Thou wert my dream
All a long summer night—
Be now my theme!
By this clear stream,
Of thee will I write;
Meantime from afar
Bathe me in light!
Thy world has not the dross of ours,
Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
That list our love or deck our bowers
In dreamy gardens, where do lie
Dreamy maidens all the day;
While the silver winds of Circassy
On violet couches faint away.
Little—oh! little dwells in thee
Like unto what on earth we see:
Beauty's eye is here the bluest
In the falsest and untruest—
On the sweetest air doth float
The most sad and solemn note—
If with thee be broken hearts,
Joy so peacefully departs,
That its echo still doth dwell,
Like the murmur in the shell.
Thou! thy truest type of grief
Is the gently falling leaf—
Thou! thy framing is so holy
Sorrow is not melancholy.
Note on Tamerlane
The earliest version of "Tamerlane" was included in the suppressed volume of 1827, but differs very considerably from the poem as now published. The present draft, besides innumerable verbal alterations and improvements upon the original, is more carefully punctuated, and, the lines being indented, presents a more pleasing appearance, to the eye at least.
Note on To Helen, The Valley of Unrest, Israfel etc.
"To Helen" first appeared in the 1831 volume, as did also "The Valley of Unrest" (as "The Valley Nis"), "Israfel," and one or two others of the youthful pieces.
Note on Romance
The poem styled "Romance" constituted the Preface of the 1829 volume, but with the addition of the following lines:
Succeeding years, too wild for song,
Then rolled like tropic storms along,
Where, though the garish lights that fly
Dying along the troubled sky,
Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,
The blackness of the general Heaven,
That very blackness yet doth fling
Light on the lightning's silver wing.
For being an idle boy lang syne,
Who read Anacreon and drank wine,
I early found Anacreon rhymes
Were almost passionate sometimes—
And by strange alchemy of brain
His pleasures always turned to pain—
His naïveté to wild desire—
His wit to love—his wine to fire—
And so, being young and dipt in folly,
I fell in love with melancholy.
And used to throw my earthly rest
And quiet all away in jest—
I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beauty's breath—
Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny,
Were stalking between her and me.
...
But now my soul hath too much room— Gone are the glory and the gloom— The black hath mellow'd into gray, And all the fires are fading away. My draught of passion hath been deep— I revell'd, and I now would sleep— And after drunkenness of soul Succeeds the glories of the bowl— An idle longing night and day To dream my very life away. But dreams—of those who dream as I, Aspiringly, are damned, and die: Yet should I swear I mean alone, By notes so very shrilly blown, To break upon Time's monotone, While yet my vapid joy and grief Are tintless of the yellow leaf— Why not an imp the greybeard hath, Will shake his shadow in my path— And e'en the greybeard will o'erlook Connivingly my dreaming-book.
Doubtful Poems
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I loved—I loved alone— Thou—in my childhood—in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still— From the torrent, or the fountain— From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold— From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by— From the thunder and the storm— And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.
To Isadore
I
Beneath the vine-clad eaves,
Whose shadows fall before
Thy lowly cottage door—
Under the lilac's tremulous leaves—
Within thy snowy clasped hand
The purple flowers it bore.
Last eve in dreams, I saw thee stand,
Like queenly nymph from Fairy-land—
Enchantress of the flowery wand,
Most beauteous Isadore!
II