TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.
1. MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed; Yes, I was firm. Thus wert not thou.
My baffled looks did fear yet dread
To meet thy looks-I could not know How anxiously they sought to shine With soothing pity upon mine.
2. To sit and curb the soul's mute rage Which preys upon itself alone; To curse the life which is the cage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Hiding from many a careless eye The scorned load of agony :-
3. Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, The.... thou alone shouldst be. To spend years thus, and be rewarded As thou, sweet love, requitedst me When none were near-Oh! I did wake From torture for that moment's sake!
4. Upon my heart thy accents sweet Of peace and pity fell, like dew On flowers half dead; thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw Their soft persuasion on my brain, Charming away its dream of pain.
5. We are not happy, sweet! our state
Is strange and full of doubt and fear; More need of words that ills abate;-
Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thee and me.
6. Gentle and good and mild thou art; Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart Away from me, or stoop to wear The mask of scorn, although it be To hide the love thou feel'st for me.
THERE was a youth who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Which burned within him, withering up his prime. And goading him like fiends from land to land. Not his the load of any secret crime,
For nought of ill his heart could understand, But pity and wild sorrow for the same; Not his the thirst for glory or command
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame; Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame, Had left within his soul the dark unrest: `. Nor what religion fables of the grave Feared he, Philosophy's accepted guest.
For none than he a purer heart could have, Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave. What sorrow, strange and shadowy and unknown, Sent him a hopeless wanderer through mankind? If with a human sadness he did groan,
He had a gentle yet aspiring mind, Just, innocent, with varied learning fed ;- And such a glorious consolation find
In others' joy when all their own is dead. He loved and laboured for his kind in grief;
And yet, unlike all others, it is said
That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,
His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower Is love and justice; clothed in which he sate Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
Pitying the tumult of their dark estate. Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise, His riches and his cares he did divide.
Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise;
What he dared do or think, though men might start, He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes.
Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, And to his many friends-all loved him well- Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart, If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell; If not, he smiled or wept.-And his weak foes He neither spurned nor hated: though with fell And mortal hate their thousand voices rose, They passed like aimless arrows from his ear. Nor did his heart or mind its portal close. To those or them, or any whom life's sphere May comprehend within its wide array.- What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?
He knew not. Though his life day after day Was failing like an unreplenished stream; Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam Piercing the chasms of ever-rising clouds, Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods, And through his sleep and o'er each waking hour Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
Were driven within him by some secret power Which bade them blaze and live and roll afar (Like lights and sounds from haunted tower to tower
O'er castled mountains borne when tempest's war Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear); Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends Which wake and feed on everliving woe; What was this grief which ne'er in other minds
A mirror found? He knew not-none could know. But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show
He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look; Or spoke in words from which none ever learned The cause of his disquietude; or shook With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale: So that his friends soon rarely undertook To stir his secret pain without avail ;-
For all who knew and loved him then perceived That there was drawn an adamantine veil
Between his heart and mind,—both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad; others believed That memories of an antenatal life
Made this where now he dwelt a penal hell; And others said that such mysterious grief
From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell On souls like his, which owned no higher law Than love,-love calm, steadfast, invincible By mortal fear or supernatural awe.
And others: ""Tis the shadow of a dream Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,
But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream Through shattered mines and caverns underground, Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam Of joy may rise but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure. Soon its exhausted waters will have found
A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, O Athanase! In one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure." So spake they, idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy: This was their consolation. Such debate
Men held with one another. Nor did he, Like one who labours with a human woe, Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit. And none but those who loved him best could know—
That which he knew not-how it galled and bit.
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold; For, like an eyeless nightmare, grief did sit
Upon his being,-a snake which fold by fold Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend Which clenched him, if he stirred, with deadlier hold. And so his grief remained-let it remain-untold.
PRINCE ATHANASE had one beloved friend; An old old man, with hair of silver white,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang.and blend With his wise words, and eyes whose arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight
Had spared in Greece-the blight that cramps and blinds,— And in his olive bower at Enoe
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds
A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates
Many a drear month in a great ship-so he
With soul-sustaining songs and sweet debates Of ancient lore there fed his lonely being. "The mind becomes that which it contemplates:" And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men. And, when he heard the crash of nations fleeing A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, O sacred Hellas! many weary years He wandered-till the path of Laian's glen Was grass-grown, and the unremembered tears Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief, Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears. And, as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw, beneath the chesnuts far beneath,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight.
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall, And his wan visage and his withered mien, Yet calm and gentle and majestical.
And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed In patient silence.
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