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cave

       He called; the naiad left her mountain wave

       He dreamed of beauty; lo, amidst his dream,

       Narcissus, mirrored in the breathless stream;

       And night's chaste empress, in her bridal play,

       Laughed through the foliage where Endymion lay;

       And ocean dimpled, as the languid swell

       Kissed the red lip of Cytherea's shell.

      Of power—Bellona swept the crimson field,

       And blue-eyed Pallas shook her Gorgon shield;

       O'er the hushed waves their mightier monarch drove,

       And Ida trembled to the tread of Jove!

      So every grace that plastic language knows

       To nameless poets its perfection owes.

       The rough-hewn words to simplest thoughts confined

       Were cut and polished in their nicer mind;

       Caught on their edge, imagination's ray

       Splits into rainbows, shooting far away;—

       From sense to soul, from soul to sense, it flies,

       And through all nature links analogies;

       He who reads right will rarely look upon

       A better poet than his lexicon!

      There is a race which cold, ungenial skies

       Breed from decay, as fungous growths arise;

       Though dying fast, yet springing fast again,

       Which still usurps an unsubstantial reign,

       With frames too languid for the charms of sense,

       And minds worn down with action too intense;

       Tired of a world whose joys they never knew,

       Themselves deceived, yet thinking all untrue;

       Scarce men without, and less than girls within,

       Sick of their life before its cares begin;—

       The dull disease, which drains their feeble hearts,

       To life's decay some hectic thrill's imparts,

       And lends a force which, like the maniac's power,

       Pays with blank years the frenzy of an hour.

      And this is Genius! Say, does Heaven degrade

       The manly frame, for health, for action made?

       Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains,

       Blanch the right cheek and drain the purple veins,

       To clothe the mind with more extended sway,

       Thus faintly struggling in degenerate clay?

      No! gentle maid, too ready to admire,

       Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre;

       If this be genius, though its bitter springs

       Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings,

       Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds

       But fruitless flowers and dark, envenomed weeds.

      But, if so bright the dear illusion seems,

       Thou wouldst be partner of thy poet's dreams,

       And hang in rapture on his bloodless charms,

       Or die, like Raphael, in his angel arms,

       Go and enjoy thy blessed lot—to share

       In Cowper's gloom or Chatterton's despair!

      Not such were they whom, wandering o'er the waves,

       I looked to meet, but only found their graves;

       If friendship's smile, the better part of fame,

       Should lend my song the only wreath I claim,

       Whose voice would greet me with a sweeter tone,

       Whose living hand more kindly press my own,

       Than theirs—could Memory, as her silent tread

       Prints the pale flowers that blossom o'er the dead,

       Those breathless lips, now closed in peace, restore,

       Or wake those pulses hushed to beat no more?

      Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now,

       The first young laurels on thy pallid brow,

       O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down

       In graceful folds the academic gown,

       On thy curled lip the classic lines that taught

       How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought,

       And triumph glistening in the clear blue eye,

       Too bright to live—but oh, too fair to die!

      And thou, dear friend, whom Science still deplores,

       And Love still mourns, on ocean-severed shores,

       Though the bleak forest twice has bowed with snow

       Since thou wast laid its budding leaves below,

       Thine image mingles with my closing strain,

       As when we wandered by the turbid Seine,

       Both blessed with hopes, which revelled, bright and free,

       On all we longed or all we dreamed to be;

       To thee the amaranth and the cypress fell—

       And I was spared to breathe this last farewell!

      But lived there one in unremembered days,

       Or lives there still, who spurns the poet's bays,

       Whose fingers, dewy from Castalia's springs,

       Rest on the lyre, yet scorn to touch the strings?

       Who shakes the senate with the silver tone

       The groves of Pindus might have sighed to own?

       Have such e'er been? Remember Canning's name!

       Do such still live? Let "Alaric's Dirge" proclaim!

      Immortal Art! where'er the rounded sky

       Bends o'er the cradle where thy children lie,

       Their home is earth, their herald every tongue

       Whose accents echo to the voice that sung.

       One leap of Ocean scatters on the sand

       The quarried bulwarks of the loosening land;

       One thrill of earth dissolves a century's toil

       Strewed like the leaves that vanish in the soil;

       One hill o'erflows, and cities sink below,

       Their marbles splintering in the lava's glow;

       But one sweet tone, scarce whispered to the air,

       From shore to shore the blasts of ages bear;

       One humble name, which oft, perchance, has borne

       The tyrant's mockery and the courtier's scorn,

       Towers o'er the dust of earth's forgotten graves,

       As once, emerging through the waste of waves,

       The rocky Titan, round whose shattered spear

       Coiled the last whirlpool of the drowning sphere!

ADDITIONAL POEMS

       Table of Contents

      1837–1848

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