On Records Of Immature Genius.[432]

Oh! judge in thoughtful tenderness of those Who, richly dower’d for life, are call’d to die Ere the soul’s flame, through storms, hath won repose In truth’s divinest ether, still and high! Let their mind’s riches claim a trustful sigh! Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain, First notes of some yet struggling harmony, By the strong rush, the crowding joy and pain Of many inspirations met, and held From its true sphere,--oh! soon it might have swell’d Majestically forth! Nor doubt that He, Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve Their grand consummate hymn, from passion-gusts made free!

Written after reading some of the earlier poems of the late Mrs Tighe, which had been lent her in manuscript.

ON WATCHING THE FLIGHT OF A SKYLARK.

Upward and upward still!--in pearly light The clouds are steep’d! the vernal spirit sighs With bliss in every wind, and crystal skies Woo thee, O bird! to thy celestial height. Bird, piercing heaven with music! thy free flight Hath meaning for all bosoms; most of all For those wherein the rapture and the might Of poesy lie deep, and strive, and burn, For their high place. O heirs of genius! learn From the sky’s bird your way! No joy may fill Your hearts, no gift of holy strength be won To bless your songs, ye children of the sun! Save by the unswerving flight, upward and upward still!

A THOUGHT OF THE SEA.

My earliest memories to thy shores are bound, Thy solemn shores, thou ever-chanting main! The first rich sunsets, kindling thought profound In my lone being, made thy restless plain As the vast, shining floor of some dread fane, All paved with glass and fire. Yet, O blue deep! Thou that no trace of human hearts dost keep, Never to thee did love with silvery chain Draw my soul’s dream, which through all nature sought What waves deny,--some bower of steadfast bliss, A home to twine with fancy, feeling, thought, As with sweet flowers. But chasten’d hope for this Now turns from earth’s green valleys, as from thee, To that sole changeless world, where “there is no more sea.”

[The sight and sound of the sea were always connected in her mind with melancholy associations; with

“Doubt, and something dark. Of the old sea some reverential fear;”

with images of storm and desolation, of shipwreck and sea-burial: the last, indeed, was so often present to her imagination, and has so frequently been introduced into her poetry, that any one inclined to superstitious presentiments might almost have been disposed to fancy it a foreshadowing of some such dark fate in store either for herself or for some one dear to her. These associations, like those awakened by the wind, were perfectly distinct from any thing of personal timidity, and were the more indefinable, as she had never suffered any calamity at all connected with the sea: none of those she loved had been consigned to its reckless waters, nor had she ever seen it in all its terrors, for the coast on which her early years were passed is by no means a rugged or dangerous one, and is seldom visited by disaster.

“Are all these notes in thee, wild wind! these many notes in thee? Far in our own unfathom’d souls their fount must surely be; Yes! buried, but unsleeping there, thought watches, memory lies, From whose deep urn the tones are poured through all earth’s harmonies.”

In one of her later sonnets on this subject, a chord is struck which may perhaps find an echo in other bosoms:--

----“Yet, O blue deep!” etc.

The same feeling is expressed in one of her letters:--“Did you ever observe how strangely sounds and images of waters--rushing torrents, and troubled ocean-waves, are mingled with the visionary distresses of dreams and delirium? To me there is no more perfect emblem of peace than that expressed by the Scriptural phrase, ‘There shall be no more sea.’”

How forcible is the contrast between the essential womanliness of these associations, so full of “the still, sad music of humanity,” and the “stern delight” with which Lord Byron, in his magnificent apostrophe to the Sea, exults in its ministry of wrath, and recounts, as with a fierce joy, its dealings with its victim, man!

----“The vile strength he wields For earth’s destruction, thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray, And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth--there let them lay.” Childe Harold.]

DISTANT SOUND OF THE SEA AT EVENING.

Yet, rolling far up some green mountain-dale, Oft let me hear, as ofttimes I have heard, Thy swell, thou deep! when evening calls the bird And bee to rest; when summer-tints grow pale, Seen through the gathering of a dewy veil; And peasant-steps are hastening to repose, And gleaming flocks lie down, and flower-cups close To the last whisper of the falling gale. Then midst the dying of all other sound, When the soul hears thy distant voice profound, Lone worshipping, and knows that through the night ’Twill worship still, then most its anthem-tone Speaks to our being of the Eternal One, Who girds tired nature with unslumbering might.

THE RIVER CLWYD IN NORTH WALES.

O Cambrian river! with slow music gliding By pastoral hills, old woods, and ruin’d towers; Now midst thy reeds and golden willows hiding, Now gleaming forth by some rich bank of flowers; Long flow’d the current of my life’s clear hours Onward with thine, whose voice yet haunts my dream, Tho’ time and change, and other mightier powers, Far from thy side have borne me. Thou, smooth stream! Art winding still thy sunny meads along, Murmuring to cottage and gray hall thy song, Low, sweet, unchanged. My being’s tide hath pass’d Through rocks and storms; yet will I not complain, If, thus wrought free and pure from earthly stain, Brightly its waves may reach their parent-deep at last.

ORCHARD-BLOSSOMS.

Doth thy heart stir within thee at the sight Of orchard-blooms upon the mossy bough? Doth their sweet household-smile waft back the glow Of childhood’s morn--the wondering, fresh delight In earth’s new colouring, then all strangely bright, A joy of fairyland? Doth some old nook, Haunted by visions of thy first-loved book, Rise on thy soul, with faint-streak’d blossoms white Shower’d o’er the turf, and the lone primrose-knot, And robin’s nest, still faithful to the spot, And the bee’s dreary chime? O gentle friend! The world’s cold breath, not Time’s, this life bereaves Of vernal gifts: time hallows what he leaves, And will for us endear spring-memories to the end. 8th May.

TO A DISTANT SCENE.

Still are the cowslips from thy bosom springing, O far-off, grassy dell?--and dost thou see, When southern winds first wake their vernal singing, The star-gleam of the wood anemone? Doth the shy ringdove haunt thee yet? the bee Hang on thy flowers as when I breathed farewell To their wild blooms? and, round my beechen tree, Still, in green softness, doth the moss-bank swell? Oh, strange illusion! by the fond heart wrought, Whose own warm life suffuses nature’s face! My being’s tide of many-colour’d thought Hath pass’d from thee; and now, rich, leafy place! I paint thee oft, scarce consciously, a scene, Silent, forsaken, dim, shadow’d by what hath been.