POEMS.

ELFIN LAND:
AND
OTHER POEMS.

BY
BENJAMIN WEST BALL.

BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
MDCCCLI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
JAMES MUNROE & COMPANY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Thurston, Torry & Emerson, Printers.

TO
D. S. H.,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
AS A TESTIMONIAL
OF AFFECTIONATE REGARD.

TO D. S. H.

I.

Ere thou wert seen, and ere I knew

Such loveliness on earth unfolded,

A morning dream revealed to view

That shape in perfect beauty moulded;

Around thy graceful waist, methought,

The fabled Zone of Love was glowing,

The cestus with enchantment fraught,

A charm, that vanquished all, bestowing—

The phantom fled, but evermore

Until thyself I might discover,

Its memory in my heart I bore,

Of shade impalpable the lover.

II.

When Eastward thou wert long sojourning,

From me divided and afar,

Though sunset in the West was burning,

I turned where shone my being’s star;

Beyond the woods, the village spires,

Adown the broadly flowing river

My glances winged by wild desires

To pierce the distance, would endeavor;

Each bickering train which eastward rolled,

Each trailing cloud that thither flew,

As long as eyesight could behold,

I followed, musing still of you;—

III.

Of you, the magnet of my heart,

The vision of my nightly slumber,

Of all my thoughts the central part,

And source of fancies without number.

The stars are not more dear to Night,

To scented winds the bursting blossom,

To Day its floods of golden light,

Than thou art, gentlest, to my bosom.

The beauty of the North is thine,

Its auburn tress, its eye of azure,

Its rose-hued cheek, whose freshness Time

Leaves blooming long without erasure.

IV.

Incarnate in thy graceful form,

I see that sweet Göthéan vision,

That dream of beauty soft and warm,

Which folded Faust in joy elysian.

Though clouds disturb the blue serene,

And storm and darkness round me lower,

Thy presence is a sunny gleam,

A bow of promise ’mid the shower;

Though from me fortune fall away,

By Hope itself disowned, forsaken,

Whilst thou art spared by pale decay,

I rest in peace, secure, unshaken.

CONTENTS.

POEMS.

PROËM.

A gleaner in the fields of song,

I follow where the great have gone,

The wise, the beautiful, the strong,

An humble garland weaving.

Their harmonies enchant mine ears,

Unseal the fontal depths of tears,

And lift my spirit to the spheres,

Each sense of pain bereaving.

Muse of the West! upon thy shrine

I lay this votive wreath of mine,

Though many an offering there may shine,

With brighter blossoms gleaming.

For, even now, though wild and young,

By cunning hands thy harp is strung,

And lips, with bees in clusters hung,

Thy fame are fast redeeming.

But late thy heart was pierced with pain,

Still o’er thee flows of raven grain

A vestment dun; thine eyelids rain

Their tears o’er one departed.

The harp of Israfel no more

Is heard below—some brighter shore

Receives him, and his lost Lenore

He clasps, the fiery hearted.

His were the wingéd words, that bear

Imaginations rich and rare,

As pinions’ seeds through all the air,

And sow them in each bosom.

Thoughts’ shadows lowered about his eye;

His forehead was a temple high,

Fit haunt for Dædal Poesy;

For flowers divine to blossom.

His spirit stalked in joyless gloom

Through autumn wolds, where never bloom

Was seen. Above, a sullen moon

Through flying rack was beaming;

The sighing winds their dirges blew,

The withered leaves in eddies flew,

Upon his brow the nightshade’s dew

In venomed drops was gleaming.

Sad heart, thy fiery throbs are o’er!

Thy soul has gained the eternal shore!

There mayst thou find the loved of yore,

Who went before thee thither!

Reknit to them by cords, which ne’er

The Parcæ dark again can shear,

Mayst thou enjoy ambrosial cheer

In regions of unclouded weather!

DISENCHANTMENT.

I.

Glides the shadow round the dial,

Youth and Hope have almost flown,

Vainly fade my days like water,

On the sandy desert thrown.

On the Tree of Life the verdure,

Leaf by leaf decaying, dies;

And a low prophetic murmur

In its waving branches sighs.

At its roots the Nornas sitting,

Chant, by turns, their solemn hymn;

In its shadow dreams are brooding,

As at old Dodona dim.

II.

Once like trodden vintage foaming,

Through my veins the life-blood rolled,

Fiery visions flashed around me,

Such as blinded prophets old.

Cold and dark the golden mountains,

Which of yore environed me;

From the star its sheen has faded,

From the blossom and the tree.

Gazing westward in the sunset,

I no longer can descry

Tents of Paladins, in clusters,

Pitched against the darkening sky.

III.

They have furled their gorgeous banners,

And their oriflammes uprolled,

They have struck their far pavilions,

Rich with purple and with gold.

In the galley of Ulysses

I no more at random sail,

On each tenth returning sunrise

Sure some stranger port to hail.

Now the regions of the Lotos

O’er the waters disappear;

Now the meadows of the Sirens

Starred with blossoms glitter near;

IV.

Now the golden ether leaving,

We to lampless glooms descend,

Where the Shadows of the Weary

Through the umbered spaces wend.

With “the blind old man” I wandered

On the soft Ionian shore,

Danced at harvest feasts in autumn,

While the oak tree arched me o’er;

Through the streets of Asian cities,

Lit with nuptial tapers trod,

Where in star-light flamed the altars

Of the yellow-buskined god.

V.

All the dark-eyed tribes of Hellas

I could visit, one by one,

In their agorai I gossipped

With the idlers in the sun;

At the school of old Crotona

Heard the Samian recite,

How the eternal Monad flowers

Into blossoms infinite;

How from shape to shape forever

Silent, serpent-like it glides,

On a starred, unresting circle,

In its pilgrimages rides.

VI.

At the city of Glaucopis,

’Neath the olive trees I lay,

While the bird of Itys warbled

Through the livelong summer day,

And at moon-rise, decked with garlands,

Lay reclined in that alcove,

Where harangued the Man-Silenus

On the genesis of Love.

Fast the wine and wit were flowing,

Mid the banquet’s joyous din;

At the door, the son of Clinias,

Crowned and drunken, gazing in.

VII.

Or at morning, in some stoa,

Heard the Sage, as in his toils

He immeshed the wordy sophists

Come to dazzle from the Isles.

In the house of Thespis sitting,

On upæthric seats of stone,

Saw the tribes of birds collected

In a kingdom of their own;

In a quaint ethereal city,

Full of many-tinted plumes,

Which in mid-air intercepted

Jove’s refection, altar-fumes.

VIII.

But the portals of Athenæ

I no longer wander through,

To her Owl and to her Bema

I have bid a long adieu.

Cities thronged with breathing beings—

Not the pavements of the dead—

For the future I must frequent,

For the future I must tread.

Though their streets have not the glory,

Which the towns of Hellas wore,

In them I must toil and battle,

Till the fret and din are o’er.

IX.

Till the clamor of the Present

In the eternal silence dies,

And my frame, but dust and ruin,

In its final chamber lies,

With the vanished and forgotten,

With the lovely and the brave,

Who have sunken through the Ages,

To the quiet of the grave.

There the eye of love shall vainly

Through the red earth seek to pry,

There the grass and night winds only

True to sorrow ever sigh.

Elfin Land
PART I.

Into the fabled Fairy land

My portals open wide,

Where life is all a holiday

From morn till eventide.

A soft and dreamy atmosphere

Above its plains is hung,

A summer noon and twilight fused

And mingled into one.

From all its bounds the turbaned cock

Is banished far away,

As erst he was from Sybaris,

Where drowsy people lay,

Indulging drowsy phantasies,

Long after break of day.

The cricket’s wiry song by night,

By day the humblebee’s,

The loudest noises are, that float

Upon the Elfin breeze.

The Welsh king, Arthur, and his court

Have dwelt long ages here—

Sir Launcelot still whispers sly

To faithless Guenevere.

Here Jacques and his gay compeers

In forests still carouse,

Pavilioned by a network green

Of melancholy boughs.

Removed beyond the Sabbath chime,

Far in the shady wold,

Unvexed by care they fleet the time,

As in the Age of Gold.

Still in the limpid runnels’ waves,

Which round their lodges wind,

And in the stones and in the trees,

Monitions deep they find.

That merry knot is also here

Of fabling Florentines,

Who revelled while the Avenger hung

O’er Arno and its vines.

The love of story, dance, and song,

They had in Tuscan land,

Still warms their breasts, though ferried o’er

Unto the Fairy strand.

Here too La Mancha’s cavalier

Reposes ’neath his bays,

Who roamed the wilds of tawny Spain

In quest of knightly praise.

O’er river, vale, and mountain lone,

He ne’er shall wander more,—

His steed is in the self-same stall

With Roland’s Brigliadore.

Stretched on the banks of Elfin streams,

With antique knights he lies,

And talks through all the livelong day,

Of many an old emprize.

Here sages dwell, whose names adorn

The mediæval time,

In lonely turrets, whence at night

Their ruddy tapers shine.

Aquinas, dialectic sage,

Endowed with subtlest wits—

Beneath a cobweb canopy

The saintly sophist sits.

And he, who in his wizard glass

To Surry’s eye displayed

His gentle lady o’er the sea,

With lilied pallor spread.

Brave Surry, knightly bard, who cull’d,

Where Tuscan summers shine,

Ambrosial flowers of heavenly song

To deck a colder clime.

Those cloistral lovers far renowned,

The sage and nun, are here,

Whose quenchless passion yielded not

To penances austere.

In vain the serge, the flinty bed,

The eremital glooms—

The boy-god flashed his fire-tipt reed

Athwart the censer’s fumes.

Ficino, mighty Platonist,

Hath here his dwelling-place;

No sphingal countenance more calm

Than his majestic face.

Among the starry flock was he,

Whose holy toils unsealed

The fountains of Hellenic lore,

And all their wealth revealed.

From Plato’s thoughts their Attic dress,

To charm an era rude,

He tore away, and in its stead

A meaner garb indued.

But unto eyes, o’er which no film

By ignorance is thrown,

His dreams those garments only grace

In which at birth they shone.

Of bright Cadmean rune he wove

A rich asbestic web;

Sometimes its woof like sunset glows,

Of gold and purple thread;

Sometimes with rosy spring it vies—

Then flowers inwoven shine;

Sometimes diaphonous as oil;

Than Coan gauze more fine.

And thus each imaged thought, that sprung

From his sciential brain,

A fluent drapery received,

To make its beauty plain.

Here pilgrims dwell, strange sights that saw

On many a foreign strand—

He born beneath the Doge’s rule,

Beloved of Kubla Khan,

And Mandeville, who journeyed far

Against the Eastern wind,

The sacred Capital to see,

And miracles of Ind.

None ever wore the sandal shoon

More marvellous than he;

For then the world had far away

Its realms of mystery.

The giant Roc then winnowed swift

The morning-cradled breeze,

And happy islands glittered o’er

The Occidental seas.

Upon Saint Michael’s happy morn

How throbbed his glowing brow,

When towards the ancient Orient

His galley turned her prow!

Already in the wind he smells

Hyblæan odors blown

From isles invisible, afar

Amid the Indian foam.

The turbaned millions, dusky, wild,

Already meet his eyes—

The domes of Islam crescent-crowned

In long perspective rise,

Mid waving palms, o’er level sands,

With skyey verges low,

Where from his eastern tent, the Sun

Spreads wide a saffron glow.

The golden thrones of Asian kings,

Their empery supreme,

Their capitals Titanic, laved

By many a famous stream;

The cities, desolate and lone,

Where desert monsters prowl,

Where spiders film the royal throne,

And shrieks the nightly owl;

Enormous Caf, the mountain wall

Of ancient Colchian land—

Where dragon-drawn Medea gave

The Argonaut her hand;

Nysæan Meros, mid whose rifts

The viny God was born,—

The empyreal sky its summit cleaves,

In shape a golden horn;

And o’er its top reclining swim

In zones of windless air

The slumbrous deities of Ind,

Removed from earthly care;

The Ammonian phalanx round its base

In festal garments ranged,

Their brows with ivied chaplets bound,

Their swords to thyrsi changed;

The ravenous gryphons, brooding o’er

The desert’s gleaming gold,

The auroral Chersonese, that shines

With treasures manifold;

The groves of odorous scent, that line

The green Sabæan shore,

Whence wrapped in cerements dipt in balm,

His sire the Phœnix bore;

The Persian valley famed in song,

Where gentle Hafiz strayed;

The Indian Hollow far beyond,

By mountains tall embayed;

Whose virgins boast a richer bloom

Than peaches of Cabool,

And nymph-like fall their marble urns

With fountain-waters cool;

Whose looms produce a gorgeous web,

That with the rainbow vies,

So delicate its downy woof,

So deep its royal dyes.

The motionless Yogee, who stands

In wildernesses lone,

His sleepless eye forever fixed

On Brahma’s airy throne,

In blue infinity to melt

His troubled soul away,

And of the sunny Monad form

A portion and a ray.

The tales, Milesian-like, that charm

The vacant ear at eve,

Wherein the Orient fabulists

Their marvels interweave;

Of wondrous realms beyond the reach

Of mortal footstep far,

Whose maidens, winged with pinions light,

Outstrip the falling star;

Whose forests bear a vocal fruit,

With human tongues endowed,

That mid the autumn-laden boughs

Are querulous and loud;

Of sparry caves in musky hills,

Which sevenfold seas surround,

Where ancient kings enchanted lie,

In dreamless slumber bound;

Of potent gems, whose hidden might

Can thwart malignant star;

Of Eblis’ pavement saffron-strewn

’Neath fallen Istakhar;

All these in long succession rose,

Illumed by fancy’s ray,

As swiftly towards the Morning lands

His galley ploughed her way.

Elfin Land.
PART II.

But far the greatest miracle

Which Elfin land can show,

A hostel is, like that which stood

In Eastcheap long ago.

Before the entrance, in the blast

There swings a tusky sign;

And when at night the Elfin moon

And constellations shine,

A ruddy glow illumes the panes,

And looking through you see,

With merry faces seated round,

A famous company.

Prince Hal the royal wassailer,

And that great fount of fun,

Diana’s portly forester,

The merry knight Sir John,

With all their losel servitors,

Mirth-shaken cheek by cheek;

Cambysean Pistol, Peto, Poins,

And Bardolph’s fiery beak.

A grove there is in Elfin land,

Where closely intertwine

The Grecian myrtle’s branches light

With Gothic oak sublime.

Beneath its canopy of shade,

Their temples bound with bays,

Are grouped the minstrels, that adorn

The mediæval days.

The laurelled Ghibelline, who saw

The Stygian abyss,

The fiery mosques and walls, that gird

The capital of Dis;

The realms of penance, and the rings

Of constellated light,

Whose luminous pavilions hold

The righteous robed in white;

Uranian groves and spheral vales,

Saturnian academes,

Where sainted theologues abide,

Discoursing mystic themes;

The Paradisal stream, that winds

Through Heaven’s unfading bowers,

And on its banks the beauteous maid,

Who culled celestial flowers.

Him next the sweet Vauclusian swan,

Love’s Laureate, appears,

Who bathed his mistress’ widowed urn

With Heliconian tears;

Certaldo’s storied sage,—a bard,

Though round his genius rare

The golden manacles of verse

He did not choose to wear.

Those rosy morns, that usher in

Each festal-gladdened day,

His prose depicts in hues as bright

As could the poet’s lay.

His ultramontane brother, born

In Albion’s shady isle;

Dan Chaucer, of his tameless race

Apollo’s eldest child;

The Medecean banqueter,

Whose Fescennines unfold

The deeds of heathen Anakim

Restored to Peter’s fold;

Ferrara’s Melesigenes,

Who o’er a wide domain

Of haunted forests, mounts, and seas,

Exerts his magic reign;

A glowing Mœnad, with her locks

Dishevelled in the wind,

His fancy wantons far and near,

From Thule unto Ind;

Now from her griffin steed alights

Alcina’s palace near,

Now in the Patmian prophet’s car

Ascends the lunar sphere;

Or with Rinaldo wanders through

The Caledonian wood,

Amid whose shades and coverts green

Heroic trophies glowed;

Or paints the mighty Paladin

Transformed to monster gross,

Whose mistress drank in Ardennes lone

The lymph of Anterōs.

Next hapless Tasso, pale and wan,

Released from dungeon grates;

The sacred legions of the cross

His genius celebrates;

Armida’s mountain paradise

Amid the western seas;

Her dragon-yoke, whose nimble hooves

Could run upon the breeze.

The sombre forest, where encamped

Dark Eblis’ minions lay,

With shapes evoked from Orcus’ gloom

To fright his foes away.

Lo, marble pontifices spring,

To arch illusive streams,

And swans and nightingales rehearse

Their moist melodious threnes!

The centuried trees are cloven wide,

And forth from every plant

A maiden steps, whose tears might melt

A heart of adamant.

A sudden darkness veils the sky,

And fortresses of fire,

With ruddy towers of pillared flame,

Above the woods aspire.

Transfigured in the morning beam.

On Zion’s holy height

Rinaldo puts the dusky swarms

Of Erebus to flight.

Nor absent from the shining throng

That dainty bard, I ween,

Who hung the maiden empress throne

With garlands ever green.

The Elfin Court’s Demodocus,

His lay he carols light,

His fancy’s unexhausted urns

Still brimmed with waters bright.

Far distant from the minstrel’s bower,

Another group is seen,

Who ruled of yore a sylvan race

In western forests green.

Manhattan’s sleepy potentates—

Of ox-like girth are they;

In ages gone the Hudson rolled

Beneath their gentle sway.

A hazy nimbus sleeps about

Their smooth unwrinkled brows;

Like ripened melon through its folds

Each mottled visage glows.

The ponderous Twiller dozes still,

Benignant, voiceless, deep;

His council-board, rotund and grave,

Unbroken silence keep.

And still Van Winkle snores and dreams

Upon the mountain side,

Unwakened by the ebbless flow

Of time’s unwearied tide.

And Sleepy Hollow’s pedagogue,

In smoky autumn air,

Lies musing of his faithless love,

His Katarina fair.

Those knights are here who wandered through

The forests of the south,

And vast savannas green and lone,

To find the fount of youth.

The towers and fanes they likewise sought

Of Eldorado bright;

Amid magnolian woods and palms

Uprose its turrets light.

Glittered its roofs with golden tiles—

All things of gold were wrought;

Its burghers wore a jaundiced hue

From yellow pavements caught.

But who shall number all that haunt

King Oberon’s domains?

His lieges are the airy shapes

Conceived in poet’s brains.

Their limbs are cast in fairer mould

Than those of common earth;

Their ladies are more beautiful

Than dames of mortal birth.

This work-day world perchance will show,

In epochs yet to be,

As goodly men and lovely maids

As those in Faërie.

INSCRIPTION.

Lithe ivy, let thy gliding foliage shade

This urn, where Shelley’s sacred dust is laid,

Whose fire was quenched beneath the angry sea,

That laves the sunny shores of Italy!

The Elements did moan around his bier.

In him they lost their best interpreter—

For his most subtile, sympathizing frame

Was as a sweet melodious instrument,

Through all whose pores and million channels went

The Universe into his heart and brain

In musical influxes, that ebbed amain

From out his lips, in verse of power to tame

A tiger’s heart, or suage an angel’s pain.

Through his well-jointed reeds the circling gyres

Of planets poured in song their soft desires,

And glad ovations, while their vernal dreams

The leaves did whisper, and the clouds and streams

And winds their fluent exultations pour,

With sky-pavilioned ocean’s organ-roar.

THE TEUTONIC MINSTREL’S TOMB.

Far north they say there lies a wizard land,

Which has above it all the changeless year,

A silver-shining, milk-warm atmosphere,

Amid whose windless calm the forests stand

As still as clustered obelisks. A bland

Delight is shed o’er all who enter here;

And by a lonely path their way they steer

Through dreamy hollows, under forests grand

Of larch and fir, round many a placid mere,

O’er silver streams and level barrens drear.

At length they come unto a mossy gate,

And find within a city desolate;

Its streets knee-deep with yellow leaves are strown,

And stiller than the Ephesian Sleeper’s cave.

The watchman’s horn at midnight lies unblown,—

The ivy-muffled bells hang dumb, and save

The noise of summer flies, sound there is none.

Wide open stands the Kaiser’s palace door,

And here and there, upon the dusty floor,

Swords, helms, and spears, and empty wine-cups lie

Between whose golden lips black spiders ply

Their filmy looms in bright security.

Within this city, reared by Elfin hands,

A huge and mouldering mausoleum stands.

These words are graved upon its portals gray,—

The Singer of the Nibelungen Lay.

INVOCATION.

O, placid Death! O, lotos-circled king!

Parent of rest and endless slumbering!

With downy-sandalled pace approach me now,

And bathe my lips and palpitating brow

From flagons full of cool Lethean spray,

For I am weary of the light of day.

Or call to Sleep, thy mild dejected twin,

And when the rosy-fingered Morn shall rise,

Will ye aloft upon the healthy wind,

That blows from out her dewy balconies,

Waft me to those calm isles, whose tribes obey

Sky-fallen Saturn’s ever peaceful sway?

IONIA.

Ye lands and immemorial isles, that bear

The name of Ion, who with besom made

Of laurel-boughs the Sun-god’s temple swept—

Ye golden climes, to poesy and love

Most dear, oases mid the wastes of Eld,

Where, in her lonely retrospective flight,

Bright-haired Mnemosyne delights to pause,

By matchless shapes of loveliness beguiled!

Within your bounds the plastic hand of art

First made the mountain’s marble entrails teem

With images of beauty, lining all

Your sea-washed strand with fair columnar cities,

Built high of glossiest sun-enamelled stone.

Forever o’er your myrtle-shaded vales,

Reclined on summer clouds, did Aphrodite

And golden Eros lean, kindling the air

With passion’s rosy glow. In all the earth

Beside, did visible nature never wear

Robes so resplendent. Through the luminous folds

Of your transparent atmosphere appeared

Unequalled prospects to enchant the eye;

Marmorean cities rising o’er the verge

Of halcyon seas, and promontories crowned

With tombs heroical, or glistening shrines;

And breezy mountains swathed with silver clouds,

The watchtowers blue of broad-eyed Jove; whence he

The limitless low-lying earth surveyed,

The towns of mortal men, their fights and toils.

Oft from your shore the fisherman descried

The smoke of conflagration climbing slow,

In graceful spires, far up the summer air,

From some beleaguered city of the isles;

And white-robed argosies from wealthy Tyre,

Rising and falling on the sparkling waves,

Voyaging with orient merchandise to towns,

Whose turrets glittered in the western beam.

Within your cities, villages, and fields,

Abode a graceful populace, with rites

And manners beautiful as e’er adorned

The imagined landscape of a poet’s dream;

The captive maid, descending with her urn

To shady spring, or cistern scooped from stone,

And flowing with cool water to the brim;

The royal virgin, seated far within

Some gorgeous recess of the kingly dome,

Plying with busy hand her dædal loom;

The wandering minstrel, slumbering fast at noon

By fountain-side or stream, or harping loud

In palace hall, and crowded market-place;

The frequent song of Hymen, saffron-robed,

Resounding through the torchlit street, what time

The star of love, thrice welcome Hesper, rose

Above some immemorial mountain’s brow;

The youthful vintagers, by moonlight pale

Bearing the grapes in osier talarisks,

While on his lute some beardless minstrel played

The Lay of Linus, regal boy, of all

The sons of men most musical, whose bloom

Was scorched and withered by the solar beam;

The rustic temple, hidden deep in groves

And pleasant solitudes, beneath whose dome

The village youth their glowing pæans sang;

And over all the dark blue heavens sublime,

Where from their sky-pavilions brightest shone

The ancient stars and constellations, hymned

By eldest bards—the sworded Titan named

Orion, with the starry sisterhoods,

Hyads and Pleïades in clusters bright.

Cradled amid your kindly influences,

The soft Ionian fancy wantoned wild

In warm voluptuous dreams of loveliness,

Pouring its inspirations in a tongue

Inimitable—a honeyed dialect—

Protean, flexible, all various,

Whose vowelled cadences could flow as smooth

As amber streams, or raise and modulate

Their intonations to the ocean’s deep

Sonorous surges chafing with the strand.

Indelible and burning Rune, its words

Upon the scroll of blind Meonides

Survive, and with their fluent numbers shame

The harsher languages of later days.

Nor in the Carian’s golden chronicle,

Though not arranged in metrical array,

Sound they less sweet. Alas! the glorious tribes,

Over whose chiselled lips they wont to roll

In honeyed song and fiery eloquence,

Have vanished. Hushed the lyres of Ibycus,

Bacchylides, and Sappho[1] starry-eyed,

And that delicious lute the Teian played

Within the halls of King Polycrates,

While round him, bound with leafed and roseal wreaths,

Mid fountain spray and snowy columns, danced

Ionia’s raven-tressed voluptuous girls.

Minstrel of beauty, love, and vinous joy,

Thy festal spirit yet survives on earth,

Clad in a garment of enduring verse,

The asbestine robe of all-immortal song!

[1] Sappho was an Æolian, but she is commonly included in this cluster of poets.

THRENODY.

Though my boyhood scarce is over,

Yet the dark Plutonian tide

Many a friend and loyal lover

From my bosom doth divide.

In the cypress-shaded valleys

Of the solemn nether realm,

They in draughts from Lethe’s chalice,

Every mortal memory whelm.

While above, the pensive willow

Droops forever o’er their urns,

And around their earthy pillow

Glide the many-footed worms.

In the race with me they started

From the East with visions gay,

Vehement and hero-hearted,

Fearless of the coming fray.

Brightly flowed their golden tresses

In the soft auroral wind,

And, like falcons from their jesses,

Upward bore they unconfined.

Bathed their spirits in the splendor

Of the Scian bard sublime,

And of Maro’s lay more tender

Heard the symphony divine.

Felt their hearts with love unbounded

For their country running o’er,

While they read the words that sounded

In the Attic Pnyx of yore.

But the frosts of death descended,

Ere was gone the morning’s dew,

And their joyful being ended,

While the world was fresh and new.

Though the rose and lily wither

On their garden beds awhile,

Soon the gentle vernal weather

Shall restore their former smile.

But for man august and splendid,

Than the angels little lower,

When his dreamlike life is ended,

Blooms his withered frame no more.

Shades of friendship, gliding slowly

On Cocytus’ farther brink,

In this cup of nectar holy

Once again to you I drink.

Ye have crossed the languid river,

Ye have paid the last obole;

Day for you has set forever,

Ye have won the mystic goal!

CONCETTO.

Ammon’s solar fount congeals

In the heat and glare of noon;

But its waters it unseals

’Neath the kisses of the moon.

So the heart is often found

In the smiles of fortune cold;

But afflictions lowering round,

All its charities unfold.

THE LAY OF THE CONDEMNED SPIRIT IN DANTE.

—— nel dolce mondo.—Inferno.

When o’er the threshold of the drear abyss,

Whose portals stern shall never ope for me,

Thy feet regain that upper world of bliss,

These shadowy orbs may never hope to see;

Wilt thou to kindred hearts, that linger yet

By Arno’s stream, my hapless name recall?

For mortals soon the dearest face forget,

When blanched by death it lies beneath the pall.

An exile in the realms of endless pain,

In dreams I see my pleasant earthly home;

Oh, bid them there resyllable my name,

Forgetful of the sins that make me moan!

Sweet world of bliss, forever lost to me,

For your blue heavens and pleasant sun I pine!

For grass, and flower, and stream, and rustling tree,

I mourn forever in the nether clime!

LOVE’S LABOR LOST.

I.

This royal gate, thou quivered sprite,

Shall ope to thee no more!

Mere Hymen’s torch is quenched and cold,

His burning lay is o’er.

The potentate, whose sceptre bright

This goodly realm obeys,

An anchoret in scholar’s weeds

Has vowed to pass his days.

II.

His palace is an academe,

As hushed as summer noon;

No festal sound is heard therein,

Beneath the sun or moon.

The palace-yard with rankest weeds

Is thickly overgrown,

And moss begins to carpet o’er

Each long untrodden stone.

III.

Bees swarm within the rifted walls,

And store their golden dew;

The livelong day with drowsy hum

They cleave the ether blue.

The yellow beams of summer sleep

In silence on the floors;

A muffled tread is sometimes heard

Along the corridors.

IV.

Within a vast and shady room,

With antique volumes piled,

In studious mood the monarch sits,

From passion’s lures exiled.

A skylight in the roof is made,

Through which at night are seen

The ancient stars in clusters bright,

Amid the blue serene.

V.

Around the king three famous lords,

Bound by the self-same vow,

In silence sit, and o’er the scrolls

Of starry Plato bow.

Above them gaze from lofty stands

The high-browed kings of thought,

Their furrowed lineaments divine

In placid marble wrought.

VI.

Beyond the blazoned window lies

A far-stretched prospect grand;

Lakes, emerald lawns, and rustling woods

O’erlooking all the land.

There in the sunshine, to and fro

Slow stalks a solemn wight,

Attended by a tiny page,

A pert and saucy sprite.

VII.

A blue pavilion farther on

Is pitched beneath the trees;

Begirt by tents, whose pennons float

And dally with the breeze.

A bevy fair of dark-eyed girls

Beneath their folds abide;

Unto the vows of yonder lords

What fortune will betide!

VIII.

Sometimes they scour the flowery meads,

On nimble palfreys white;

Sometimes they dance beneath the shade

Through all the balmy night.

Their merry songs, their jocund notes,

Are borne from grove to grove;

Fill up your ears with molten wax,

Ye enemies of love!

IX.

Short was the siege those damsels laid—

The king has gone away,

In lonely woods his lady’s wrath

By penance to allay.

The famous lords, who round him sat,

Each, at his maid’s command,

Attend a year the couch of death,

Ere he can win her hand.

THE PLAGUE IN SUMMER.

Oh golden hours! Elysian day,

Adorned with all things bright and gay;

Green boughs, and winds, and summer beams,

Lovely as Eden’s transient gleams!

But ah! the glorious robes ye wear

Deride the depths of man’s despair,

Since, lurking mid your gladsome rays,

The Plague of Ganges stalks and slays.

For he from Indian vales has come,

Following the circle of the sun;

Through Balk, and over Oxus’ stream,

Gliding as soundless as a dream,

Into the cities of the West,

That quail before the giant pest.

The stir of life in silence dies,

Where’er the mighty vampyre flies;

The voice of mirth is hushed and mute;

The viol shrill, the festal lute;

Alike o’er towns and hamlets brood

Silence, and Death, and Solitude;

While in the shadow of the pall

The busy worms hold carnival!

EUTHANASIA.

In the dawn of her life and the bloom of her spring,

Dark Asrael fanned her to sleep with his wing;

And her form, when the spirit had flown from its shrine,

Lay like marble, that’s moulded by chisel divine.

Oh, why was she garnered in life’s early bloom

To grace with her beauty the clods of the tomb?

There were victims for death, who were weary and old,

And who longed for the slumber unbroken and cold.

But her loveliness lives, for escaped from its urn,

In blossoms and odors her dust shall return—

And the Hesper-like glory, that shone in her eye,

To-night will be beaming a star in the sky.

THE FORGOTTEN.

Many a sword hath nobly wrought,

Many a warrior bravely fought,

Whose name the lyre hath never taught

To swell his nation’s minstrelsy.

In lonely woods their ashes sleep,

Whose dewy leaves above them weep,

And wild birds chant their dirges sweet—

But none e’er list their melody.

Oh, when we pledge our father’s fame,

One flowing goblet let us drain