The Muse
Take thy lute, poet, kiss my lips and sing;The wild-rose feels her buds begin to swell.The winds grow warm; this night gives birth to Spring:The wagtail, while the lingering dawn doth dwell,Loves on the first green bush to rest her wing;Take thy lute, poet, kiss my lips and sing!
The Poet
How black below the valley lies!Methought I saw a veiled form riseAnd hover on the woodland gray.Along the mead she seemed to pass;Her light foot skimmed the flowering grass :Like a strange vision, but alas!Fainter it grows, and fades away.
The Muse.
Take thy lute, poet; from her perfumed vestNight shakes the zéphyr on the sward and sighs.The rose, a jealous virgin, shuts her breastIn which the pearly hornet swooning dies.Dream thou of the beloved, while all things drowse!To-night beneath the sombre linden-boughs'The beam of sunset leaves a sweet farewell.To-night all things shall flower: immortal earthIs filled with fragrance, love and murmuring mirth,Like the blest couch where two young lovers dwell.
The Poet
Why leaps my heart with sudden throbs?What in my bosom swells and sobsWith fears that on my sensés brood?Did not a hand strike on my door?Why does my dwindling lamp-light pourIts splendeur in a sudden flood?God! through my limbs what tremors run!Who comes? Who knocks? Who calls me? None!The hour-bell sounds; I am alone:O poverty! O solitude!
The Muse
Take thy lute, poet, for the wine of youthFerments even now as with a God's désire.My troubled breast is torn with joy and ruth,And parchèd winds have set my lips on fire.See, wayward child, my beauty shines unveiled!Has our first kiss no memory that charms,As when, touched by my wing, with cheeks that paledAnd tearful eyes, thou swoonèdst in these arms?Then I consoled thee for a bitter grief!Alas! so young, yet dying for love's sake.Console me now, I die of hopes too brief;I can but pray to live till morning break.
The Poet
Is thine the voice that calls my name,And art thou corne, O my poor Muse?O my flower ! my immortal flame!Sole being faithful even in shame,Whose love of me my love renews!Welcome again, my blonde delight,Mistress and sister sweet thou art!I feel thee near, through deepest night,Bathed in thy golden garments brightWith beams that steal into my heart.
The Muse
Take thy lute, poet. I, the immortal love,Have watched this night thy silence and thy tears,And now, as when her nestlings call the dove,Descend, to weep with thee, from highest spheres.Thou sufferest, dear friend. Though lonely griefConsume thee, though despair thy soul destroy;Though love, such as earth wears, was all too brief,A shadow of delight, a spectral joy:Come, sing to God; sing in thy thoughts again,Sing thy lost pleasure, sing thy vanished pain;Soar, in a kiss, towards the unknown world.Awake at will the echoes of thy lyre,Tell us of glory and gladness and desire,And let thy fancies float in dreams unfurled.Discover realms that give our woes surcease;Fly hence, we are alone, the world is ours;Green Caledon, dusk Italy, fair GreeceMy mother, with her honied crown of flowers,Argos, red Pteleon of the hecatombs,And Pelion's naked brow that glows and glooms;And Messa the divine, delight of doves.And blue Eurotas, and, like silvery lightGlassed in the gulf whose wave the pale swan loves,White Oloôsone and Camyra white.Tell me what songs shall lull our golden dream!From what mysterious source our tears shall stream!When this day's sunrise smote thy lids with dawn,What seraph, bending pensive from above,Shook lilac-blossoms from his robe of lawnAnd, whispering low, breathed on thy couch his love?Shall we sing songs of joy, or grief, or hope?Drench in their blood the steel-embattled ranks?Suspend the lover on his silken rope?Fling on the winds the foam o' the courser's flanks?Say from what hand unnumbered lamps aboveLighten by night and day in heavenly domesThe holy oil of life and deathless love?Cry Tarquin, 'tis thine hour, the shadow comes!Plunge and pluck up the pearl from deepest seas?Watch the kid browse on bitter ebony-trees?Lead Melancholy to the skiey shores?Follow on scarpèd hills the hunter's horn?The hind beseeches him, looks and implores;Her heath-bed waits; her fawns are newly born:He stoops, he slays her, and the quarry throws,Still quivering, to his hounds that pant and reek.Or shall we paint the virgin's crimsoned cheekWhen, followed by her page, to mass she goes,And, by the matron's side, with absent air,Forgets on half-closed lips her pious prayer?Trembling she hears, hard-echoing on the ground,The spurs of a bold cavalier resound.Shall we command the heroes of old FranceTo mount, full-armed, their many-crenelled towers.And from oblivion wake the rude romanceTheir glory taught to antique troubadours?Swathe the soft elegy in white? Or wooWild war, and bid the man of WaterlooBoast how his scythe mowed down the mortal bands,Before the herald of eternal nightSwooped with swift wing on the green island-height,And on that iron heart crossed his pale hands?Shall our proud satire to the gibbet nailWhat pain soever youth nursed in his core,Let it find issue; sacred is the soreBlack angels opened in thy heart's profound;With greatest sorrow greatest souls are crowned.Yet stricken as thou art, O poet! knowThat not for silence lives thy voice below.The noblest song with grief and anguish throbs,And some I made immortal with pure sobs.When the slow pelican, wearied of long flight,Regains the shore and seeks his reedy home,His hungered brood, lost in the haze of night,Watching him from afar, swoop on the foam.With beaks that on their hideous gorge agapeAlready seize and share the prey, they shapeTheir course to the parent bird, with joyful cries.He, towards a high cliff slowly labouring,Shelters the brood beneath his trailing wingAnd, desperate, gazes sadly on the skies.A stream of blood flows from his plumage torn ;In vain he scoured the depths of the salt flood :The sea was vacant and the shore forlorn,And for sole nourishment he brings his blood.Sombre and silent, stretched on the bare rock,Succouring with father's flesh his little flock,By love sublime sustained he soothes his woundAnd, while the bleeding breast his offspring drinks,Beneath the feast of death he reels and sinks.As one with tenderness and horror swooned.But sometimes, midst the sacred sacrifice,Wearied in death so long to agonise.He trembles lest they drain the living spring;Then, rising, opens on the wind his wing.And flaps his bosom with funereal wail,Sending through night such wild farewell abroadThat on the lonely beach the sea-mews quail:And the belated traveller, turning pale,Feels death in the air and gives his soul to God.O poet! such is the great singer's fate:He feeds awhile the joy of them that live;But the world's feasts on which his soul doth waitSeem most like those the pelican's life-springs give.When hopes beguiled at last thrill all his chordsWith sadness and despair, with love and pain,Such concert swells the hearts of men in vain.His declamations are like flaming swords:Though in the air they trace a dazzling ringStill to their blade some drops of blood will cling.
The Poet
O voice from the abysmal deeps,Lay not on me this last command!Man leaves no writing on the sandWhen at its hour the north-wind sweeps.There was a time when love, in sooth,Rose ceaseless on my lips, and youthWas ready, like a bird, to sing;But I have suffered, as through fire,And should my silent griefs desireTo speak their anguish on my lyreTheir lightest breath would break the string.
