But first—before his conscious soul could dare
For the consoling balm to pour the prayer,
Alone the shadows of the past to brave, Alone to commune with the accusing grave, And shrive repentance of its haunting gloom Before Life's true Confessional—the Tomb;— Such made his dream!—Oh! not in vain the creed Of old that knit atonement with the dead! The penitent offering, the lustrating tide, The wandering, haunted, hopeful homicide, Who sees the spot to which the furies urge, Where halt the hell-hounds, and where drops the scourge, And the appeased Manes pitying sigh— "Thou hast atoned! once more enjoy the sky!"
Such made the dream he rushes to fulfil!—
Round the new mound babbled the living rill;
A name, the name that Arden's wife should bear,
Sculptured the late and vain repentance there.
O'er the same bridge which once to rapture led,
Went the same steps their pathway to the dead:
Night after night the same lone shadow gave
A tremulous darkness to the hurrying wave;
Lost—and then, lengthening from the neighbouring yews,
Dimm'd the wan shimmer of the moonlit dews,
Then gain'd a grave;—and from the mound was thrown,
Still as the shadow of yon funeral stone!
II.
Meanwhile to Morvale!—Sorrow, like the wind
Through trees, stirs varying o'er each human mind;
Uprooting some, from some it doth but strew
Blossom and leaf, which spring restores anew;
From some, but shakes rich powers unknown in calm,
And wakes the trouble to extract the balm.
Let weaker natures suffer and despair,
Great souls snatch vigour from the stormy air;
Grief not the languor—Grief the action brings;
And clouds the horizon but to nerve the wings.
Up from his heavy thought, one dawning day,
The Indian, silent, rose, and went his way;
Palace and pomp and wealth and ease resign'd, }
As one new-born, he plunged amidst his kind, }
Whither, with what intent, he scarce divined. }
He turn'd to see, through mists obscure and dun,
The domes and spires of the vex'd Babylon;
Before him smiled the mead and waved the corn,
And Nature's music swell'd the hymns of Morn.
A sense of freedom, of the large escape
From the pent walls our customs round us shape;
The imperfect sympathies which curse the few,
Who ne'er the chase the many join pursue;
The trite convention, with its cold control,
Which thralls the habit, yet not links the soul;
—The sense of freedom pass'd into his breast,
But found no hope it flatter'd and caress'd;
So the sad captive, when at length made free,
Shrinks from the sunlight he had pined to see;
Feels on the limb the custom of the chain,
Each step a struggle and each breath a pain,
And knows—return'd unto the world too late,
No smile shall greet him at his lonely gate;
Seal'd every eye, of old that watch'd and wept;
The world he knew has vanish'd while he slept!
He wander'd on, alone, on foot—alone,
As in the waste his earlier steps had known.
Forth went the peasant—Adam's curse begun;—
Home went the peasant in the western sun;
He heard the bleating fold, the lowing herd,
The last shrill carol of the nestling bird!
He saw the rare lights of the hamlet gleam
And fade;—the stars grow stiller on the stream;
Swart, by the woodland, cower'd the gipsy tent
Whence peer'd dark eyes that watch'd him as he went—
He paused and turn'd:—Him more the outlaws charm
Than the trim hostel and the happy farm.
Strangers, like him, from antique lands afar,
Aliens untamed where'er their wanderings are,
High Syrian sires of old;[V]—dark fragments torn From the great creed of Isis—now forlorn In rags—all earth their foe, and day by day Worn in the strife with social Jove away— Wretched, 'tis true, yet less enslaved, their strife, Than our false peace with all this masque of life, Convention's lies—the league with Custom made, The crimes of glory, and the frauds of trade. Rest and rude food the lawless Nomads yield; The dews rise ghost-like from the whitening field, And ghost-like on the wanderer glides the sleep Through which the phantom Dreams their witching Sabbat keep!
At dawn, while yet, around the Indian, lay
The dark, fantastic groups—resumed the way;
Before his steps the landscape spreads more free
And fresh from man;—ev'n as a broadening sea,
When, more and more the harbour left behind,
The lone sail drifts before the strengthening wind.
Behold the sun!—how stately from the East,
Bright from God's presence, comes the glorious Priest!
Deck'd as beseems the Mighty One to whom
Heaven gives the charge to hallow and illume!
How, as he comes—through the Great Temple, Earth,
Peels the rich Jubilee of grateful mirth!
The infant flowers their odour-censers swinging,
Through aislëd glades Air's Anthem-Chorus ringing;
While, like some soul lifted aloft by love,
High and alone the sky-lark halts above,
High, o'er the sparkling dews, the glittering corn,
Hymns his frank happiness and hails the morn!
He stands upon the green hill's lighted brow,
And sees the world at smiling peace below,
Hamlet and farm, and thy best type, Desire
Of the sad Heart—the heaven-ascending spire!
He stood and mused, and thus his musing ran:—
"How strong, how feeble, is thine art, O Man!
Thou coverest Earth with wonders—at thy hand
Curbs the meek water, blooms the subject land:
Why halts thy magic here?—Why only deck'd
Earth's sterile surface, mournful Architect?
Why art thou powerless o'er the world within?
Why raise the Eden, yet retain the sin?
Why, while the earth, thou but enjoy'st an hour,