FANCY · TO AUTUMN · Sonnet: After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains · On Seeing the Elgin Marbles · To — · Sonnet to a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall · Sonnet to John Hamilton Reynolds · What the Thrush Said · Sonnet - The Human Seasons · Lines Written in the Highlands after a Visit to Burns’s Country · Stanzas · The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer’s joys are spoilt by use, 10
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn’s red-lipp’d fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter’s night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled 20
From the ploughboy’s heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee there, and send abroad,
With a mind self-overaw’d,
Fancy, high-commission’d:—send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost; 30
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray
All the heaped Autumn’s wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it:—thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear; 40
Rustle of the reaped corn;
Sweet birds antheming the morn:
And, in the same moment—hark!
’Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum’d lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; 50
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 60
When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
Acorns ripe down-pattering,
While the autumn breezes sing.
Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Every thing is spoilt by use:
Where’s the cheek that doth not fade,
Too much gaz’d at? Where’s the maid 70
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where’s the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where’s the face
One would meet in every place?
Where’s the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
Let, then, winged Fancy find
Thee a mistress to thy mind: 80
Dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter,
Ere the God of Torment taught her
How to frown and how to chide;
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid.—Break the mesh
Of the Fancy’s silken leash; 90
Quickly break her prison-string
And such joys as these she’ll bring.—
Let the winged Fancy roam
Pleasure never is at home.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
After dark vapours have oppress’d our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved of its pains,
Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May;
The eyelids with the passing coolness play
Like rose leaves with the drip of summer rains.
The calmest thoughts come round us; as of leaves
Budding - fruit ripening in stillness - autumn suns 10
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves -
Sweet Sappho’s cheek - a smiling infant’s breath -
The gradual sand that through an hourglass runs -
A woodland rivulet - a Poet’s death.
My spirit is too weak - mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.
And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud:
10
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main -
A sun - a shadow of a magnitude.
Think not of it, sweet one, so; -
Give it not a tear;
Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go
Any - anywhere.
Do not look so sad, sweet one, —
Sad and fadingly;
Shed one drop, then it is gone,
O ’twas born to die.
Still so pale? then dearest weep;
Weep, I’ll count the tears,
And each one shall be a bliss
For thee in after years.
Brighter has it left thine eyes
Than a sunny rill;
And thy whispering melodies
Are tenderer still.
Yet - as all things mourn awhile
At fleeting blisses,
Let us too! but be our dirge
A dirge of kisses.
20
Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,
Since I was tangled in thy beauty’s web,
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.
And yet I never look on midnight sky,
But I behold thine eyes’ well memory’d light;
I cannot look upon the rose’s dye,
But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight.
I cannot look on any building flower,
But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips
And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour
Its sweets in the wrong sense: - Thou dost eclipse
Every delight with sweet remembering,
And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.
O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day’s journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would lengthen and dilate.
O to arrive each Monday morn from Ind!
To land each Tuesday from the rich Levant!
10
In little time a host of joys to bind,
And keep our souls in one eternal pant!
This morn, my friend, and yester-evening taught
Me how to harbour such a happy thought.
Lines From a Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds
O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind.
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ‘mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away.
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
10
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.
Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look 10
On mists in idleness - to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain, Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain; There is a pleasure on the heath where druids old have been, Where mantles grey have rustled by and swept the nettles green; There is a joy in every spot made known by times of old, New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told; There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart, More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart, When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf, Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or seashore iron scurf, 10 Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn, Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away; Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, - the sun may hear his lay; Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear, But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear; Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks; Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in caves and weedy creeks; Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the air; Ring-doves may fly convuls’d across to some high-cedar’d lair; 20 But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground, As Palmer’s, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found. At such a time the soul’s a child, in childhood is the brain; Forgotten is the worldly heart - alone, it beats in vain. - Aye, if a madman could have leave to pass a healthful day To tell his forehead’s swoon and faint when first began decay, He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone forth To find a Bard’s low cradle-place about the silent North! Scanty the hour and few the steps beyond the bourn of care, Beyond the sweet and bitter world, - beyond it unaware! 30 Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way: O horrible! to lose the sight of well remember’d face, Of Brother’s eyes, of Sister’s brow - constant to every place; Filling the air, as on we move, with portraiture intense; More warm than those heroic tints that pain a painter’s sense, When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old, Locks shining black, hair scanty grey, and passions manifold. No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable’s length Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength: 40 One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy waterfall. But in the very next he reads his soul’s memorial: - He reads it on the mountain’s height, where chance he may sit down
Upon rough marble diadem - that hill’s eternal crown. Yet be his anchor e’er so fast, room is there for a prayer That man may never lose his mind on mountains black and bare; That he may stray league after league some great birth place to find And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.
I
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them.
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
II
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
Apollo’s summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
III
Ah! would ‘twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh’d not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.
The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone,
Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise -
Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday - or holinight
10
Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through today,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.