest men; we rule, With a despotic sway, all giant minds.
We are not impotent, we pallid stones;
Not all our power is gone, not all our fame,
Not all the magic of our high renown, Not all the wonder that encircles us, Not all the mysteries that in us lie, Not all the memories that hang upon And cling around about us as a garment, Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."
HAIL to thy face and odours, glorious Sea! 'T'were thanklessness in me to bless the not Great beauteous being! in whose breath and smile My heart beats calmer, and my very mind Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world! Though like the world thou fluctuat'st, thy din To me is peace, thy restlessness repose; Even gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes, With all the darling field-flowers in their prime, And gardens haunted by the nightingale's Long trills and gushing ectasies of song,
For these wild headlands, and the sea-mew's clang.
With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea, I long not to o'erlook earth's fairest glades
And green savannahs-Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in:
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half-way o'er it like a wearied bird: It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can see themselves at once.
Of rural landscape are there lights and shades Of more harmonious dance and play than thine. How vividly this moment brightens forth, Between gray parallel and leaden breadths, A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league, Flushed like the rainbow, or the ring-dove's neck, And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing The semblance of a meteor.
Chameleon-like thou changest, but there's love In all thy change, and constant sympathy With yonder sky-thy mistress; from her brow Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colours on Thy faithful bosom; morning's milky white, Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve; And all thy balmier hours, fair element, Have such divine complexion-crisped smiles, Luxuriant bearings, and sweet whisperings, That little is the wonder Love's own Queen From thee of old was fabled to have sprung- Creation's common! which no human power Can parcel or inclose; the lordliest floods And cataracts that the tiny hands of man Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew To thee that could subdue the earth itself
And brook'st commandment from the heavens
For marshalling thy waves
Yet, potent Sea! How placidly thy moist lips speak even now Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be So fanciless as to feel no gratitude
That power and grandeur can be so serene, Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way, And rocking even the fisher's litle bark As gently as a mother rocks her child? The inhabitants of other worlds behold Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share On earth's rotundity; and is he not
A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man. Who sees not, or, who seeing, has no joy In thy magnificence? What though thou art Unconscious and material, thou canst reach The inmost immaterial mind's recess,
And with thy tints and motion stir its chords To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre! The Spirit of the Universe in thee Is visible; thou hast in thee the life- The eternal, graceful, and majestic life Of nature, and the natural human heart
Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.
Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-cir.
Has spires and mansions more amusive still
Men's volant homes that measure liquid space
On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land, With pained and panting steeds and clouds of dust,
Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the
Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts In long array, or hither flit and yond Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights, Like spirits on the darkness of the deep. There is a magnet-like attraction in These waters, to the imaginative power That links the viewless with the visible, And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond Yon highway of the world my fancy flies, When by her tall and triple mast we know Some noble voyager that has to woo
The trade-winds, and to stem the ecliptic surge. The coral-groves-the shores of conch and pearl, Where she will cast her anchor and reflect Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves, And under planets brighter than our own: The nights of palmy isles, that she will see Lit boundless by the fire-fly-all the smells Of tropic fruit that will regale her-all The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting Varieties of life she has to greet,
Come swarming over the meditative mind.
« ZurückWeiter » |