III

1.

THREE EARLY SONNETS

CHECK EVERY OUTFLASH." CHECK every outflash, every ruder sally

Of thought and speech ; speak low, and give up wholly
Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy ;
This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley,
Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;

But in the middle of the sombre valley,
The crisped waters whisper musically,
And all the haunted place is dark and holy.
The nightingale, with long and low preamble,

Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,
And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches

The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,
And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above-

When in this valley first I told my love. Englishman's Magazine, August, 1831.

a

II. “ME MY OWN FATE TO LASTING SORROW DOOMETH.” Me my own Fate to lasting sorrow doometh:

Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory:

Thy spirit, circled with a living glory,
In summer still a summer joy resumeth.
Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh,

Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary,
From an old garden where no flower bloometh,

One cypress on an inland promontory.
But yet my lonely spirit follows thine,

As round the rolling earth night follows day :
But yet thy lights on my horizon shine

Into my night, when thou art far away.
I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright,

When we two meet there's never perfect light.
Friendship's Offering, 1832.

THERE ARE THREE THINGS.”
THERE are three things which fill my heart with sighs,

And steep my soul in laughter (when I view
Fair maiden-forms moving like melodies)

Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue.
There are three things beneath the blessed skies

For which I live, black eyes and brown and blue :

III.

I hold them all most dear, but oh! black eyes,

I live and die, and only die for you.
Of late such eyes looked at me—while I mused,

At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane
In old Bayona nigh the southern sea-
From an half-open lattice looked at me.
I saw no more-only those eyes-confused

And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain.
Yorkshire Literary Annual, 1832.

IV

ANACREONTICS
With roses musky breathed,
And drooping daffodilly,
And silver-leaved lily,
And ivy darkly-wreathed,
I wove a crown before her
For her I love so dearly,
A garland for Lenora.
With a silken cord I bound it.
Lenora, laughing clearly
A light and thrilling laughter,
About her forehead wound it,

And loved me ever after.
The Gem, 1831.

V

TIMBUCTOO
Deep in that lion-launted inland lies
A mystick city, goal of high emprise.

-CHAPMAN.
I STOOD upon the Mountain which o’erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall’n below th’ Atlantick, and above
The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,
Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue
Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed
The limits of his prowess, pillars high

Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the Sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.
And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of Man
As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then
A center'd glory-circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name
Imperial Eldorado roofd with gold:
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.
As when in some great City where the walls
Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd
Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retir'd
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis,
Before the awful Genius of the place
Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
Her phantasy informs them.

Where are ye Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green ? Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms, The blossoming abysses of your hills ? Your flowering Capes, and your gold-sanded bays Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds? Where are the infinite ways, which, Seraph-trod, Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes, Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love, Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd, Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems, And ever circling round their emerald cones In coronals and glories, such as gird The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven ? For nothing visible, they say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play'd about

With it's peculiar glory. Then I rais'd
My voice and cried, “Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair
As those which starr'd the night o'the elder World ?
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient Time ? "

A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light !
A rustling of white wings! The bright descent
Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me
There on the ridge, and look'd into my

face
With his unutterable, shining orbs.
So that with hasty motion I did veil
My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those, that gaze upon the noonday Sun.
Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compass'd round about his brow
With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternation of all hues, he stood.

"O child of man, why muse you here alono
Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling winds,
And odours rapt from remote Paradise ?
Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:
Open thine eye and see.”

I look'd, but not
Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With it's exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great Angel Mind which look'd from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my Spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within

eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem'd to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
of full beatitude. Each failing sense
As with a momentary flash of light
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw

The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy
Shorn of it's hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth
And harmony of planet-girded Suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay-the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts
Involving and embracing each with each,
Rapid as fire, inextricably link’d,
Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riv'n rapt brain; as when in some large lake
From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm
Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres
Which break upon each other, each th' effect
Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong
Than it's precursor, till the eye in vain
Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise
Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round.

I know not if I shape
These things with accurate similitude
From visible objects, for but dimly now,
Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream,
The memory of that mental excellence
Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine
The indecision of my present mind
With it's past clearness, yet it seems to me
As even then the torrent of quick thought