Moonlight

Not alway from the lessons of the schools,
  Taught evermore by those who trust them not,
  Though in fine phrase tricked out, or bodied forth
  In solid saw, spring forth the fairest fruits
  Of wisdom or of duty. Spirits there are
  Who, rather from the forms of outward nature—
  Those teachers who in our dull colleges
  Have never taken degree—rejoice to cull
  Their doctrine; nutriment to grosser sense,
  If alien, yet with finer essences
 
  Not unassimilate! Such win their lore
  Through many a sympathy, from "stones, and trees,
  And running brooks;" from every sound and thing;
  Yea, from far less; from films of sounds and things;
  The airiest shadow flitting o'er the mead;
  The last thin whisper of the evening breeze;
  The faintest hue that dies along the main.
  Such thoughts dost Thou, beloved Moon, shed forth
  For poets, which from them we gather up
  Not scant; and I have had them of my own,
  Gentle and fair, and, as I fain would deem,
  Not unpoetic quite, though never stamped
  With countermark of verse; I all unskilled
  Of measure, or the thoughts themselves too swift
  Or subtile for the workmanship of words
  And yet, though woven of thy most delicate rays,
  Or snatched, as might be, from quick-vanishing stars,
  Twinkling and gone, not thence, would I believe,
  Mere passing thoughts, but fitted to endure,
  For profit of the meditative mind,
  As yon sweet stars and Thou, fair Moon, endurest.
  For I have loved Thee from my childhood up
 
  Till now; from when, beneath far tropic skies,
  Forth guided by my ancient Afran nurse,
  Whose ebon face strange contrast made with Thine,
  I first observed Thee; and, observing, wondered
  If those, thy seeming features, nose and mouth,
  And steadfast eyes, were really such as ours,
  And asked of her, like wondering. Nor when
  To these fair isles conveyed, a growing school-boy,
  From forth our play-ground's narrow boundary,
  I spied thee, 'mid blue ether, in thy freedom
  Careering, even like the white-sailed ship
  That sped me hither; or if I beheld thee,
  When sultry summer-airs forbade to sleep,
  Slanting, at midnight, through th' uncurtained window,
  On the half-testered bed, uncurtained too,
  Our youngster couch; not then could I withhold
  To gaze upon Thee; pensive half—half glad,
  I scarce knew which nor wherefore, with a vague
  Unsatisfied delight. And as, in days
  Ere chivalry was gone, some youthful knight,
  Of high-born damsel, whom he ne'er might reach,
  Enamoured, worshipped still her peerless beauty,
  And dress'd his thoughts on hers, and thus imbibed
 
  Civility with love; not less, fair Idol,
  On thee I hung in thy removèd sphere,
  And duly paid my visionary vows
  To thy bright purity; nor was the soul,
  E'en in those stripling-days, as now I deem,
  Wholly by such communion unrefined.
  Nor seldom did I win from thy sweet light
  A more creative and less pensive joy;
  Such joy as kindly Fancy oft will weave
  For childhood; kindlier still, if she desert not
  Our after-years. 'Twas when dim-floating clouds
  Were hung in the still west, and there had hung
  From hour of parted twilight. They had watched
  The sinking Sun's last glory, and caught thence,
  Around his golden garment clustering,
  A passing radiance not their own; but now,
  Though rayless, hueless, still they lingered here,
  As in persisting love (so spirits, they say,
  Will hover round loved spots); nor lingered here
  In vain; for Thou didst bring a second day
  Less bright than his; but not less beautiful.
  Sun of the Midnight! Then those pallid clouds,
 
  Each in its turn by thy soft light lit up,
  Grew to a living dream-land. Earth and Sea,
  In all their shows, were there, with semblances
  Of man, or beast, or monster. Not an image
  Through childhood's brain had flitted, won, perchance,
  From tale of nurse or grandsire, or out-gleaned
  From story-book, thumbed o'er and o'er again,
  But there found type or home. What mattered it,
  In that free hour, of tyrant pedagogue,
  Or brute school-comrade, tyrant more than he;
  Or grammar rule, perplexing easy speech;
  Or cramp obdurate sum, tried ten times o'er
  On the smeared slate? I recked not of them then—
  I thought not of them! No discoverer
  By land or sea, to cape or central range
  Tacking his own proud name, to dream thenceforth
  Of immortality;—no conqueror—
  No! not the Norman, broadly parcelling
  Among his mailèd knights and barons bold
  New territory—was more lord than I
  In that my flaky kingdom; free to give,
  Make or unmake, at pleasure! Yon far cloud,
  Floating like island in its sea of sky,
 
  Should be the spot for Crusoe! There Saint George
  Was fighting with the dragon, while below
  Paced slowly Bunyan's Pilgrim with his staff!
  There stood the magic steed, which whirled away
  Young Calmaralzaman; there drove the bark,
  Rapt fiercely by invisible force along,
  To split, with Sinbad, on the loadstone shore!
  But when came classic lessons, and all fresh
  From lore of Tooke's Pantheon—a new world
  Peopled with deity—I knew how thine,
  In the far days of famed Antiquity,
  Had been no slighted worship; glorious then
  Of my new knowledge, and fantastical
  As innocent childhood is, I longed to have been
  The shepherd youth, of whom then first I read,
  Endymion; Endymion, loved in Latmos!
  (Ah! me, quaint shepherd, not of crook, but satchel,
  And guessing, at that age, how much of love!)
  And, in my foolishness, almost I craved
  Those Pagan days again. Then would recur
  The holy teachings of the primal book,
  "The Sun to rule the day, and Thou the night,"
 
  And wake to wiser musings. Mixture strange
  Of sacred and profane! Yet each in turn
  Struck its own chord, and made Thee dearer still.
  Nor me when onward years had loosed at length
  From 'prisonment of school-boy, and left free
  To choose my own observatories, when
  And where I willed, frank-breathing mountain-top
  Or wide-viewed plain, did I less love thy light,
  Sweet Moon; and, e'en amid the revelries
  Of the mad city, when thy thoughtful beam
  Hath met me, sliding slow from temple to tower,
  Or pausing on the broad and silent street,
  Beneath that pause more broad and yet more silent;
  How oft hath the wild will of wayward youth
  Received in Thee a monitor, not vain,
  To calm and summon home. But if, far rather,
  Thou wert seen planing o'er some lovely region,
  From city remote, to thy attempering ray
  More native; making its day-loveliness
  Yet lovelier; softening with diffused beauty
  Near plain; or making with long narrow line
  The distant sea; or, slanted with soft step
 
  Almost to earth, wert streaming light behind
  Some ancient wood, more forward thence to fling
  Its huge black outline; Thou thyself chance-spied
  Through the tall stems; or else wert stealing down
  The shadowy dingle, pensively to rest
  By the hushed waters of some bosomed lake;
  'Mid scene like this, to love most harmonised,
  How dearer was thy presence! By such mirror,
  (Mirror of Dian! aptly named by those
  Who dwelt near Nemi's wooded wave,) how oft
  Fixed have I stood to watch thy dream-like image,
  And then upturned me from the soft reflection
  To view thy very Self in the high heaven.
  There wert Thou, with the same unaltered features
  Which mocked my childhood; features still, indeed,
  So Science tells, but features of a world,
  Visible continents and circling seas,
  With all their promontories. Trancèd thus,
  (My childish fancies weaned, but love unbated,)
  How fondly have I longed, how deeply yearned
  To know Thee nearer; yearned to climb thy hills,
  And thread thy peaceful valleys; there, perchance,
 
  To meet some loved one lost; and well content,
  With such sweet compensation, to forego
  This native earth of ours, by folly and guilt
  Too often marred; and yet, though often marred,
  Beautiful still; and still more beautiful
  That Thou, fair Moon! dost shed thy peace upon it.
  That peace, how deep! this night of thousand stars,
  That hide themselves abashed from the bold sun,
  But hang, all fondly, on thy gentler brow—
  How calm! Yet not o'er calmer skies alone,
  Mild Moon! is thy dominion  Thou dost sway
  The very storm to obey thy peacefulness.
  When winds are piping, and the chargèd clouds,
  As if out-summoned by that warlike music,
  First in black squadrons rush; then sternly muster
  In sullen mass, on either side the heaven,
  Like armies face to face, with space between;
  'Tis then Thou glidest forth; like some pale nun,
  Unhooded, whom a high and rare occasion
  Wrests from her sanctuary, to interpose
  In mortal quarrel, so Thou glidest forth,
  And lookest thy mild bidding; and the winds
 
  Are silent; and those close-compacted clouds,
  Disbanding, fleet in tender flakes away,
  And leave the world to thy tranquillity.
  On such a night it was, so wildly fitful,
  That Thou, Conductress of my way, didst lead me
  To where the mighty mystery of Stonehenge
  Broods o'er the silent plain, and with mute power
  Rules the vast circuit of its sea-like space,
  As Thou dost rule the sky. For many a mile
  I journeyed, pondering on the days when Thou
  Wert shining o'er the Druid; being to him
  His Sun, his chronicler of months and years,
  And sanctifier of his rites most holy!
  And musing on the rites—the priest—all gone!
  Thou and that lonely fane the sole abiders!
  In my inmost spirit I felt how the dead Past
  Controuls the living Present; binding awe
  And melancholy, of high strain or low,
  Not solely on the' imaginative mind,
  That 'mid mere earthly precinct asks no home,
  But e'en on fleshlier natures, which escape not
  Foresight of their own doom, to vanish in turn. 

  So did I reach to where uprose those pillars
  'Mid their sepulchral barrows; turfy tombs!
  Which yet outlast the marble. At the first
  All indistinctly visioned; but, ere long,
  When Thou wert lucent in the open path
  Which winds had swept before Thee, then I saw them
  In their huge steadfastness; and felt their power
  Unutterable, and in wonder stood!
  Then too I longed to chase away those clouds
  Which still were flocking round Thee, like the ghosts
  Of fabled Orcus; and to question Thee
  Of all the past; as the great Florentine,
  Who saw the triple vision, reverently
  Questioned mild Maro 'mid the dim sojourn.
  Say, Moon! for Thou didst shine o'er Paradise
  From the beginning; its sole light by night,
  Thou and the stars; ere yet that other light
  From the preventing sword with double tongue
  Flamed at the gateway; and hast seen the shepherds
  In old Chaldæa watchers of those stars,
  And of thy nightly course, with each event
  Of after-rolling time; say, who first planned
  The mystic round of those gigantic columns? 

  Who dragged the masses from their yawning quarries,
  And planted on such bases as might scorn
  The earthquake, and uphung rock upon rock?
  Are they, as some have dreamed, unconquered relics
  Of a young world; survivors of the flood;
  Reared by a first-born strength mightier than ours?
  Or if indeed the work of men like us,
  In what far cyele? Stood they here before
  Elder Assyria, or ere Egypt was?
  Before those pyramids, or ere the towers
  Of Belus old? Or did they rise, thus rude,
  And curl their uncouth ring in that same age
  Which saw the fair-proportioned Parthenon,
  In its first finish of Pentelic marble,
  Outsparkle from the hand of Phidias?
  Say, for Thou knowest; Thou hast seen of each
  The birth and the old age; hast seen the rites
  Of either worship, Pallas's or Thine;
  Beheld thine oaken or her olive-wreath
  Hung on each altar; and beholdest, now,
  The vaunted wonder of each famous temple,
  The Celtic circle and the Grecian frieze,
  Both ruin-smote! 

  Was it, O Moon! in prescience
  Of populous champaigns turned to pallid wastes;
  And temples—fallen; and roofless palaces;
  And monuments—men know not whose they were;
  Making our solid earth seem but a play-place
  For Mutability; was it for this
  That Thou didst choose the undecaying sea
  For thy peculiar realm? Towers, built like rocks,
  Crumble and strew the region; forests old
  Are treeless wastes; where hills, up-peaked, yawn now
  Deep gulfs; such foot-marks Mutability
  Leaves on the land. But, for the ocean-waves,
  Myriads of sharp-keeled ships have cut athwart them
  To their safe ports, and left behind no furrow;
  Ten thousand gallant barks with all their trim
  Have sunk, yet where they sunk remains no sign;
  Tempest hath wrenched the Pharos from its rock,
  And toppled down, with every tended light,
  To gorge the surge they lit; Earthquake hath flung
  Whole cities to the deep; yet o'er the fragments,
  Acanthus, or volute, or fluted column,
  Or causeway, clattering once with proud-horsed chariot,
  It rolls as heretofore. This isle of ours
 
  What if no Earthquake rend! yet change steals o'er it
  Slowly, but surely; and, ere yet the half
  Of our threescore-and-ten be past, we learn
  The lesson. Nor alone the works of Man,
  The long-trimmed avenue, or hall ancestral,
  On which our youngling wonder loved to gaze,
  Are sought for and are gone; yon very headland
  Which now thy light is lifting from the waves,
  Or struck by storm, or fretted by still frost,
  Wears not the form it wore when, yet an urchin,
  Timidly bold, I scrambled on its edge
  Precipitous, and, warned a hundred times,
  Would still gaze giddily down. And yet the waters
  Are circling round its base, as seems, no other
  Than those my childhood knew; and such, no doubt,
  The woad-stained aboriginal beheld,
  When his flat coracle from off his shoulder
  He slipped upon them; such the unflinching Roman
  Stemmed with the strong oar of his beakèd galley;
  And such the more impetuous Norman blood
  Swept through, to win a kingdom in a day.
  Hence rightly didst Thou make the ocean-waves
 
  Thine appanage; their very change constraining
  To a vicissitude so fixed, that change
  With them is but renewal.—Storm may smite them,
  And flash their sprays all round, like wind-tost feathers,—
  Still they re-plume their beauty; and, like Thee,—
  Thou, waxing, waning; They, in ebb or flow—
  Though ever changing are the same for ever.
  Through what invisible controul Thou rulest
  These willing waves, sublimer intellects
  Have found and taught; and veneration waits
  On their vast toils. But far-reached arguments
  Of densities, and gravitating powers,
  Mean distance—perigee, and apogee—
  Forewarned eclipses—total or in part—
  With each attraction, simple or combined,
  Were never meant for hold unscientific
  Of brain like mine; while lettered diagrams,
  And algebraic symbols, line or cross,—
  Strange as the shapes, which, in our Carib isle,
  Rude Obi-wizard scrawls on hut or tree,
  Or as demure astrologer erst traced
  On vellum, when he sold the stars for gold—
 
  These but perplex the more, like Cabala,
  Searing the sense. Enough for me to know,
  Through such chance-knowledge as mere hear-say brings,
  And faith, if uninquiring yet sincere,
  Enough for me to know, wide-ruling Moon!
  That thine it is to lead the foam-edged surges
  Along the shores; or up the sinuous harbour
  Where ships ride inland, lifting their tall masts
  Above the groves; or call them to the loch,
  Whose briny inlet, winding from the main,
  Tempts up the grampus 'mid the heathy hills.
  Enough for me to know that Thou, no less,
  Dost fill the curving horns of mightiest bay,
  Whose indrawn waters are themselves a sea,
  While kingdoms clasp it round. Or if I turn
  From lore of book or chart to watch the billows
  In-rolling from the deeps with joyous motion;
  And catch their thousand faces glistening up
  In thy clear light, and hear their thousand voices,
  Like a whole people's at a jubilee;
  Or if I see them, as I see them, now,
  Beneath this calmest sky as smoothly spread,
  And whitely, as an alabaster floor;
 
  No touch of cloud and not a murmur on them;
  E'en where they meet the shore scarce murmuring;
  As all reposing in thy clement ray,
  Yet ready to up-leap at thy least bidding;
  Beholding this, what needs more formal warrant
  From inky hand of gowned Philosophy
  To prove that Thou art in full right their Queen?
  And Queen Thou art in this thy realm of midnight,
  And lovely as Queen-like; yet not lovely less
  When Thou art lapsing on through either twilight,
  Companion of the Evening or the Dawn.
  For ever to the heart, which feeds on beauty,
  The Evening and the Morning make the day;
  Meridian Suns are mate-fellows of Earth,
  But Morn and musing Eve consort with Heaven.
  And ne'er did Dawn behold Thee lovelier yet,
  Than when we saw Thee, one remembered day,
  Thee and that brightest of all morning-stars,
  Hang o'er the Adrian; not in thy full lustre,
  But graceful with slim crescent; such as, erst,
  Some Arab chief beheld in his own sky
 
  Of purest, deepest azure; and so loved it,
  So loved it, that he chose it for his symbol;
  A peaceful symbol in a warlike banner!
  And oft, I ween, in many a distant camp,
  'Mid the sharp neigh of steeds, and clash of cymbals,
  And jingle of the nodding Moorish bells,
  When he hath caught that image o'er the tents,
  Hath he bethought him of the placid hours
  When Thou wert whitening his night-feeding flocks
  On Yemen's happy hills; and then, perchance,
  Hath sighed to think of war!
  We too beheld Thee
  With untired eye fixed upward; scarce regarding
  (So deep the charm which Thou hadst wrapped around us)
  Where reddening lines along the Eastward Sea
  Spoke of the Sun's uprising. Up He rose,
  From o'er the regions of the near Illyria,
  Glorious, how glorious!—if less gladly hailed
  As warning thy departure. Yet, some time,
  Ye shone together; and we then might feel
  How they, the ancient masters of that land,
  The dwellers on the banks of Rubicon,
  Who saw what we were seeing, uninstruct'
 
  Of wiser faith, had, in no feigned devotion,
  Bowed down to Thee, their Dian, and to Him,
  Bright-haired Apollo! We too bowed our hearts,
  But in a purer worship, to the One,
  Who made, Alone, the hills and seas and skies,
  And Thee, fair Moon, the Hallower of them all!
  Well did that Sun fulfil his rising promise,
  Showering redundant light, the live-long day,
  O'er plain, and inland peak, and bluest sea;
  And brightening the far mole, which Old Ancona
  Hath reared upon the waves. Meanwhile thy form
  (Faint and more faint, and, if might be, more fair;
  And still, as near to lose Thee, loved the more)
  Thinned to unseen. But as some morning dream,
  Too sweet to part with, and which yet must fade
  At touch of light, will oft unconsciously
  Mix with the day, serener thoughts inweaving
  Than sun-beams bring; or as some melody,
  Closed on the ear, nor e'en by it remembered,
  Will still its silent agency prolong
  Upon the spirit, with a hoarded sweetness
  Tempering the after-mood; e'en so didst Thou
 
  Waft the bland influence of thy dawning presence
  Over the onward hours.
  Yet, Thou sphered Vestal!
  If mine it were to choose me when to bend
  Before thy high-hung lamp; and venerate
  Thy mysteries; and feel, not hear, the voice
  Of thy mute admonition; let it be
  At holy vesper-tide, when nature all
  Whispers of peace; if solemn less than night's,
  More soothing still. Such season of the Soul
  Obeys Thee best. For as the unwrinkled pool,
  Stilled o'er by stirless Eve, will dimple under
  The tiniest brushing of an insect's wing;
  So, at that hour, do human hearts respond
  To every touch of finer thought.
  Such eve,
  Such blessed eve was ours, when last we stood
  Beside the storied shore of Gaëta,
  Breathing its citroned air. Silence more strict
  Was never. The small wave, or ripple rather,
  Scarce lisping up the sand, crept to the ear
  Sole sound; nor did we break the calm with movement,
  Or sacrilege of word; but stayed in peace,
 
  Of Thee expectant. And what need had been
  Of voicèd language, when the silent eye,
  And silent pressure of each linkèd arm,
  Spokemore than utterance? Nay, whose tongue might tell
  What hues were garlanding the western sky
  To welcome thy approaching! Purple hues
  With orange wove, and many a floating flake
  Crimson or rose, with that last tender green
  Which best relieves thy beauty. Who may paint
  How glowed those hills, with depth of ruddy light
  Translucified, and half etherial made,
  For thy white feet to tread on? and, ere long—
  Ere yet those hues had left or sky or hill,
  One peak with pearling top confess'd thy Coming.
  There didst Thou pause awhile, as inly musing
  O'er realm so fair! And, first, thy rays fell partial
  On many a scattered object, here and there;
  Edging or tipping, with fantastic gleam,
  The sword-like aloe, or the tent-roofed pine,
  Or adding a yet paler pensiveness
  To the pale olive-tree; or, yet more near us,
  Were flickering back from wall reticulate'
  Of ruin old. But when that orb of Thine
 
  Had clomb to the mid-concave, then broad light
  Was flung around o'er all those girding cliffs,
  And groves, and villages, and fortress towers,
  And the far circle of that lake-like sea,
  Till the whole grew to one expanded sense
  Of peacefulness, one atmosphere of love,
  Where the Soul breathed as native, and mere Body
  Sublimed to Spirit.
  She, too, stood beside us,
  Our human type of Thee; the Pure, the Peaceful,
  The Gentle—potent in her gentleness!
  And, as she raised her eyes to thy meek glory,
  In the fond aspiration of a heart,
  Which prized all beauty and all sanctity;
  We saw, and loved to see, thy sainting ray
  Fall, as in fondness, on her upturned brow,
  Serene—like it. Alas! in how brief space
  Coldly to glitter on her marble tomb!
  She lies in her own land; far from the scene
  Of that fair eve; but Thou, its fairer part,
  Thou Moon! art here; and now we gaze on Thee
  To think on Her; if still in sorrow, yet
 
  Not without hope; and, for the time to come,
  Though dear to us thy light hath ever been,
  Shall love Thee yet the more for her sweet sake.

  Once more that tomb hath opened! and She, who,
  Companion of my wanderings as my life,
  Thus far had listened to th' unfinished strain,
  Shedding fond tears to hear a Sister's praise,
  Now lies in death beside her. Fare thee well,
  Thou faithful Heart! and Thou, dejected Song!
  For now thy spell is broken—fare thee well.