Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,
And must inherit all he builds below
When he is gone), a hall stood; o'er whose roof
Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,
Clasping its grey rents with a verdurous woof,
A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.
Th' autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made
A natural couch of leaves in that recess,
Which seasons none disturbed, but in the shade
Of flowering parasites did spring love to dress
With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness
Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene'er
The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;
Whose intertwining fingers ever there,
Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.
We know not where we go, or what sweet dream
May pilot us thro' caverns strange and fair
Of far and pathless passion, while the stream
Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,
Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;
Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion
Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there
Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean
Of universal life, attuning its commotion.
To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapt
Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow
Of public hope was from our being snapt,
Tho' linked years had bound it there; for now
A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below
All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,
Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,
Came on us, as we sate in silence there.
Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air.
In silence which doth follow talk that causes
The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,
When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses
Of inexpressive speech ;-the youthful years
Which we together past, their hopes and fears 'The blood itself which ran within our frames, That likeness of the features which endears
The thoughts suppressed by them, our very names,
And all the winged hours which speechless memory
claims,
Had found a voice:-and ere that voice did pass,
The night grew damp and dim, and thro' a rent
Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass
A wandering Meteor, by some wild wind sent,
Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
A faint and pallid lustre; while the song
Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering beat,
Strewed strongest sounds the moving leaves among;
A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.
The Meteor shewed the leaves on which we sate,
And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties
Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight
My neck near hers, her dark and deepening eyes,
Which as twin phantoms of one star that lies
O'er a dim weil, move, though the star reposes,
Swam in our mute and liquid ecstacies,
Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,
With their own. fragrance pale, which spring but half
The meteor to its far morass returned:
The beating of our veins one interval
Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned
Within her frame mingle with mine, and fall
Around my heart like fire; and over all
A mist was spread the sickness of a deep
And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall
Two disunited spirits when they leap
In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep.
Was it one moment that confounded thus
All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one
Unutterable power, which shielded us
Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone
Into a wide and wild oblivion
Of tumult and of tenderness? or now
Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,
The seasons and mankind, their changes know,
Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?
I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Thro' tears of a wide mist, boundless and dim,
In one caress? What is the strong controul
Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,
Where far over the world those vapours roll
Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?
It is the shadow which doth float unseen,
But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality,
Whose divine darkness fled not from that green
And lone recess, where lapt in peace did lie
Our linked frames, till, from the changing sky,
That night and still another day had fled;
And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,
And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread
Under its orb,-loud winds were gathering over head.
Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,
Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chili,
And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn
O'er her pale bosom :-all within was still,
And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill
The depth of her unfathomable look ;-
And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill
The waves contending in its caverns strook,
For they foreknew the storm, and the grey ruin shook,
There we unheeded sate, in the communion
Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite
Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.-
Few were the living hearts which could unite
Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night
With such close sympathies, for they had sprung
From linked youth, and from the gentle might
Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long, [strong.
Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest,
And such is Nature's law divine, that those
Who grow together cannot choose but love,
If faith or custom do not interpose,
Or common slavery mar what else might move
All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove
Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,
That living tree, which, if the arrowy dove
Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile, [smile;
But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sun-beans
And clings to them, when darkness may dissever
The close caresses of all duller plants
Which bloom on the wide earth-thus we for ever
Were linked, for love had nurs'd us in the haunts
Where knowledge from its secret source inchants
Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,
Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,
As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging
Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.
The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were
Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,
Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,-
And so we sate, until our talk befel
Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,
And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,
Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison: well,
For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,
But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were
Since she had food:-therefore I did awaken
The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane,
soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,
Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,
Following me obediently; with pain
Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,
When lips and heart refuse to part again
Till they have told their fill, could scarce express
The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness.
Cythna beheld me part as I bestrode
That willing steed-the tempest and the night,
Which gave my path its safety as I rode
Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite
The darkness and the tumult of their night,
Borne on all winds.-Far thro' the streaming rain
Floating at intervals the garments white
Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.
I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he
Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red
Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly:
And when the earth beneath his tameless tread
Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread
His nostrils to the blast, and joyously
Mock the fierce peal with neighings;-thus we sped
O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry
Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.
There was a desolate village in a wood
Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed
The hungry storm: it was a place of blood,
A heap of hearthless walls-the flames were dead
Within those dwellings now,-the life had fled
From all those corpses now,-but the wide sky
Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead
By the black rafters, and around did lie
Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.
Beside the fountain in the market-place
Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare
With horny eyes upon each other's face,
And on the earth and on the vacant air,
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