I Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air,Whether beneath the sole and spectral star The dear severity of dawn you wear,Or whether in the joy of ample day And speechless ecstasy of growing JuneYou lie and dream the long blue hours away Till nightfall comes too soon,Or whether, naked to the unstarred night,You strike with wondering awe my inward sight, --
II Go forth to you with longing, though the yearsThat turn not back like your returning streams And fain would mist the memory with tears,Though the inexorable years deny My feet the fellowship of your deep grass,O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky, Cloud phantoms drift and pass, --You know my confident love, since first, a child,Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild.
III And ever your long reaches lured me on;And ever o'er my feet your grasses foamed, And in my eyes your far horizons shone.But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell And on my pulse you laid a soothing palm)Instruct my ears in your most secret spell; And sometimes in the calmInitiate my young and wondering eyesUntil my spirit grew more still and wise.
IV I entered fearless the most holy place,Received between my lips the secret fire, The breath of inspiration on my face.But not for long these rare illumined hours, The deep surprise and rapture not for long.Again I saw the common, kindly flowers, Again I heard the songOf the glad bobolink, whose lyric throatPeeled like a tangle of small bells afloat.
V The flicker of sand-pipers in from seaIn gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play Of field-mice in the vetches, -- these to meWere memorable events. But most availed Your strange unquiet waters to engageMy kindred heart's companionship; nor failed To grant this heritage, --That in my veins forever must abideThe urge and fluctuation of the tide.
VI River of hubbub, raucous Tantramar,Untamable and changeable as flame, It called me and compelled me from afar,Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress. When in its gaping channel deeps withdrawnIts waves ran crying of the wilderness And winds and stars and dawn,How I companioned them in speed sublime,Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time!
VII From Fundy's tumbling troughs and tide-worn caves,While red Minudie's flats were drowned with din And rough Chignecto's front oppugned the waves,How blithely with the refluent foam I raced Inland along the radiant chasm, exploringThe green solemnity with boisterous haste; My pulse of joy outpouringTo visit all the creeks that twist and shineFrom Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine.
VIII A little while the seething and the hiss,And every tributary channel filled To the brim with rosy streams that swelled to kissThe grass-roots all awash and goose-tongue wild And salt-sap rosemary, -- then how well contentI was to rest me like a breathless child With play-time rapture spent, --To lapse and loiter till the change should comeAnd the great floods turn seaward, roaring home.
IX Serenity of vision and of dream,Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed With joy impetuous and pain supremeThe sharp, fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth In endless and controlless ebb and flow,Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth One hundred years agoWith fiery succour to the ranks of songDefied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong.
X Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace,Was tortured with perpetual unrest. Now loud with flood, now languid with release,Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife Of tides from the salt sea of human painThat hiss along the perilous coasts of life Beat in his eager brain;But all about the tumult of his heartStretched the great calm of his celestial art.
XI And my still world of ecstasy, to thee,Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire, and Liberty;To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise,Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear The pure and sacred baysI worship, and have worshipped since the hourWhen first I felt thy bright and chainless power.
XII Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded formsThat to the mother's eye remained unseen, -- Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and stormsOf fierce retributive fury, such as jarred Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings,And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred, With lust of meaner things,With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crimeDared in the face of unforgetful Time.
XIII Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere,Whose influence thereafter seemed to float Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear,Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love. But still supreme in thy nativity,All dark, invidious aspects far above, Beamed one clear orb for thee, --The star whose ministrations just and strongControlled the tireless flight of Dante's song.
XIV Of penitential unavailing shame,Thy venerable foster-mother hears The sons of song impeach her ancient name,Because in one rash hour of anger blind She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feetToo soon to earth's wild outer ways consigned, -- Far from her well-loved seat,Far from her studious halls and storied towersAnd weedy Isis winding through his flowers.
XV Thine own Alastor, on an endless questOf unimagined loveliness didst range, Urged ever by the soul's divine unrest.Of that high quest and that unrest divine Thy first immortal music thou didst make,Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine, And phantom seas that breakIn soundless foam along the shores of Time,Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme.
XVI Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud,Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loudWith tempest, yet beneficent as prayer; Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewingThe withered leaves of custom on the air, And through the wreck pursuingO'er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes,Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes.
XVII Wert fain to body forth, -- the dauntless form,The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow Of the great Titan, flinchless in the stormOf pangs unspeakable and nameless hates, Yet rent by all the wrongs and woes of men,And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates Might be assuaged, -- oh thenOut of that vast compassionate heart of thineThou wert constrained to shape the dream benign.
XVIII In such transcendent rhapsodies of greenThat one might guess the sprites of spring were glad For your majestic ruin, yours the scene,The illuminating air of sense and thought; And yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome,Where the giant vision into form was wrought; Beneath your blazing domeThe intensest song our language ever knewBeat up exhaustless to the blinding blue! --
XIX The myrtles and the ilexes that sigh O'er San Giuliano, where no jars disturbThe lonely aziola's evening cry, The Serchio's sun-kissed waters, -- these conspiredWith Plato's theme occult, with Dante's calm Rapture of mystic love, and so inspiredThy soul's espousal psalm, A strain of such elect and pure intentIt breathes of a diviner element.
XX A rapt evangel to assuage all wrong,Not Love alone, but the austerer name Of Death engaged the splendours of thy song.The luminous grief, the spacious consolation Of thy supreme lament, that mourned for himToo early haled to that still habitation Beneath the grass-roots dim, --Where his faint limbs and pain-o'erwearied heartOf all earth's loveliness became a part,
XXI Thy solemn incommunicable joyAnnouncing Adonais has not died, Attesting death to free but not destroy,All this was as thy swan-song mystical. Even while the note serene was on thy tongueThin grew the veil of the Invisible, The white sword nearer swung, --And in the sudden wisdom of thy restThou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed.
XXII Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon!Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss Repent that sacred flame you quenched too soon!Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn In affluent purple down your golden shore!Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in scorn, Our ears may greet no more,Unless at last to that far sphere we climbWhere he completes the wonder of his rhyme!
XXIII From eyes that watched to hearts that waited, tillUp from the ocean roared the tempest dark -- And the wild heart Love waited for was still!Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide, Rolled seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shellsAnd shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide Remote from all farewells,Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain,Nor heeded Casa Magni's quenchless pain.
XXIV That blind, mute clay relinquished by the wavesReluctantly at last, and slumbering now In one of kind earth's most compassionate graves!Not thou, not thou, -- for thou wert in the light Of the Unspeakable, where time is not.Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight And thy eternal thoughtWere they not even now all wiped awayIn the reunion of the infinite day!
XXV And worshippedst, beholding Him the sameAdored on earth as Love, the same whose rod Thou hadst endured as Life, whose secret nameThou now didst learn, the healing name of Death. In that unroutable profound of peace,Beyond experience of pulse and breath, Beyond the last releaseOf longing, rose to greet thee all the lordsOf Thought, with consummation in their words:
XXVI Though blind, saw gods and heroes, and the fallOf Ilium, and many alien skies, And Circe's Isle; and he whom mortals callThe Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound As thou the Titan victor; the benignSpirit of Plato; Job; and Judah's crowned Singer and seer divine;Omar; the Tuscan; Milton, vast and strong;And Shakespeare, captain of the host of Song.
XXVII To the wide-glittering beach thy body came;And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange And curious regard thy kindred flame,Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt, With fierce purgation search thee, soon resolvingThee to the elements of the airy vault And the far spheres revolving,The common waters, the familiar woods,And the great hills' inviolate solitudes.
XXVIII With solemn mourning and with mindful tears, --The pained, imperious wanderer unmated Who voiced the wrath of those rebellious years;Trelawney, lion-limbed and high of heart; And he, that gentlest sage and friend most true,Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part One grieving ghost, that flewHither and thither through the smoke unstirredIn wailing semblance of a wild white bird.
XXIX Forever glad the world because of thee;Because of thee forever eyes illume A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea!O poignant voice of the desire of life, Piercing our lethargy, because thy callAroused our spirits to a nobler strife Where base and sordid fall,Forever past the conflict and the painMore clearly beams the goal we shall attain!
XXX From whatsoever wanderings, near or far,To you I turn with joy forever new, To you, O sovereign vests of Tantramar!Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood, With every tribute stream and brimming creek,Ponders, possessor of the utmost good, With no more left to seek, --But the hour wanes and passes; and once moreResounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.
XXXI And his great heart's unvanquishable powerHave thrust with storm to his supreme estate, Ascend by night his solitary towerHigh o'er the city's lights and cries uplift. Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to readAnd the keen stars' conflicting message sift, Till the slow signs recede,And ominously scarlet dawns afarThe day he leads his legions forth to war.
