Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce!
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till wreck'd in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction an'i repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipp'd by those sisters wild
Call'd Hope and Fear-upon the heart are piled
Their offerings,-of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.
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The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride delighting and delighted.
The hour is come-the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinels-but true love never yet
Was thus constrain'd: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms more strength has love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.
A ship is floating in the harbor now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever plow'd that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbors are not safe and good,
This land would have remain'd a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
The blue Egean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails,
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss, violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odor through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odor, beam and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul--they seem
Like echoes of an antenatal dream-
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
It is a favor'd place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or Zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
Blushes and trembles at its own excess :
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen,
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices-
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know;
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a Wreck of human art,
But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
The volumes of their many twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
Or fragments of the day's intense serene ;-
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Possessing and possest by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one-or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awaken'd day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips,
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them; and the wells
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd
Thee to be lady of the solitude.-
And I have fitted up some chambers there,
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.-
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys, which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn; and therefore still,
Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill.
The ringdove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the over-hanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The
mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea,
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,—
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.-
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,
And say:-"We are the masters of thy slave;
What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ?"
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,
All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave."
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of men, until ye meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
And bid them love each other and be blest :
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest,-for I am Love's.
417
ΜΑΝΤΣ ΕΙΜ' ΕΣΘΛΩΝ ΑΓΩΝΩΝ.
TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO,
LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA,
IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF PISA, November 1, 1821.
THE poem of Hellas, written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.
age have been performed by the Greeks-that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.
The apathy of the rulers of the civilized world, to the astonishing circumstances of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilizationThe subject in its present state is insusceptible of rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is somebeing treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have thing perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of called this poem a drama from the circumstance of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks, its being composed in dialogue, the license is not Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have greater than that which has been assumed by other their root in Greece. But for Greece-Rome the poets, who have called their productions epics, only instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our a because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-cestors, would have spread no illumination with her
arms, and we might still have been savages and id aters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.
The human form and the human mind attained a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operat ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of
The Persæ of Eschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended, forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization and social the race. improvement. The modern Greek is the descendant of these The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, glorious beings whom the imagination almost refe so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the to figure to itself as belonging to our kind; and he Thespian wagon to an Athenian village at the Diony-inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity c siaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment greater in many instances he is degraded by moral and poli than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchical slavery to the practice of the basest vices it t of the hour may think fit to inflict. genders, and that below the level of ordinary degr The only goat-song which I have yet attempted dation; let us reflect that the corruption of the best has, I confess, in spite of the unfavorable nature of produces the worst, and that habits which subsist the subject, received a greater and a more valuable only in relation to a peculiar state of social m portion of applause than I expected, or than it de
tion may be expected to cease, as soon as that rela tion is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the s Common fame is the only authority which I can mirable novel of "Anastatius" could have been a allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, faithful picture of their manners, have undergone and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my read- important changes. The flower of their youth. ers for the display of newspaper erudition to which turning to their country from the universities of laly I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the con- Germany and France, have communicated to the clusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain fellow-citizens the latest results of that social per an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical fection of which their ancestors were the original materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is source. unquestionable that actions of the most exalted cour- the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred The university of Chios contained before
students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilization.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; | and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other, until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk-but when was the oppressor generous or just?
The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble govemment is vainly attempting to revive. The seed
of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany, to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe; and that enemy well knows the power and cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division, to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.
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Away, unlovely dreams!
Away, false shapes of sleep:
Be his, as Heaven seems,
Clear, bright and deep!
Soft as love and calm as death,
Sweet as a summer-night without a breath.
Sleep, sleep! our song is laden
With the soul of slumber;
It was sung by a Samian maiden,
Whose lover was of the number
Who now keep
Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.
I touch thy temples pale!
I breathe my soul on thee! And could my prayers avail, All my joy should be
Dead, and I would live to weep,
So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.
The spell of the mighty mistress now!
When conscience lulls her sated snake,
And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.
Breathe low, low,
The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
Through the veins of the frozen earth-low, low!
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veil'd, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,-but it returneth!
Yet were life a charnel, where Hope lay coffin'd with despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie, Love were lust
Lent not life its soul of light,
Hope its iris of delight,
Truth its prophet's robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear.
In the great morning of the world,
The spirit of God with might unfurl'd
The flag of Freedom over Chaos,
And all its banded anarchs fled,
Like vultures frighted from Imaus,
Before an earthquake's tread-
So from Time's tempestuous dawn
Freedom's splendor burst and shone :-
Thermopyla and Marathon
Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing fire.-The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted,
Like an eagle on a promontory.
Its unwearied wings could fan
The quenchless ashes of Milan.*
From age to age, from man to man
It lived; and lit from land to land
Florence, Albion, Switzerland:
Then night fell; and as from night
Reassuming fiery flight,
From the West swift Freedom came,
Against the course of Heaven and doom
A second sun array'd in flame;
To burn, to kindle, to illume,
From far Atlantis its young beams
Chased the shadows and the dreams.
France, with all her sanguine steams,
Hid, but quench'd it not; again
Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
From utmost Germany to Spain.
As an eagle fed with morning
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,
When she seeks her airy hanging
In the mountain cedar's hair,
And her brood expect the clanging
Of her wings through the wild air,
Sick with famine-Freedom so
To what of Greece remaineth now
Returns; her hoary ruins glow
Like orient mountains lost in day;
Beneath the safety of her wings
Her renovated nurslings play,
And in the naked lightnings
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies,
A desert, or a Paradise;
Let the beautiful and the brave
Share her glory, or a grave.
With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew.
With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew.
SEMICHORUS I.
With an orphan's affection
She follow'd thy bier through time;
And at thy resurrection Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
If Heaven should resume thee,
To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
SEMICHORUS II.
If Hell should entomb thee;
To Hell shall her high hearts bend.
SEMICHORUS I.
If Annihilation
* Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard
The times do cast strange shad
On those who watch and who must rule their co
Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,
Be whelm'd in the fierce ebb:-and these are of t
Thrice has a gloomy vision haunted me
As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,
Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.
Would that no matter. Thou didst say thou knewe
A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle
Of strange and secret and forgotten things.
I bade thee summon him:-'tis said his tribe
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
The Jew of whom I spake is old.--so old
He seems to have outlived a world's decay;
The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean
Seem younger still than he;-his hair and beard
Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;
His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries
Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct
With light, and to the soul that quickens them
Are as the atoms of the mountain-drif
To the winter wind:-but from his
A life of unconsumed thought, wh
The present, and the past, and the
Some say that this is he whom t
Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his
Mock'd with the curse of imm
Some feign that he is Enoch;
He was pre-adamite, and has
league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa Cycles of generation and of ruin. burnt the city to the ground, but liberty lived in its ashes, The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin.-See Sts. And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, MONDI's "Histoires des Républiques Italiennes," a book Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, which has done much towards awakening the Italians to In years outstretch'd beyond the date of man, | May have obtain'd to sovereignty and science
an imitation of their great ancestors.
|