Thou, who didst lately borrow Cynthia's form,
And modestly forego thine own! O thou,
Who didst thyself at midnight hours inspire!
Say, why not Cynthia patroness of song?
As thou her crescent, she thy character
Assumes; still more a goddess by the change.
Are there demurring wits, who dare dispute
This revolution in the world inspired?
Ye train Pierian! to the lunar sphere,
In silent hour, address your ardent call
For aid immortal; less her brother's right.
She, with the spheres harmonious, nightly leads
The mazy dance, and hears their matchless strain;
A strain for gods, denied to mortal ear.
Trausmit it heard, thou silver queen of Heaven!
What title, or what name, endears thee most?
Cynthia Cyllene! Phoebe !-or dost hear
With higher gust, fair Pd of the skies?
Is that the soft enchantment calls thee down,
More powerful than of old Circean charm?
Come: but from heavenly banquets with thee bring
The soul of song, and whisper in mine ear
The theft divine; or in propitious dreams
(For dreams are thine) transfuse it through the breast Of thy first votary-but not thy last;
If, like thy namesake, thou art ever kind.
And kind thou wilt be; kind on such a theme; A theme so like thee, a quite lunar theme,
Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair!
A theme that rose all pale, and told my soul
Twas night; on her fond hopes perpetual night;
A night which struck a damp, a deadlier damp
Than that which smote me from Philander's tomb.
Narcissa follows ere his tomb be closed.
Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;
They love a train, they tread each other's heel :
Her death invades his mournful right, and claims
The grief that started from my lids for him;
Seizes the faithless, alienated tear;
Or shares it ere it falls. So frequent death,
Sorrow he more than causes, he confounds;
For human sighs his rival strokes contend,
And make distress distraction. O Philander!
What was thy fate? A double fate to me;
Portent, and pain! a menace, and a blow!
Like the black raven hovering o'er my peace;
Not less a bird of omen than of prey.
It called Narcissa long before her hour;
It called her tender soul by break of bliss,
From the first blossom, from the buds of joy;
Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves
In this inclement clime of human life.
Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful! and soft as young!
And gay as soft! and innocent as gay!
And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For fortune fond had built her nest on high.
Like birds quite exquisite of note and plume,
Transfixed by fate (who loves a lofty mark),
How from the summit of the grove she fell,
And left it unharmonious! all its charms
Extinguished in the wonders of her song!
Her song still vibrates in my ravished ear,
Still melting there, and with voluptuous pain
(Oh, to forget her!) thrilling through my heart!
Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy! this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of paradise,
As yet unforfeit! in one blaze we bind,
Kneel, and present it to the skies; as all
We guess of Heaven: and these were all her own.
And she was mine; and I was !-was?-most blest-
Gay title of the deepest misery!
As bodies grow more ponderous, robbed of life:
Good lost weighs more in grief than gained in joy.
Like blossomed trees, o'erturned by vernal storm
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay :
And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;
Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.
And will not the severe excuse a sigh?
Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep !
Our tears indulged indeed deserve our shame.
Ye that e'er lost an angel! pity me.
Soon as the lustre languished in her eye,
Dawning a dimmer day on human sight;
And on her cheek the residence of spring,
Pale omen sat; and scattered fears around
On all that saw (and who would cease to gaze,
That once had seen?) With haste, parental histe
I flew, I snatched her from the rigid north,
Her native bed, on which bleak Boreas blew,
And bore her nearer to the sun; the sun
(As if the sun could envy) checked his beam,
Denied his wonted succour; nor with more
Regret beheld her drooping, than the bells
Of lilies; fairest lilies, not so fair!
Queen lilies! and ye painted populace!
Who dwell in fields, and lead ambrosial lives;
In morn and evening dew your beauties bathe,
And drink the sun; which gives your cheeks to glov
And out-blush (mine excepted) every fair;
You gladlier grew, ambitious of her hand,
Which often cropped your odours, incense meet
To thought so pure! Ye lovely fugitives!
Coeval race with man! for man you smile;
Why not smile at him too? You share indeed
His sudden pass! but not his constant pain.
So man is made, nought ministers delight,
But what his glowing passions can engage:
And glowing passions, bent on aught below,
Must, soon or late, with anguish turn the scale ;
And anguish, after rapture, how severe !
Rapture? Bold man! who tempts the wrath divine,
By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste;
While here, presuming on the rights of Heaven.
For transport dost thou call on every hour,
Lorenzo? At thy friend's expense be wise:
Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed at best; but oft a spear:
On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.
Turn, hopeless thought! turn from her.-Thought repelled Resenting rallies, and wakes every woe.
Snatched ere thy prime! and in thy bridal hour!
And when kind Fortune with thy lover smiled!
And when high-flavoured thy fresh opening joys!
And when blind man pronounced thy bliss complete!
And on a foreign shore! where strangers wept !
Strangers to thee; and, more surprising still,
Strangers to kindness, wept: their eyes let fall
Inhuman tears: strange tears! that trickled down
From marble hearts! obdurate tenderness !
A tenderness that called them more severe;
In spite of nature's soft persuasion steeled ;
While nature melted, superstition raved;
That mourned the dead, and this denied a grave.
Their sighs incensed; sighs foreign to the will!
Their will the tiger sucked, outraged the storm.
For oh! the curs'd ungodliness of zeal!
While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed
In blind infallibility's embrace,
The sainted spirit petrified the breast;
Denied the charity of dust, to spread
O'er dust! a charity which dogs enjoy.
What could I do? what succour? what resource?
With pious sacrilege a grave I stole ;
With impious piety that grave I wronged;
Short in my duty; coward in my grief!
More like a murderer than friend, I crept,
With soft suspended step, and muffled deep
In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.
I whispered what should echo through their realms;
Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies.
Presumptuous fear! how durst I dread her foes,
While nature's loudest dictates I obeyed?
Pardon necessity, blest shade! of grief
And indignation rival bursts I poured:
Half execration mingled with my prayer;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored;
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust;
Stamped the cursed soil; and, with humanity
Denied Narcissa, wished them all a grave.
Glows my resentment into guilt? What guilt
Can equal violations of the dead?
The dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust
Of this Heaven-laboured form, erect, divine!
This Heaven-assumed majestic robe of earth
He deigned to wear, who hung the vast expanse
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold.
When every passion sleeps that can offend;
When strikes us every motive that can melt;
When man can wreak his rancour uncontrolled,
That strongest curb on insult and ill will;
Then, spleen to dust? the dust of innocence ?
An angel's dust?—This Lucifer transcends :
When he contended for the patriarch's bones,
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride;
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall.
Far less than this is shocking in a race
Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love:
And uncreated, but for love divine;
And, but for love divine, this moment, lost,
By fate resorbed, and sunk in endless night.
Man hard of heart to man! of horrid things,
Most horrid! 'mid stupendous, highly strange !
Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs;
Pride brandishes the favours he confers,
And contumelious his humanity :
What then his vengeance? Hear it not, ye stars!
And thou, pale moon! turn paler at the sound;
Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.
A previous blast foretells the rising storm,
O'erwhelming turrets threaten ere they fall;
Volcanoes bellow ere they disembogue;
Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour;
And smoke betrays the wide consuming fire:
Ruin from man is most concealed when near,
And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow.
Is this the flight of fancy? Would it were!
Heaven's Sovereign saves all beings but himself,
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
Fired is the muse? and let the muse be fired:
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks he feels,
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends;
Shame to mankind! Philander had his foes;
He felt the truths I sing, and I him.
But he, nor I, feel more: past ills, Narcissa!
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart!
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs;
Pangs numerous, as the numerous ills that swarmed
O'er thy distinguished fate, and clustering there
Thick as the locusts on the land of Nile,
Made death more deadly, and more dark the grave,
Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale),
How was each circumstance with aspics armed?
An aspic each! and all, a Hydra woe:
What strong Herculean virtue could suffice?—
Or is it virtue to be conquered here?
This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews:
And each tear mourns its own distinct distress;
And each distress, distinctly mourned, demands
Of grief still more, as heightened by the whole.
A grief like this, proprietors excludes:
Not friends alone such obsequies deplore;
They make mankind the mourner; carry sighs
Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way;
And turn the gayest thought of gayest age,
Down the right channel through the vale of death.
The vale of death! that hushed Cimmerian vale,
Where darkness, brooding o'er unfinished fates,
With raven wing incumbent, waits the day
(Dread day!) that interdicts all future change!
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