pale, broken ruins of the heart,
The soul's bright wing, uplifted silently,
Sweeps thro' the steadfast depths of the mind's heaven,
Like the fixed splendor of the morning star—
Nearer and nearer to the wasteless flame
That in the centres of the universe
Burns through the o'erlapping centuries of time.
And shall it stagger midway on its path,
And sink its radiance low as the dull dust,
For the death-flutter of a fledgling hope?
Or, with the headlong phrensy of a fiend,
Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun,
For that, with nearer vision it discerns
What in the distance like ripe roses seemed
Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks
Are the red lights of wreckers!
Just as well
The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose
His puny shoulder to the icy slip
Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life;
Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave,
And think to rise as from the bridal bed.
But let the soul resolve its course shall be
Onward and upward, and the walls of pain
May build themselves about it as they will,
Yet leave it all-sufficient to itself.
How like the very truth a lie may seem!—
Led by that bright curse, Genius, some have gone
On the broad wake of visions wonderful
And seemed, to the dull mortals far below,
Unraveling the web of fate, at will.
And leaning on their own creative power,
As on the confident arm of buoyant Love.
But from the climbing of their wildering way
Many have faltered, fallen,—some have died,
Still wooing from across the lapse of years
The faded splendour of a morning dream,
And feeding sorrow with remembered smiles.
Love, that pale passion-flower of the heart,
Nursed into bloom and beauty by a breath,
With the resplendence of its broken light,
Even on the outposts of mortality,
Dims the still watchfires of the waiting soul.
O, tender-visaged Pity, stoop from heaven,
And from the much-loved bosom of the past
Draw back the nestling hand of Memory,
Though it be quivering and pale with pain;
And with the dead dust of departed Hope
Choke up and wither into barrenness
The sweetest fountain of the human heart,
And stay its channels everlastingly
From the endeavor of the loftier soul.
Nay, 'twere a task outbalancing thy power,
Nor can the almost-omnipotence of mind
Away from aching bind the bleeding heart,
Or keep at will its mighty sorrow down.
And, were the white flames of the world below
Binding my forehead with undying pain,
The lily crowns of heaven I would put back,
If thou wert there, lost light of my young dream!—
Hope, opening with the faint flowers of the wood,
Bloomed crimson with the summer's heavy kiss,
But autumn's dim feet left it in the dust,
And like tired reapers my lorn thoughts went down
To the gloom-harvest of a hopeless love,
For past all thought I loved thee: Listening close
From the soft hour when twilight's rosy hedge
Sprang from the fires of sunset, till deep night
Swept with her cloud of stars the face of heaven,
For the quick music, from the pavement rung
Where beat the impatient hoof-strokes of the steed,
Whose mane of silver, like a wave of light,
Bathed the caressing hand I pined to clasp!
It is as if a song-lark, towering high
In pride of place, should stoop her sun-bathed wing,
Low as the poor hum of the grasshopper.
I scorn thee not, old man; no haunting ghost
Born of the darkness of thy perjury
Crosses the white tent of my dreaming now
But for myself, that I should so have loved!—
The sweet folds of that blessed charity,
Pure as the cold veins of Pentelicus,
Were all too narrow now to hide away
One burning spot of shame—the wretched price
Of proving traitor to the wondrous star
That with a cloud of splendor wraps my way.
And yet, from the bright wine-cup of my life,
The rosy vintage, bubbling to the brim,
Thou With a passionate lip didst drain away
And to God's sweet gift—human sympathy—
Making my bosom dumb as the dark grave,
Didst leave me drifting on the waste of life,
A fruitless pillar of the desert dust;
For, from the ashes of a ruined hope
There springs no life but an unwearied woe
That feeding upon sunken lip and cheek
Pushes its victims from mortality.
Vainly the light rain of the summer time
Waters the dead limbs of the blasted oak.
Love is the worker of all miracles;
And if within some cold and sunless cave
