WRITTEN ON THE DAY THAT MR. LEIGH HUNT LEFT PRISON · HOW MANY BARDS GILD THE LAPSES OF TIME! · TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME SOME ROSES · ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS AT AN EARLY HOUR · HAPPY IS ENGLAND! I COULD BE CONTENT · Fill for me a brimming bowl · Lines · Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be · O! Were I one of the Olympian twelve · Song: The stranger lighted from his steed · Sonnet to Homer · The Devon Maid · Sonnet on Visiting the Tomb of Burns · Sonnet Written in the Cottage where Burns was Born · Translation from a Sonnet of Ronsard · Ode to Fanny · Song: Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear! · Sonnet: · Fame, like a wayward Giri, will still be coy · How fever’d is the man, who cannot look · Sonnet on the Sonnet · You Say You Love · Sonnet to Fanny
What though, for showing truth to flatter’d state
Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit, been as free
As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturn’dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser’s halls he strayed, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
With daring Milton through the fields of air:
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, — I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; ’tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds — the whisp’ring of the leaves —
The voice of waters — the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, — and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert; — when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; ’twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell’d:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell’d:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whisper’d of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell’d.
Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.
The while let music wander round my ears.
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
’Tis not content so soon to be alone.
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
For skies Italian, and an inward groan
To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;
Enough their simple loveliness for me,
Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
Yet do I often warmly burn to see
Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.
Fill for me a brimming bowl
And let me in it drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To banish women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with - fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e’er from Lethe’s wave was quaff d;
From my despairing heart to charm
The image of the fairest form 10
That e’er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e’er my wandering fancy spell’d.
In vain! away I cannot chase
The melting softness of that face,
The beaminess of those bright eyes,
That breast-earth’s only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore
The Classic page, or Muse’s lore. 20
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev’d its smart
I should have felt sweet relief,
I should have felt ‘the joy of grief.’
Yet as the Tuscan mid the snow
Of Lapland thinks on sweet Arno,
Even so for ever shall she be
The Halo of my Memory.
August 1814
I
Unfelt, unheard, unseen,
I’ve left my little queen,
Her languid arms in silver slumber lying:
Ah! through their nestling touch,
Who - who could tell how much
There is for madness - cruel, or complying?
II
Those faery lids how sleek!
Those lips how moist! - they speak,
In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds:
Into my fancy’s ear
Melting a burden dear,
How ‘Love doth know no fullness nor no bounds.’
III
True! - tender monitors!
I bend unto your laws:
This sweetest day for dalliance was born!
So, without more ado,
I’ll feel my heaven anew,
For all the blushing of the hasty mom.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,’
Hold like rich gamers the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more, 10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
O! Were I one of the Olympian twelve,
Their godships should pass this into a law, -
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady’s hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair;
And for each briar-berry he might eat,
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller’s lips.
10
I
The stranger lighted from his steed.
And ere he spake a word,
He seiz’d my lady’s lily hand,
And kiss’d it all unheard.
II
The stranger walk’d into the hall,
And ere he spake a word,
He kiss’d my lady’s cherry lips,
And kiss’d ‘em all unheard.
III
The stranger walk’d into the bower, -
But my lady first did go, -
Aye hand in hand into the bower,
Where my lord’s roses blow.
IV
My lady’s maid had a silken scarf,
And a golden ring had she,
And a kiss from the stranger, as off he went
Again on his fair palfrey.
Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows of my slavery, my giving up,
My sudden adoration, my great love!
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind; - but then the veil was rent,
For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green,
10
There is a budding morrow in midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
Stanzas sent in a letter to B. R. Haydon
I
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there in the basket?
Ye tight little fairy just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?
II
I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets’ mainly,
But ‘hind the door I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly.
III
I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating -
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!
IV
I’ll put your basket all safe in a nook,
Your shawl I hang up on the willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy’s eye
And kiss on a grass green pillow.
The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold - strange - as in a dream,
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv’d, paly summer is but won
From winter’s ague, for one hour’s gleam;
Though sapphire-warm, their stars do never beam:
All is cold beauty; pain is never done:
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it! Bums! with honour due
I oft have honour’d thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.
This mortal body of a thousand days
Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine own barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
10
The meadow thou hast tramped o’er and o’er, -
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind, -
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name, -
O smile among the shades, for this is fame!
Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies,
For more adornment, a full thousand years;
She took their cream of beauty’s fairest dyes,
And shap’d and tinted her above all Peers’
Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,
And underneath their shadow fill’d her eyes
With such a richness that the cloudy Kings
Of high Olympus utter’d slavish sighs.
When from the heavens I saw her first descend,
My heart took fire, and only burning pains,
10
They were my pleasures - they my life’s sad end;
Love pour’d her beauty into my warm veins …
I
Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest;
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
A theme! a theme! great nature! give a theme;
Let me begin my dream.
I come - I see thee, as thou standest there,
Beckon me out into the wintry air.
II
Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries. -
Tonight, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
A smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright.
As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
Lost in soft amaze,
I gaze, I gaze!
III
Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
What stare outfaces now my silver moon!
Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
Let, let, the amorous burn -
But, pr’ythee, do not turn
The current of your heart from me so soon
O! save, in charity,
The quickest pulse for me.
IV
Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
Voluptuous visions into the warm air;
Though swimming through the dance’s dangerous wreath,
Be like an April day,
Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
Then, Heaven! there will be
A warmer June for me.
V
Why, this - you’ll say, my Fanny! is not true
Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
Where the heart beats: confess - ’tis nothing new -
Must not a woman be
A feather on the sea,
Sway’d to and fro by every wind and tide?
Of as uncertain speed
As blow-ball from the mead?
VI
I know it - and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny!
Whose heart goes fluttering for you everywhere,
Nor, when away you roam,
Dare keep its wretched home,
Love, love alone, his pains severe and many:
Then, loveliest! keep me free,
From torturing jealousy.
VII
Ah! if you prize my subdued soul above
The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour;
Let none profane my Holy See of love,
Or with a rude hand break
The sacramental cake:
Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
If not - may my eyes close,
Love! on their lost repose.
I
Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush my dear!
All the house is asleep, but we know very well
That the jealous, the jealous old bald-pate may hear,
Tho’ you’ve padded his nightcap - O sweet Isabel!
Tho’ your feet are more light than a Fairy’s feet,
Who dances on bubbles where brooklets meet. -
Hush, hush! soft tiptoe! hush, hush my dear!
For less than a nothing the jealous can hear.
II
No leaf doth tremble, no ripple is there
On the river, - all’s still, and the night’s sleepy eye
Closes up, and forgets all its Lethean care,
Charm’d to death by the drone of the humming Mayfly;
And the moon, whether prudish or complaisant,
Has fled to her bower, well knowing I want
No light in the dusk, no torch in the gloom,
But my Isabel’s eyes, and her lips pulp’d with bloom.
III
Lift the latch! ah gently! ah tenderly - sweet!
We are dead if that latchet gives one little clink!
Well done - now those lips, and a flowery seat -
The old man may sleep, and the planets may wink;
The shut rose shall dream of our loves, and awake
Full blown, and such warmth for the morning’s take
The stock-dove shall hatch her soft brace and shall coo,
While I kiss to the melody, aching all through!
As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away -
Not to pure Ida’ with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where ‘mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 10
Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.
I
Fame, like a wayward Giri, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy.
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gipsey, will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper’d close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gipsey is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
10
Ye lovesick Bards, repay her scorn for scorn,
Ye Artists lovelorn, madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.
You cannot eat your cake and have it too. - Proverb
How fever’d is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book,
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself,
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,
Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom,
But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,
10
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire
The undisturbed lake has crystal space,
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace,
Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness,
Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy:
Let us inspect the Lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less 10
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.
I
You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
The soft vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth -
O love me truly!
II
You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid’s nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember.
O love me truly!
III
You say you love - but then your lips
Coral tinted teach no blisses.
More than coral in the sea -
They never pout for kisses -
O love me truly!
IV
You say you love; but then your hand
No soft squeeze for squeeze returneth,
It is like a statue’s dead -
While mine to passion burneth -
O love me truly!
V
O breathe a word or two of fire!
Smile, as if those words should burn me,
Squeeze as lovers should - O kiss
And in thy heart inurn me!
O love me truly!
I cry your mercy - pity - love! - aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask’d, and being seen - without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, - all - all - be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, - those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, -
Yourself - your soul - in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life’s purposes, - the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!