V O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power. Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, A new Earth and new Heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud 70 Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light. VI There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress, And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping THE PICTURE OR THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION THROUGH weeds and thorns, and matted underwood I force my way; now climb, and now de scend O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot Crushing the purple whorts; 1 while oft unseen, Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves, The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil, I know not, ask not whither! A new joy, Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust, And gladsome as the first-born of the spring, Beckons me on, or follows from behind, 10 Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quelled, I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak, Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake High o'er me, murmuring like a distant Soar up, and form a melancholy vault sea. Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse ; Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul, And of this busy human heart aweary, Worships the spirit of unconscious life 20 In tree or wild-flower.-Gentle lunatic! If so he might not wholly cease to be, He would far rather not be that he is; But would be something that he knows not of, In winds or waters, or among the rocks! 1 Vaccinium Myrtillus, known by the different names of Whorts, Whortle-berries, Bilberries; and in the North of England, Blea-berries and Bloom-berries. [Note by S. T. C. 1802.] But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion here ! No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound; Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk Where Love dare loiter ! If in sullen Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that He should stray hither, the low stumps Was never Love's accomplice, never And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' Eye-poisons for some love-distempered E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed, But not unheeded gazed for see, ah! see, The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks Not to thee, III O wild and desert stream! belongs this tale : Gloomy and dark art thou-the crowded firs Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed, The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow, Making thee doleful as a cavern-well : Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove Save when the shy king-fishers build their bells : And suddenly, as one that toys with On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, nest wild stream! This be my chosen haunt-emanci pate From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone, And each mis-shapes the other. Stay I rise and trace its devious course. O And soon the fragments dim of lovely Dart off asunder with an angry sound, forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more The pool becomes a mirror; and behold Each wildflower on the marge inverted there, And there the half-uprooted tree-but where, O where the virgin's snowy arm, that leaned On its bare branch? He turns, and she is gone! Homeward she steals through many a woodland maze Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth! And hark, the noise of a near waterfall! Go, day by day, and waste thy manly I pass forth into light-I find myself Behold'st her shadow still abiding there, The landscape on my sight! Two crescent The Naiad of the mirror! hills 140 Fold in behind each other, and so make A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem, More beautiful than whom Alcæus wooed, With brook and bridge, and grey stone The Lesbian woman of immortal song! cottages, O child of genius! stately, beautiful, Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my And full of love to all, save only me, ati And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart, feet, The whortle-berries are bedewed with Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall. The smoke from cottage-chimneys, tinged The night draws on-such ways are with light, 149 Rises in columns; from this house alone, hard to hit And fit it is I should restore this sketch, 180 Dropt unawares no doubt. Why should I yearn That cottage, with its slanting chimney- To keep the relique? 'twill but idly feed the sun, Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful |
