"We know not what will come-Yet, Laon, dearest, Cythna shall be the prophetess of love.
Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,
To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove
Within the homeless future's wintry grove;
For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem
Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,
And violence and wrong are as a dream
'Which rolls from stedfast truth an unreturning stream.
"The blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds
Over the earth-next comes the snows, and rain,
And frosts, and storms, which dreary winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ætherial wings;
Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.
"O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness,
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best, and fairest! Whence comest thou, when, with dark winter's sadness
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy, thou art the child who bearest
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou wearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet
"Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,
Surround the world,-We are their chosen slaves.
Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven
Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves?
Lo, Winter comes!-the grief of many graves,
The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,
The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves
Stagnate like ice at Faith, the enchanter's word,
And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.
"The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile
The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey;
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile
Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
The moon of wasting Science wanes away
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,
And grey Priests triumph, and like blight or blast
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.
"This is the Winter of the world;--and here
We die, even as the winds of autumn fade,
Expiring in the frore and foggy air-
Behold! Spring comes, tho' we must pass who made
The promise of its birth, even as the shade
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings
The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,
From its dark gulph of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.
"O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise:
Would'st thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart-it is a paradise
Which everlasting spring has made its own
And, while drear Winter fills the naked skies,
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown,
Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.
"In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
Which made them great, the good will ever find;
And tho' some envious shade may interlope
Between the effect and it, one comes behind
Who aye the future to the past will bind-
Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever
Evil with evil, good with good, must wind
In bands of union, which no power may sever;
They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never
The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves, the innocent and free,
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty
To adorn and clothe this naked world;-and we
Are like to them-such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive
To be a rule and law to ages that survive.
"So be the turf heaped over our remains
Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,-
Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins
The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
Pass from our being, or be numbered not
Among the things that are; let those who come
Behind, for whom our stedfast will has bought
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,
Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb.
"Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live, and burn, and move,
When we shall be no more;-the world has seen
A type of peace; and as some most serene
And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye
After long years, some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope returning suddenly,
Quells his long madness-thus man shall remember thee.
"And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us
As worms devour the dead, and near the throne
And at the altar most accepted thus
Shall sneers and curses be;-what we have done
None shall dare vouch, tho' it be truly known;
That record shall remain, when they must pass
Who built their pride on its oblivion;
And fame, in human hope which sculptored was,
Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass
"The while we two, beloved, must depart,
And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,
Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart
That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:
These eyes, these lips, this blood, seem darkly there
To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep,
Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
In joy-but senseless death-a ruin dark and deep!
"These are blind fancies. Reason cannot knov
What sense can neither fell nor thought conceive!
There is delusion in the world-and woe,
And fear, and pain-we know not whence we live,
Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give
Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,
Or even these thoughts.-Come near me! I do weave
A chain I cannot break-I am possest
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.
"Yes, yes-thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm-
willingly beloved, would these eyes,
Might they no more drink being from thy form,
Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize
Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee-
Yes, Love when wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:
Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee
Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters Return not to their fountain-Earth and Heaven,
The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters,
Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, aud Even,
All that we are or know, is darkly driven
Towards one gulph.-Lo! what a change is come
Since I first spake-but time shall be forgiven,
Tho' it change all but thee!" She ceased-night's gloom Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's suniess doine.
Tho' she had ceased, her countenance, uplifted
To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;
Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted
The air they breathed with love, her locks undight;
"Fair star of life and love," I cried, " my soul's delight,
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
Oh that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,
Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!"
She turned to me and smiled-that smile was Paradise:
Was there a human spirit in the steed,
That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
He broke our linked rest? or do indeed
All living things a common nature own,
And thought erect a universal throne,
Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?
I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
Which was not human-the lone Nightingale
Has answered me with her most soothing song
Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
With grief, and sighed beneath; for many a dale
The Antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
With happy sounds, and motions, that avail
Like man's own speech; and such was now the token
Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was
broken?
Each night that mighty steed bore me abroad,
And I returned with food to our retreat
And dark intelligence: the blood, which flowed
Over the fields, had stained the courser's feet.
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