POEMS WRITTEN IN MDCCCXVIII.
ROSALIND AND HELEN, AND LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.
THE story of ROSALIND and HELEN is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular, inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it.
I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where
is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.
SCENE.-The Shore of the Lake of Como. ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.
COME hither, my sweet Rosalind. 'Tis long since thou and I have met: And yet methinks it were unkind Those moments to forget. Come, sit by me. I see thee stand By this lone lake, in this far land, Thy loose hair in the light wind flying, Thy sweet voice to each tone of even United, and thine eyes replying To the hues of yon fair heaven. Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me? And be as thou wert wont to be Ere we were disunited?
None doth behold us now: the power That led us forth at this lone hour Will be but ill requited
If thou depart in scorn: oh! come, And talk of our abandoned home. Remember, this is Italy,
And we are exiles. Talk with me
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, Barren and dark although they be, Were dearer than these chesnut woods;
Those heathy paths, that inland stream, And the blue mountains, shapes which seem Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream: Which that we have abandoned now, Weighs on the heart like that remorse Which altered friendship leaves. I seek No more our youthful intercourse. That cannot be ! Rosalind, speak, [come Speak to me. Leave me not.-When morn did When evening fell upon our common home, When for one hour we parted,—do not frown; I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken; But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown, Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me, And not my scorned self who prayed to thee.
Is it a dream, or do I see
And hear frail Helen? I would flee Thy tainting touch; but former years Arise, and bring forbidden tears; And my o'erburthened memory
Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.
I share thy crime. I cannot choose
But weep for thee: mine own strange grief But seldom stoops to such relief;
Lifted a sudden look upon his mother, And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee Of light and unsuspecting infancy,
And whispered in her ear," Bring home with you That sweet, strange lady-friend." Then off he flew,
But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile, Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while, Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.
In silence then they took the way Beneath the forest's solitude. It was a vast and antique wood, Through which they took their way;
And the grey shades of evening
O'er that green wilderness did fling Still deeper solitude.
Pursuing still the path that wound The vast and knotted trees around,
Through which slow shades were wandering, To a deep lawny dell they came,
To a stone seat beside a spring,
O'er which the columned wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane
Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain, Man's early race once knelt beneath The overhanging deity.
O'er this fair fountain hung the sky, Now spangled with rare stars. The snake, The pale snake, that with eager breath Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, Is beaming with many a mingled hue, Shed from yon dome's eternal blue, When he floats on that dark and lucid flood In the light of his own loveliness; And the birds that in the fountain dip Their plumes with fearless fellowship Above and round him wheel and hover. The fitful wind is heard to stir One solitary leaf on high; The chirping of the grasshopper Fills every pause. There is emotion In all that dwells at noontide here: Then, through the intricate wild wood, A maze of life and light and motion Is woven. But there is stillness now; Gloom, and the trance of Nature now : The snake is in his cave asleep;
The birds are on the branches dreaming; Only the shadows creep;
Only the glow-worm is gleaming; Only the owls and the nightingales Wake in this dell when day-light fails, And grey shades gather in the woods; And the owls have all fled far away In a merrier glen to hoot and play, For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. The accustomed nightingale still broods On her accustomed bough,
But she is mute; for her false mate Has fled and left her desolate.
This silent spot tradition old
Had peopled with the spectral dead. For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told That a hellish shape at midnight led The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, And sate on the seat beside him there, Till a naked child came wandering by, When the fiend would change to a lady fair! A fearful tale! The truth was worse: For here a sister and a brother Had solemnised a monstrous curse, Meeting in this fair solitude: For beneath yon very sky, Had they resigned to one another Body and soul. The multitude, Tracking them to the secret wood, Tore limb from limb their innocent child, And stabbed and trampled on its mother; But the youth, for God's most holy grace, A priest saved to burn in the market-place.
Duly at evening Helen came
To this lone silent spot,
From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow So much of sympathy to borrow
As soothed her own dark lot. Duly each evening from her home,
With her fair child would Helen come
To sit upon that antique seat, While the hues of day were pale ; And the bright boy beside her feet Now lay, lifting at intervals His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse calls Following. He was a gentle boy And in all gentle sports took joy; Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, With a small feather for a sail, His fancy on that spring would float, If some invisible breeze might stir Its marble calm and Helen smiled Through tears of awe on the gay child, To think that a boy as fair as he, In years which never more may be, By that same fount, in that same wood, The like sweet fancies had pursued ; And that a mother, lost like her, Had mournfully sate watching him. Then all the scene was wont to swim Through the mist of a burning tear.
For many months had Helen known This scene; and now she thither turned Her footsteps, not alone.
The friend whose falsehood she had mourned, Sate with her on that seat of stone. Silent they sate; for evening, And the power its glimpses bring Had, with one awful shadow, quelled The passion of their grief. They sate With linked hands, for unrepelled Had Helen taken Rosalind's. Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair, Which is twined in the sultry summer air Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet, And the sound of her heart that ever beat, As with sighs and words she breathed on her, Unbind the knots of her friend's despair, Till her thoughts were free to fioat and flow; And from her labouring bosom now, Like the bursting of a prisoned flame, The voice of a long-pent sorrow came.
I saw the dark earth fall upon The coffin; and I saw the stone Laid over him whom this cold breast Had pillowed to his nightly rest! Thou knowest not, thou canst not know My agony. Oh! I could not weep: The sources whence such blessings flow Were not to be approached by me! But I could smile, and I could sleep, Though with a self-accusing heart, In morning's light, in evening's gloom, I watched, and would not thence depart,- My husband's unlamented tomb. My children knew their sire was gone But when I told them, "he is dead,"
They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
They clapped their hands and leaped about, Answering each other's ecstacy
With many a prank and merry shout, But I sat silent and alone,
Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.
They laughed, for he was dead; but I Sate with a hard and tearless eye, And with a heart which would deny The secret joy it could not quell, Low muttering o'er his loathed name; Till from that self-contention came Remorse where sin was none; a hell Which in pure spirits should not dwell.
I'll tell thee truth. He was a man Hard, selfish, loving only gold, Yet full of guile his påle eyes ran With tears, which each some falsehood told, And oft his smooth and bridled tongue Would give the lie to his flushing cheek: He was a coward to the strong; He was a tyrant to the weak,
On whom his vengeance he would wreak : For scorn, whose arrows search the heart, From many a stranger's eye would dart, And on his memory cling, and follow His soul to its home so cold and hollow. He was a tyrant to the weak,
And we were such, alas the day! Oft, when my little ones at play,
Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
Or if they listened to some tale
Of travellers, or of fairy land,
When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand Flashed on their faces,-if they heard
Or thought they heard upon the stair His footstep, the suspended word Died on my lips: we all grew pale ;
The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear If it thought it heard its father near; And my two wild boys would near my knee Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.
I'll tell the truth: I loved another. His name in my ear was ever ringing, His form to my brain was ever clinging; Yet if some stranger breathed that name, My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast: My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame, My days were dim in the shadow cast,
By the memory of the same!
Day and night, day and night,
He was my breath and life and light,
For three short years, which soon were past.
On the fourth, my gentle mother
Led me to the shrine, to be
His sworn bride eternally.
And now we stood on the altar stair,
When my father came from a distant land, And with a loud and fearful cry, Rushed between us suddenly.
I saw the stream of his thin grey hair,
I saw his lean and lifted hand,
And heard his words,-and live! O God! Wherefore do I live?" Hold, hold !"
He cried, "I tell thee 'tis her brother! Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
Of yon church-yard rests in her shroud so cold. I am now weak, and pale, and old: We were once dear to one another,
I and that corpse! Thou art our child!" Then with a laugh both long and wild The youth upon the pavement fell : They found him dead! All looked on me, The spasms of my despair to see ; But I was calm. I went away; I was clammy-cold like clay! I did not weep-I did not speak ; But day by day, week after week, I walked about like a corpse alive! Alas! sweet friend, you must believe This heart is stone-it did not break.
My father lived a little while, But all might see that he was dying, He smiled with such a woeful smile! When he was in the church-yard lying Among the worms, we grew quite poor, So that no one would give us bread; My mother looked at me, and said Faint words of cheer, which only meant That she could die and be content;
So I went forth from the same church door To another husband's bed.
And this was he who died at last,
When weeks and months and years had past, Through which I firmly did fulfil My duties, a devoted wife,
With the stern step of vanquished will, Walking beneath the night of life, Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain Falling for ever, pain by pain, The very hope of death's dear rest; Which, since the heart within my breast Of natural life was dispossest, Its strange sustainer there had been.
When flowers were dead, and grass was green Upon my mother's grave,-that mother Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make My wan eyes glitter for her sake, Was my vowed task, the single care Which once gave life to my despair,- When she was a thing that did not stir, And the crawling worms were cradling her To a sleep more deep and so more sweet Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee, I lived; a living pulse then beat Beneath my heart that awakened me. What was this pulse so warm and free? Alas! I knew it could not be
My own dull blood: 'twas like a thought Of liquid love, that spread and wrought Under my bosom and in my brain,
And crept with the blood through every vein ; And hour by hour, day after day, The wonder could not charm away, But laid in sleep my wakeful pain, Until I knew it was a child,
And then I wept. For long, long years These frozen eyes had shed no tears: But now-'twas the season fair and mild When April has wept itself to May: I sate through the sweet sunny day By my window bowered round with leaves, And down my cheeks the quick tears ran
Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves, When warm spring showers are passing o'er : O Helen, none can ever tell
The joy it was to weep once more!
I wept to think how hard it were To kill my babe, and take from it The sense of light, and the warm air, And my own fond and tender care, And love and smiles; ere I knew yet That these for it might, as for me, Be the masks of a grinning mockery. And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet To feed it from my faded breast, Or mark my own heart's restless beat Rock it to its untroubled rest;
And watch the growing soul beneath Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath, Half interrupted by calm sighs; And search the depth of its fair eyes For long departed memories! And so I lived till that sweet load Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed The stream of years, and on it bore Two shapes of gladness to my sight; Two other babes, delightful more In my lost soul's abandoned night, Than their own country ships may be Sailing towards wrecked mariners, Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. For each, as it came, brought soothing tears, And a loosening warmth, as each one lay Sucking the sullen milk away, About my frozen heart did play, And weaned it, oh how painfully!—
As they themselves were weaned each one From that sweet food,-even from the thirst Of death, and nothingness, and rest, Strange inmate of a living breast! Which all that I had undergone Of grief and shame, since she, who first The gates of that dark refuge closed, Came to my sight, and almost burst The seal of that Lethean spring; But these fair shadows interposed: For all delights are shadows now! And from my brain to my dull brow The heavy tears gather and flow : I cannot speak-Oh let me weep!
Like vipers on some poisonous weed. Whether his ill were death or sin None knew, until he died indeed, And then men owned they were the same.
Seven days within my chamber lay That corse, and my babes made holiday : At last, I told them what is death: The eldest, with a kind of shame, Came to my knees with silent breath, And sate awe-stricken at my feet; And soon the others left their play, And sate there too. It is unmeet To shed on the brief flower of youth The withering knowledge of the grave; From me remorse then wrung that truth. I could not bear the joy which gave Too just a response to mine own. In vain. I dared not feign a groan And in their artless looks I saw, Between the mists, of fear and awe, That my own thought was theirs; and they Expressed it not in words, but said, Each in its heart, How every day Will pass in happy work and play, Now he is dead and gone away!
After the funeral all our kin Assembled, and the will was read. My friend, I tell thee, even the dead Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, To blast and torture. Those who live Still fear the living, but a corse Is merciless, and power doth give To such pale tyrants half the spoil He rends from those who groan and toil, Because they blush not with remorse Among their crawling worms. Behold, I have no child! my tale grows old With grief, and staggers: let it reach The limits of my feeble speech, And languidly at length recline
On the brink of its own grave and mine.
Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty Among the fallen on evil days: 'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, And houseless Want in frozen ways Wandering ungarmented, and Pain, And, worse than all, that inward stain, Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers Youth's star-light smile, and makes its tears First like hot gall, then dry for ever! And well thou knowest a mother never Could doom her children to this ill, And well he knew the same. Imported, that if e'er again
I sought my children to behold, Or in my birth-place did remain Beyond three days, whose hours were told, They should inherit nought: and he, To whom next came their patrimony, A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold, Aye watched me, as the will was read, With eyes askance, which sought to see The secrets of my agony;
And with close lips and anxious brow Stood canvassing still to and fro The chance of my resolve, and all The dead man's caution just did call;
For in that killing lie 'twas said- "She is adulterous, and doth hold In secret that the Christian creed Is false, and therefore is much need That I should have a care to save My children from eternal fire." Friend, he was sheltered by the grave, And therefore dared to be a liar! In truth, the Indian on the pyre Of her dead husband, half-consumed, As well might there be false, as I To those abhorred embraces doomed, Far worse than fire's brief agony. As to the Christian creed, if true Or false, I never questioned it : I took it as the vulgar do: Nor my vext soul had leisure yet To doubt the things men say, or deem That they are other than they seem.
All present who those crimes did hear, In feigned or actual scorn and fear, Men, women, children, slunk away, Whispering with self-contented pride, Which half suspects its own base lie. I spoke to none, nor did abide, But silently I went my way. Nor noticed I where joyously Sate my two younger babes at play,
In the court-yard through which I past; But went with footsteps firm and fast Till I came to the brink of the ocean green, And there, a woman with grey hairs, Who had my mother's servant been, Kneeling, with many tears and prayers, Made me accept a purse of gold, Half of the earnings she had kept To refuge her when weak and old.
With woe, which never sleeps or slept, I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought- But on yon alp, whose snowy head 'Mid the azure air is islanded (We see it o'er the flood of cloud, Which sunrise from its eastern caves Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, Hung with its precipices proud,
From that grey stone where first we met), There, now who knows the dead feel nought? Should be my grave; for he who yet
Is my soul's soul, once said: ""Twere sweet 'Mid stars and lightnings to abide, And winds and lulling snows, that beat With their soft flakes the mountain wide, When weary meteor lamps repose, And languid storms their pinions close: And all things strong and bright and pure, And ever-during, aye endure:
Who knows, if one were buried there, But these things might our spirits make, Amid the all-surrounding air,
Their own eternity partake?"
Then 'twas a wild and playful saying
At which I laughed or seemed to laugh:
They were his words: now heed my praying, And let them be my epitaph.
Thy memory for a term may be
My monument. Wilt remember me?
I know thou wilt, and canst forgive
Whilst in this erring world to live
« AnteriorContinuar » |