The Zinghis' yet re-echoing fame.And now what has he? what! a name.
The sound of revelry by night
Comes o'er me, with the mingled voice
Of many with a breast as light,
As if 'twere not the dying hour
Of one, in whom they did rejoice—
As in a leader, haply—Power
Its venom secretly imparts;
Nothing have I with human hearts.
XVI.
When Fortune mark'd me for her own,
And my proud hopes had reach'd a throne
(It boots me not, good friar, to tell
A tale the world but knows too well,
How by what hidden deeds of might,
I clamber'd to the tottering height,)
I still was young; and well I ween
My spirit what it e'er had been.
My eyes were still on pomp and power,
My wilder'd heart was far away
In valleys of the wild Taglay,
In mine own Ada's matted bower.
I dwelt not long in Samarcand
Ere, in a peasant's lowly guise,
I sought my long-abandon'd land;
By sunset did its mountains rise
In dusky grandeur to my eyes:
But as I wander'd on the way
My heart sunk with the sun's ray.
To him, who still would gaze upon
The glory of the summer sun,
There comes, when that sun will from him part,
A sullen hopelessness of heart.
That soul will hate the evening mist
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits hearken) as one
Who in a dream of night would fly, But cannot, from a danger nigh. What though the moon—the silvery moon— Shine on his path, in her high noon; Her smile is chilly, and her beam In that time of dreariness will seem As the portrait of one after death; A likeness taken when the breath Of young life, and the fire o' the eye, Had lately been, but had pass'd by. 'Tis thus when the lovely summer sun Of our boyhood, his course hath run: For all we live to know—is known; And all we seek to keep—hath flown; With the noon-day beauty, which is all. Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall— The transient, passionate day-flower, Withering at the evening hour.
XVII.
I reach'd my home—my home no more—
For all was flown that made it so—
I pass'd from out its mossy door,
In vacant idleness of woe.
There met me on its threshold stone
A mountain hunter, I had known
In childhood, but he knew me not.
Something he spoke of the old cot:
It had seen better days, he said;
There rose a fountain once, and there Full many a fair flower raised its head: But she who rear'd them was long dead, And in such follies had no part, What was there left me now? despair— A kingdom for a broken—heart.
To ——
Sleep on, sleep on, another hour —
I would not break so calm a sleep,
To wake to sunshine and to show'r,
To smile and weep.
Sleep on, sleep on, like sculptured thing,
Majestic, beautiful art thou;
Sure seraph shields thee with his wing
And fans thy brow —
We would not deem thee child of earth,
For, O, angelic, is thy form!
But, that in heav'n thou had'st thy birth,
Where comes no storm
To mar the bright, the perfect flow'r,
But all is beautiful and still —
And golden sands proclaim the hour
Which brings no ill.
Sleep on, sleep on, some fairy dream
Perchance is woven in thy sleep —
But, O, thy spirit, calm, serene,
Must wake to weep.
Tamerlane
To Isaac Lea
It was my choice or chance or curse
To adopt the cause for better or worse
And with my worldly goods & wit
And soul & body worship it ----
To Margaret
| Who hath seduced thee to this foul revolt From the pure well of Beauty undefiled? So banish from true wisdom to prefer Such squalid wit to honourable rhyme? To write? To scribble? Nonsense and no more? I will not write upon this argument To write is human -- not to write divine. |
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