FROM "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA."
COME, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low, With shield of proof shield me from out the prease* Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw; O, make me in those civil wars to cease: I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light, A rosy garland, and a weary head: And if these things, as being thine in right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.
FROM "SECOND PART OF HENRY IV.," ACT III. SC. 1.
KING HENRY. How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep! O gentle
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep. liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile, In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deafening clamors in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down; Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees, And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
There can come no sorrow;
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, And to celestial joy their kindred souls invite. And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away: Without thee what is all the morning's wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
YES! bear them to their rest;
The rosy babe, tired with the glare of day, The prattler, fallen asleep e'en in his play; Clasp them to thy soft breast,
Bless them in dreams with a deep, hushed delight.
Yet must they wake again,
Wake soon to all the bitterness of life,
The pang of sorrow, the temptation strife, Aye to the conscience pain:
Canst thou not take with them a longer flight?
Canst thou not bear them far
E'en now, all innocent, before they know The taint of sin, its consequence of woe, The world's distracting jar,
To some ethereal, holier, happier height?
The brow shall know no shade, the eye no tears, Forever young, through heaven's eternal years In one unfading morrow,
O night! Nor sin nor age nor pain their cherub beauty blight.
Would we could sleep as they,
So stainless and so calm, at rest with Thee, And only wake in immortality! Bear us with them away,
To that ethereal, holier, happier height.
GEORGE WASHINGTON BETHUNE.
The dusty day is done.
Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep Wide over groves of balm,
Down from the towering palm,
In at the open casement cooling run, And round thy lowly bed, Thy bed of pain,
Bathing thy patient head, Like grateful showers of rain
While the white curtains, waving to and fro, Fan the sick air ;
And pityingly the shadows come and go, With gentle human care, Compassionate and dumb.
The dusty day is done, The night begun ;
While prayerful watch I keep, Sleep, love, sleep!
Is there no magic in the touch
of fingers thou dost love so much?
Fain would they scatter poppies o'er thee now; Or, with its mute caress,
The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press Upon thy weary lid and aching brow; While prayerful watch I keep, Sleep, love, sleep!
The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
The candles flare
With fresher gusts of air;
The beetle's drone
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan;
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt alone
OUR life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity;
They pars like spirits of the past, — they speak Like sibyls of the future; they have power,
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter, The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; Till all are ringing,
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing, And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear ; Commingling with the hum Of the Sepoy's distant drum, And lazy beetle ever droning near. Sounds these of deepest silence born, Like night made visible by morn; So silent that I sometimes start To hear the throbbings of my heart, And watch, with shivering sense of pain, To see thy pale lids lift again.
The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes, Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day's harsh din; Then boldly ventures out,
And looks about,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricky, winsome sort of way, His delicate marauding seems no sin. And still the curtains swing,
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
As tears were in the sky: More heavily the shadows fall,
Like the black foldings of a pall,
Where juts the rough beam from the wall;
They make us what we were not, what they
And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanished shadows. Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind? - The mind can make Substances, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed Perchance in sleep,- for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of a mild declivity, the last As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, Not by the sport of nature, but of inan : These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing, - the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself, - but the boy gazed on her; And both were young, and one was beautiful; And both were young, - yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him; he had looked Upon it till it could not pass away; He had no breath, no being, but in hers; She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words; she was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, Which colored all his objects; ;- he had ceased To live within himself: she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously, Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share : Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother, but no more; 't was much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him; Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race. It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not, and why?
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed From out the massy gate of that old Hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt With strange and dusky aspects; he was not Himself like what he had been on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Time taught him a deep answer when she Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around : And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better in her home, A thousand leagues from his, - her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of beauty, -- but behold! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. What could her grief be? she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be? - she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which preyed Upon her mind a spectre of the past.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.' The wanderer was returned. I saw him stand Before an altar with a gentle bride ; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The starlight of his boyhood; as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock That in the antique oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then
As in that hour - a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reeled around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been, But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back
That on its own creations spends itself. All things he understands, and nothing does.
And thrust themselves between him and the Profusely eloquent in copious praise
What business had they there at such a time?
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love; O, she was changed, As by the sickness of the soul! her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, They had not their own lustre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things, And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift; What is it but the telescope of truth, Which strips the distance of its fantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real!
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Through that which had been death to many men, And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the universe He held his dialogues; and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and a secret. Be it so.
Of action, he will talk to you as one Whose wisdom lay in dealings and transactions; Yet so much action as might tie his shoe Cannot his will command; himself alone By his own wisdom not a jot the gainer. Of silence, and the hundred thousand things 'Tis better not to mention, he will speak, And still most wisely.
FROM THE EXCURSION," BOOK 1.
O, MANY are the poets that are sown By nature; men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse (Which, in the docile season of their youth, It was denied them to acquire, through lack Of culture and the inspiring aid of books, Or haply by a temper too severe, Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame), Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led By circumstance to take unto the height The measure of themselves, these favored beings, All but a scattered few, live out their time, Husbanding that which they possess within, And go to the grave, unthought of.
Are often those of whom the noisy world Hears least.
He had no times of study, and no place; All places and all times to him were one. His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved, And sounded only when the spirit blew,
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