Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read online

  Of every ancient wind and thund’rous storm,

  Had been off-shaken from his scathless bark.

  He had heard distant years sweet concord yield,

  And go to silence; having firmly kept

  Majestical companionship with Time.

  Anon his strength wax’d proud: his tusky roots

  Forced for themselves a path on every side,

  Riving the earth; and, in their savage scorn,

  Casting it from them like a thing unclean,

  Which might impede his naked clambering

  Unto the heavens. Now blasted, peel’d, he stood,

  By the gone night, whose lightning had come in

  And rent him, even as it rent the man

  Beneath his shade: and there the strong and weak

  Communion join’d in deathly agony.

  There, underneath, I lent my feverish strength,

  To scoop a lodgment for the traveller’s corse.

  I gave it to the silence and the pit,

  And strew’d the heavy earth on all: and then —

  I — I, whose hands had form’d that silent house, —

  I could not look thereon, but turn’d and wept!

  . . . . . .

  Oh Death — oh crownëd Death — pale-steedëd Death!

  Whose name doth make our respiration brief,

  Muffling the spirit’s drum! Thou, whom men know

  Alone by charnel-houses, and the dark

  Sweeping of funeral feathers, and the scath

  Of happy days, — love deem’d inviolate!

  Thou of the shrouded face, which to have seen

  Is to be very awful, like thyself! —

  Thou, whom all flesh shall see! — thou, who dost call,

  And there is none to answer! — thou, whose call

  Changeth all beauty into what we fear,

  Changeth all glory into what we tread,

  Genius to silence, wrath to nothingness,

  And love — not love! — thou hast no change for love!

  Thou, who art Life’s betroth’d, and bear’st her forth

  To scare her with sad sights, — who hast thy joy

  Where’er the peopled towns are dumb with plague, —

  Where’er the battle and the vulture meet, —

  Where’er the deep sea writhes like Laocoon

  Beneath the serpent winds, and vessels split

  On secret rocks, and men go gurgling down,

  Down, down, to lose their shriekings in the depth!

  Oh universal thou! who comest aye

  Among the minstrels, and their tongue is tied; —

  Among the sophists, and their brain is still; —

  Among the mourners, and their wail is done; —

  Among the dancers, and their tinkling feet

  No more make echoes on the tombing earth; —

  Among the wassail rout, and all the lamps

  Are quench’d; and wither’d the wine-pouring hands!

  Mine heart is armëd not in panoply

  Of the old Roman iron, nor assumes

  The Stoic valour. ‘Tis a human heart

  And so confesses, with a human fear; —

  That only for the hope the cross inspires,

  That only for the man who died and lives,

  ‘Twould crouch beneath thy sceptre’s royalty,

  With faintness of the pulse, and backward cling

  To life. But knowing what I soothly know,

  High-seeming Death, I dare thee! and have hope,

  In God’s good time, of showing to thy face

  An unsuccumbing spirit, which sublime

  May cast away the low anxieties

  That wait upon the flesh — the reptile moods;

  And enter that eternity to come,

  Where live the dead, and only Death shall die.

  A SEA-SIDE MEDITATION.

  “Ut per aquas quæ nunc rerum simulacra videmus.”

  Lucretius , lib. i.

  Go , travel ‘mid the hills! The summer’s hand

  Hath shaken pleasant freshness o’er them all.

  Go, travel ‘mid the hills! There, tuneful streams

  Are touching myriad stops, invisible;

  And winds, and leaves, and birds, and your own thoughts,

  (Not the least glad) in wordless chorus, crowd

  Around the thymele of Nature.

  Go,

  And travel onward. Soon shall leaf and bird,

  Wind, stream, no longer sound. Thou shalt behold

  Only the pathless sky, and houseless sward;

  O’er which anon are spied innumerous sails

  Of fisher vessels like the wings o’ the hill,

  And white as gulls above them, and as fast, —

  But sink they — sink they out of sight. And now

  The wind is springing upward in your face;

  And, with its fresh-toned gushings, you may hear

  Continuous sound which is not of the wind,

  Nor of the thunder, nor o’ the cataract’s

  Deep passion, nor o’ the earthquake’s wilder pulse;

  But which rolls on in stern tranquillity,

  As memories of evil o’er the soul; —

  Boweth the bare broad Heav’n. — What view you? sea — and sea!

  The sea — the glorious sea! from side to side,

  Swinging the grandeur of his foamy strength,

  And undersweeping the horizon, — on —

  On — with his life and voice inscrutable.

  Pause: sit you down in silence! I have read

  Of that Athenian, who, when ocean raged,

  Unchain’d the prison’d music of his lips,

  By shouting to the billows, sound for sound.

  I marvel how his mind would let his tongue

  Affront thereby the ocean’s solemnness.

  Are we not mute, or speak restrainedly,

  When overhead the trampling tempests go,

  Dashing their lightning from their hoofs? and when

  We stand beside the bier? and when we see

  The strong bow down to weep — and stray among

  Places which dust or mind hath sanctified?

  Yea! for such sights and acts do tear apart

  The close and subtle clasping of a chain,

  Form’d not of gold, but of corroded brass,

  Whose links are furnish’d from the common mine

  Of every day’s event, and want, and wish;

  From work-times, diet-times, and sleeping-times:

  And thence constructed, mean and heavy links

  Within the pandemonic walls of sense,

  Enchain our deathless part, constrain our strength,

  And waste the goodly stature of our soul.

  Howbeit, we love this bondage; we do cleave

  Unto the sordid and unholy thing,

  Fearing the sudden wrench required to break

  Those claspëd links. Behold! all sights and sounds

  In air, and sea, and earth, and under earth,

  All flesh, all life, all ends, are mysteries;

  And all that is mysterious dreadful seems,

  And all we cannot understand we fear.

  Ourselves do scare ourselves: we hide our sight

  In artificial nature from the true,

  And throw sensation’s veil associative

  On God’s creation, man’s intelligence;

  Bowing our high imaginings to eat

  Dust, like the serpent, once erect as they;

  Binding conspicuous on our reason’s brow

  Phylacteries of shame; learning to feel

  By rote, and act by rule, (man’s rule, not God’s!)

  Until our words grow echoes, and our thoughts

  A mechanism of spirit.

  Can this last?

  No! not for aye. We cannot subject aye

  The heav’n-born spirit to the earth-born flesh.

  Tame lions will scent blood, and appetite />
  Carnivorous glare from out their restless eyes.

  Passions, emotions, sudden changes, throw

  Our nature back upon us, till we burn.

  What warm’d Cyrene’s fount? As poets sing,

  The change from light to dark, from dark to light.

  All that doth force this nature back on us,

  All that doth force the mind to view the mind,

  Engend’reth what is named by men, sublime .

  Thus when, our wonted valley left, we gain

  The mountain’s horrent brow, and mark from thence

  The sweep of lands extending with the sky;

  Or view the spanless plain; or turn our sight

  Upon yon deep’s immensity; — we breathe

  As if our breath were marble: to and fro

  Do reel our pulses, and our words are mute.

  We cannot mete by parts, but grapple all:

  We cannot measure with our eye, but soul;

  And fear is on us. The extent unused,

  Our spirit, sends, to spirit’s element,

  To seize upon abstractions: first on space,

  The which eternity in place I deem;

  And then upon eternity; till thought

  Hath form’d a mirror from their secret sense,

  Wherein we view ourselves, and back recoil

  At our own awful likeness; ne’ertheless,

  Cling to that likeness with a wonder wild,

  And while we tremble, glory — proud in fear.

  So ends the prose of life: and so shall be

  Unlock’d her poetry’s magnific store.

  And so, thou pathless and perpetual sea,

  So, o’er thy deeps, I brooded and must brood,

  Whether I view thee in thy dreadful peace,

  Like a spent warrior hanging in the sun

  His glittering arms, and meditating death;

  Or whether thy wild visage gath’reth shades,

  What time thou marshall’st forth thy waves who hold

  A covenant of storms, then roar and wind

  Under the racking rocks; as martyrs lie

  Wheel-bound; and, dying, utter lofty words!

  Whether the strength of day is young and high,

  Or whether, weary of the watch, he sits

  Pale on thy wave, and weeps himself to death; —

  In storm and calm, at morn and eventide,

  Still have I stood beside thee, and out-thrown

  My spirit onward on thine element, —

  Beyond thine element, — to tremble low

  Before those feet which trod thee as they trod

  Earth, — to the holy, happy, peopled place,

  Where there is no more sea. Yea, and my soul,

  Having put on thy vast similitude,

  Hath wildly moanëd at her proper depth,

  Echoed her proper musings, veil’d in shade

  Her secrets of decay, and exercised

  An elemental strength, in casting up

  Rare gems and things of death on fancy’s shore,

  Till Nature said, ‘Enough.’

  Who longest dreams,

  Dreams not for ever; seeing day and night

  And corporal feebleness divide his dreams,

  And on his elevate creations weigh

  With hunger, cold, heat, darkness, weariness:

  Else should we be like gods; else would the course

  Of thought’s free wheels, increased in speed and might

  By an eterne volution, oversweep

  The heights of wisdom, and invade her depths:

  So, knowing all things, should we have all power;

  For is not knowledge power? But mighty spells

  Our operation sear; the Babel must,

  Or ere it touch the sky, fall down to earth:

  The web, half form’d, must tumble from our hands,

  And, ere they can resume it, lie decay’d.

  Mind struggles vainly from the flesh. E’en so,

  Hell’s angel (saith a scroll apocryphal)

  Shall, when the latter days of earth have shrunk

  Before the blast of God, affect his heav’n;

  Lift his scarr’d brow, confirm his rebel heart,

  Shoot his strong wings, and darken pole and pole, —

  Till day be blotted into night; and shake

  The fever’d clouds, as if a thousand storms

  Throbb’d into life! Vain hope — vain strength — vain flight!

  God’s arm shall meet God’s foe, and hurl him back!

  A VISION OF LIFE AND DEATH.

  Mine ears were deaf to melody,

  My lips were dumb to sound:

  Where didst thou wander, oh my soul,

  When ear and tongue were bound?

  ‘I wander’d by the stream of time,

  Made dark by human tears:

  I threw my voice upon the waves,

  And they did throw me theirs.’

  And how did sound the waves, my soul?

  And how did sound the waves?

  ‘Hoarse, hoarse, and wild! — they ever dash’d

  ‘Gainst ruin’d thrones and graves.’

  And what sight on the shore, my soul?

  And what sight on the shore?

  ‘Twain beings sate there silently,

  And sit there evermore.’

  Now tell me fast and true, my soul;

  Now tell me of those twain.

  ‘One was yclothed in mourning vest,

  And one, in trappings vain.

  ‘She, in the trappings vain, was fair,

  And eke fantastical:

  A thousand colours dyed her garb;

  A blackness bound them all.

  ‘In part her hair was gaily wreath’d,

  In part was wildly spread:

  Her face did change its hue too fast,

  To say ‘twas pale or red.

  ‘And when she look’d on earth, I thought

  She smiled for very glee:

  But when she look’d to heav’n, I knew

  That tears stood in her ee.

  ‘She held a mirror, there to gaze:

  It could no cheer bestow;

  For while her beauty cast the shade,

  Her breath did make it go.

  ‘A harper’s harp did lie by her,

  Without the harper’s hest;

  A monarch’s crown did lie by her,

  Wherein an owl had nest:

  ‘A warrior’s sword did lie by her,

  Grown rusty since the fight;

  A poet’s lamp did lie by her: —

  Ah me! — where was its light?’

  And what didst thou say, O, my soul,

  Unto that mystic dame?

  ‘I ask’d her of her tears, and eke

  I ask’d her of her name.

  ‘She said, she built a prince’s throne:

  She said, he ruled the grave;

  And that the levelling worm ask’d not

  If he were king or slave.

  ‘She said, she form’d a godlike tongue,

  Which lofty thoughts unsheathed;

  Which roll’d its thunder round, and purged

  The air the nations breathed.

  ‘She said, that tongue, all eloquent,

  With silent dust did mate;

  Whereon false friends betray’d long faith,

  And foes outspat their hate.

  ‘She said, she warm’d a student’s heart,

  But heart and brow ‘gan fade:

  Alas, alas! those Delphic trees

  Do cast an upas shade!

  ‘She said, she lighted happy hearths,

  Whose mirth was all forgot:

  She said, she tunëd marriage bells,

  Which rang when love was not .

  ‘She said, her name was Life; and then

  Out laugh’d and wept aloud, —

  What time the other being strange

  Lifted the veiling shroud.

  ‘Yea! lifted
she the veiling shroud,

  And breathed the icy breath;

  Whereat, with inward shuddering,

  I knew her name was Death.

  ‘Yea! lifted she her calm, calm brow,

  Her clear cold smile on me:

  Whereat within my deepness, leap’d

  Mine immortality.

  ‘She told me, it did move her smile,

  To witness how I sigh’d,

  Because that what was fragile brake,

  And what was mortal died:

  ‘As if that kings could grasp the earth,

  Who from its dust began;

  As if that suns could shine at night,

  Or glory dwell with man.

  ‘She told me, she had freed his soul,

  Who aye did freedom love;

  Who now reck’d not, were worms below,

  Or ranker worms above!

  ‘She said, the student’s heart had beat

  Against its prison dim;

  Until she crush’d the bars of flesh,

  And pour’d truth’s light on him.

  ‘She said, that they who left the hearth,

  For aye in sunshine dwell;

  She said, the funeral tolling brought

  More joy than marriage bell!

  ‘And as she spake, she spake less loud;

  The stream resounded more:

  Anon I nothing heard but waves

  That wail’d along the shore.’

  And what didst thou say, oh my soul,

  Upon that mystic strife?

  ‘I said, that Life was only Death,

  That only Death was Life.’

  EARTH.

  How beautiful is earth! my starry thoughts

  Look down on it from their unearthly sphere,

  And sing symphonious — Beautiful is earth!

  The lights and shadows of her myriad hills;

  The branching greenness of her myriad woods;

  Her sky-affecting rocks; her zoning sea;

  Her rushing, gleaming cataracts; her streams

  That race below, the wingëd clouds on high;

  Her pleasantness of vale and meadow! —

  Hush!

  Meseemeth through the leafy trees to ring

  A chime of bells to falling waters tuned;

  Whereat comes heathen Zephyrus, out of breath

  With running up the hills, and shakes his hair