XI. CALM is the morn, without a sound, Calm and deep peace on this high wold, That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and still light on yon great plain, That sweeps, with all its autumn bowers, To mingle with the bounding main : Calm and deep peace in this wide air, If any calm, a calm despair: Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, And waves that sway themselves in rest, And dead calm in that noble breast Which heaves but with the heaving deep. XII. Lo! as a dove when up she springs, To bear through Heaven a tale of woe, Some dolorous message knit below The wild pulsation of her wings; Like her I go I cannot stay; I leave this mortal ark behind, O'er ocean mirrors rounded large, And reach the glow of southern skies, And linger weeping on the marge, And saying, "Comes he thus, my friend? And forward dart again, and play XIII. TEARS of the widower, when he sees Her place is empty, fall like these, Which weep a loss forever new, A void where heart on heart reposed; Silence, till I be silent too. Which weep the comrade of my choice, A spirit, not a breathing voice. Come, Time, and teach me many years For now so strange do these things seem, Mine eyes have leisure for their tears; My fancies time to rise on wing, And glance about the approaching sails, As though they brought but merchants' bales, And not the burthen that they bring. XIV. If one should bring me this report, And standing, muffled round with woe, And if along with these should come And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had drooped of late, And I perceive no touch of change, XV. TO-NIGHT the winds begin to rise And roar from yonder dropping day; The rooks are blown about the skies; The forest cracked, the waters curled, And wildly dashed on tower and tree And but for fancies, which aver That all thy motions gently pass That makes the barren branches loud; The wild unrest that lives in woe That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire. XVI. WHAT words are these have fallen from me? Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or, sorrow such a changeling be? Or doth she only seem to take The touch of change in calm or storm; But knows no more of transient form In her deep self, than some dead lake Hung in the shadow of a heaven? And staggers blindly ere she sink? And stunned me from my power to think, And all my knowledge of myself; And made me that delirious man XVII. THOU Comest, much wept for; such a breeze For I in spirit saw thee move Through circles of the bounding sky; Henceforth, wherever thou mayst roam, So may whatever tempest mars Mid-ocean spare thee, sacred bark ; And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars. So kind an office hath been done, Such precious relics brought by thee; XVIII. 'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand Where he in English earth is laid, And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land. |