Around me lies a wild and watery waste,
With every billow sentinel to keep
Its prisoner fetter'd to his ocean cell—
What were it but a plunge—an instant strife—
Then liberty snatch'd from the clutch of Death
The Tyrant, who with mystic terror grinds
Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free, And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven, Now rushing with wild joy around the belt Of whirling Saturn, then away through space Till he and all his radiant brotherhood Dwindle to fire-flies round the brow of Night. Thought is the great creator under God, Begotten of his breathing, that can raise Shapes from the dust and give them Beauty's soul; And though my empire be a continent, Squared down from leagues to inches, what of that? The mind contains a world within its frame Which Fancy peoples o'er with radiant forms, Replete with life and spirit excellence. O! there is glory in the thought that now I stand absolved from all the chilling forms And falsities of life, that like frail reeds Pierce the blind palms of those that lean on them, And from the springs of my own being draw All strength, and hope, and joyance, all that makes Lone meditations sweet, and schools the heart For prophecy. In the o'erpeopled world We seem like babes that cannot walk alone, But fasten on the skirts of other men, Their creeds, conclusions, and vain phantasies, Too languid, or too weak to poize ourselves; But here the crutch is shattered at a blow, Dependence made a thing for winds to blast, And paraphrase in bitter mockery.
From this retreat, as from a cloister calm,
I dream upon the busy haunts of men
As things that touch me not. An empire riven,
A monarchy o'erthrown, here seem to me
Importless as a foam-bell's death. The world
And all its revolutions are now less
Within my chronicles, than is the ken
Of a star's orbit on the fines of space;
But like a mariner saved from the wreck
On this calm spot I stand, unscathed, secure
From the rough throbbings of the sea of strife,
And woe, and clamour, wherewith this world's life
Ebbs and declines unto the printless shore
Of death. O! blessed change, if there were one
To love me in this solitude, and make
Life beautiful. My soul is wearied out
With earth's fierce warfare, and its selfish ease;
The slights and coldness of the hollow crowds
That are its arbiters; the changeful face,
The upstart arrogance of base-born fools,
Who crown them with their golden dross, and deem
That the all-potent badge of sovereignty.
O thou, my heart! hast thou not framed for life
A golden palace in all solitude,
Whither the strains of quiet melodies
Float on the breath of memory, like songs
From the dim bosom of the evening woods,
Peopling its chambers with sweet poesy?
Hast thou not called the sunshine from the morn
To circle thee with a pure spirit life,
And with the softness of its tender arms
Clasp thee in the embrace of heav'nly love?
Hast thou not heard the music of the stars,
In the calm stillness of the summer night,
And read their jewell'd pages o'er and o'er,
Like the bright inspirations of a bard,
Till glowing strophes rung within thy soul
Of glad Orion and clear Pleiades?
Hast thou not seen the silv'ry moonshine thrill
Upon the dusky mantle of the night,
Like radiant glances through a maiden's veil,
Till shaken thence they fell in a pure shower
O'er flood and field and bosky wilderness,
Wreathing earth with the glory of a saint?
O! thus to dwell far from the stir of life,
Far from its pleasures and its miseries,
Far from the panting cry of man's desire,
That waileth upward in hoarse discontent,
And here to list but to that liquid voice
That riseth in the spirit, and whose flow
Is like a rivulet from Paradise—
To hear the wanderings of divine thought
Within the soul, like the low ebb and flow
Of waters in the blue-deep ocean caves,
Forming itself a speech and melody
Sweeter than words unto the aching sense—
To stand alone with Nature where man's step
Hath never bowed a grass-blade 'neath its weight,
Nor hath the sound of his rude utterance
Broken the pauses of the wild-bird's song;
And thus in its unpeopled solitude
To be the spirit of this universe,
Centering thought and reason in one frame,
And in the majesty of quenchless soul,
Rising unto the stature of a man,
That is to make life glorious and great, Dissolving matter in the spiritual, As the green pine dissolveth into flame; Not on the breath of popular applause That is the spectre of all nothingness; Not on the fawning of a servile crew, Who kiss the hem of fortune's purple robe, And lick the dust before prosperity, Waiting the cogging of the downward scale, To turn from slaves to bravos in the dark; Not on the favours of the politic, Who in the smile of honour, Persian-like, Pamper the pampered from their banquet halls, But to his starving cry, when fortune frowns, Mutter their falsehoods through the bolted gate; But in the brightness of the inner soul, The placitude of peace and holy thought, The joyous lightness of the spirit's wings, Sweeping with equal strokes the azure sky Of Present, Past, and wide Futurity; In the high tidemarks on the sands of life, Where thought hath swept her purifying wave, Bearing the treasures of the unsearched deep To swell the riches of humanity. That is a happiness apart from man To aid, to sympathise with, or destroy; In its calm solitude alike secure From the broad adulation of the weak, And the strained condescension of the great, Both insults to the mighty soul within, That is not prized but for its golden shrine. Here there is that which makes the spirit free And noble in the measure of its strength, Untrammelled by conventionalities That make the very light of heaven take worth According to the casement it shines through.
O solitude! thy blessed power hath swept
All earthly passions from my soul like weeds
That choke the issues of eternal love.
What now to me are hatred and revenge?
Thoughts that if fleeting through the mind would fall
Like unknown birds upon a foreign shore,
Strange, wonderful; where no false hearts are nigh
To poison life with variance and strife.
O holy Nature! thou art only love
And peace and universal unity,
From thy sweet bosom springeth up no seed
Of bitterness