The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 12

x.x.xIX

'Think not in death my love could ever cease; If thou wast false, more need there is for me Still to be true; that slumber were not peace, If't were unvisited with dreams of thee: And thou hadst never heard such words as these, Save that in heaven I must forever be 590 Most comfortless and wretched, seeing this Our unbaptized babe shut out from bliss.

XL

'This little spirit with imploring eyes Wanders alone the dreary wild of s.p.a.ce; The shadow of his pain forever lies Upon my soul in this new dwelling-place; His loneliness makes me in Paradise More lonely, and, unless I see his face, Even here for grief could I lie down and die, 599 Save for my curse of immortality.

XLI

'World after world he sees around him swim Crowded with happy souls, that take no heed Of the sad eyes that from the night's faint rim Gaze sick with longing on them as they speed With golden gates, that only shut on him; And shapes sometimes from h.e.l.l's abysses freed Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy deep.

XLII

'I am a mother,--spirits do not shake This much of earth from them,--and I must pine 610 Till I can feel his little hands, and take His weary head upon this heart of mine; And, might it be, full gladly for his sake Would I this solitude of bliss resign And be shut out of heaven to dwell with him Forever in that silence drear and dim.

XLIII

'I strove to hush my soul, and would not speak At first, for thy dear sake; a woman's love Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak, And by its weakness overcomes; I strove 620 To smother bitter thoughts with patience meek, But still in the abyss my soul would rove, Seeking my child, and drove me here to claim The rite that gives him peace in Christ's dear name.

XLIV

'I sit and weep while blessed spirits sing; I can but long and pine the while they praise, And, leaning o'er the wall of heaven, I fling My voice to where I deem my infant strays, Like a robbed bird that cries in vain to bring Her nestlings back beneath her wings' embrace; 630 But still he answers not, and I but know That heaven and earth are both alike in woe.'

XLV

Then the pale priests, with ceremony due, Baptized the child within its dreadful tomb Beneath that mother's heart, whose instinct true Star-like had battled down the triple gloom Of sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, too.

Strewed the pale corpse with many a milkwhite bloom, And parted the bright hair, and on the breast Crossed the unconscious hands in sign of rest. 640

XLVI

Some said, that, when the priest had sprinkled o'er The consecrated drops, they seemed to hear A sigh, as of some heart from travail sore Released, and then two voices singing clear, _Misereatur Deus_, more and more Fading far upward, and their ghastly fear Fell from them with that sound, as bodies fall From souls upspringing to celestial hall.

PROMETHEUS

One after one the stars have risen and set, Sparkling upon the h.o.a.rfrost on my chain: The Bear, that prowled all night about the fold Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den.

Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn, Whose blus.h.i.+ng smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less, Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn.

Sunless and starless all, the desert sky Arches above me, empty as this heart 10 For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.

All night have I heard voices: deeper yet The deep low breathing of the silence grew, While all about, m.u.f.fled in awe, there stood Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at heart, But, when I turned to front them, far along Only a shudder through the midnight ran, And the dense stillness walled me closer round. 20 But still I heard them wander up and down That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings Did mingle with them, whether of those hags Let slip upon me once from Hades deep, Or of yet direr torments, if such be, I could but guess; and then toward me came A shape as of a woman: very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them.

Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice; 30 A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, s.h.i.+vering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead 40 And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars.

Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!

Thy hated name is tossed once more in scorn From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom. 50 And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove!

They are wrung from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those spa.r.s.e drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm high-curled and black Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break.

Why art thou made a G.o.d of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force?

True Power was never born of brutish Strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the s.h.a.ggy dugs 60 Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts, That quell the darkness for a s.p.a.ce, so strong As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself?

Why art thou made a G.o.d of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile?

Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold 70 What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save?

Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; When thine is finished, thou art known no more: There is a higher purity than thou, And higher purity is greater strength; Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might. 80 Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine: Let man but will, and thou art G.o.d no more, More capable of ruin than the gold And ivory that image thee on earth.

He who hurled down the monstrous t.i.tan-brood Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned, Is weaker than a simple human thought.

My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze, 90 That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, Sways huge Ocea.n.u.s from pole to pole; For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow In my wise heart the end and doom of all.

Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude,--that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,--and long commune With this eternal silence;--more a G.o.d, In my long-suffering and strength to meet 100 With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath.

Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, Hadst to thy self usurped,--his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,-- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne.

Tyrants are but the sp.a.w.n of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, 110 Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant.

Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base.

The tyrant trembles, if the air but stir The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120 With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale.

Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will.

So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove!

And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge, Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains 130 Shrink not before it; for it shall befit A sorrow-taught, unconquered t.i.tan-heart.

Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand On a precipitous crag that overhangs The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, As in a gla.s.s, the features dim and vast Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems, Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise; Not fearfully, but with clear promises Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, 140 Their outlook widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the Present and the Past, Even to the very source and end of things.

Such am I now: immortal woe hath made My heart a seer, and my soul a judge Between the substance and the shadow of Truth.

The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch, 150 Through which I see a sceptre and a throne.

The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee; The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more; The murmurous bliss of lovers underneath Dim grapevine bowers whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute l.u.s.t; the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil 160 Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,-- Even the spirit of free love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death,-- These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal 170 They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge: For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more, Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe: When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud, They shed down light before us on life's sea, That cheers us to steer onward still in hope.

Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, 180 In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts; The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men.

All other glories are as falling stars, But universal Nature watches theirs: Such strength is won by love of humankind.

Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of n.o.ble deeds Cries shame upon the idle and the vile, 190 And keeps the heart of Man forever up To the heroic level of old time.

To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,--this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, 200 And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs.

Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak.

Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable G.o.d!

But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the sharp tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A G.o.d among my brethren weak and blind, 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon.

But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmans.h.i.+p of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made,--a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, 220 Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and with sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.

Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom, and for whose glory, ye shall cease: And, when thou'rt but a weary moaning heard From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory, A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice 230 Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Far echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, 240 Are triumph), like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right.

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; But Good, once put in action or in thought, Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak G.o.d, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, 250 In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,-- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the aegean from roused isle to isle,-- Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:--This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall 260 In all the throbbing exultations, share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits, Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, snowing them the end, Pain's th.o.r.n.y crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars.

This is a thought, that, like the fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow 270 On the h.o.a.r brows of aged Caucasus: But, oh, thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star!

Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove!

Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long, Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops Thy puny G.o.ds.h.i.+p, as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. Oh, even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down, 280 Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a G.o.d he be uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in brave dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom,--now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become 290 Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt The palaces of tyrants, to scare off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,-- Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, 300 Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust In the unfailing energy of Good, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,--that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom in all coming time!

But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, 310 And Euxine answer with a m.u.f.fled roar, On either side storming the giant walls Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam (Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow), That draw back baffled but to hurl again, s.n.a.t.c.hed up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the t.i.tans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad In vain emprise. The moon will come and go 320 With her monotonous vicissitude; Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows, and to interchange The influence benign of loving eyes, But now by aged use grows wearisome;-- False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries of lonely woe Unshamed by weak complaining, but for thee, Loneliest, save me, of all created things, Mild-eyed Astarte, my best comforter, 330 With thy pale smile of sad benignity?

Year after year will pa.s.s away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness, lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to northward. Yes, for ages yet 340 Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, While the immortal with the mortal linked Dreams of its wings and pines for what it dreams, With upward yearn unceasing. Better so: For wisdom is stern sorrow's patient child, And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like G.o.ds; And love, that makes them be G.o.ds, from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s 350 Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood.

Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish G.o.ds; one face is ill; But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, As are all hearts, when we explore their depths.

Therefore, great heart, bear up; thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart 360 Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love And patience which at last shall overcome.