The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Julian and Maddalo; a Conversation.
• The Witch of Atlas.
• Letter to —
• The Triumph of Life.
• Fragments From an Unfinished Drama.
• Prince Athanase: a Fragment.
• Ode to Naples. *
• Marianne’s Dream.
• Mont Blanc. Lines Written In the Vale of Chamouni.
• Miscellaneous Poems.
• On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery.
• Song.
• To Constantia, Singing.
• The Fugitives.
• A Lament.
• The Pine Forest of the Cascine, Near Pisa.
• To Night.
• Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa.
• Arethusa.
• The Question.
• Lines to an Indian Air.
• Stanzas Written In Dejection, Near Naples.
• Autumn: a Dirge.
• Hymn of Apollo.
• Hymn of Pan.
• The Boat On the Serchio.
• The Zucca. *
• The Two Spirits. an Allegory.
• A Fragment.
• A Bridal Song.
• The Sunset.
• Song, On a Faded Violet.
• Lines to a Critic.
• Good Night.
• To-morrow.
• Death.
• A Lament.
• Love’s Philosophy.
• To E*** V***
• To —
• Lines.
• To William Shelley.
• An Allegory.
• Mutability.
• From the Arabic. an Imitation.
• To —
• Music.
• Lines.
• Death.
• To —
• Passage of the Apennines.
• To Mary —
• The Past.
• Song of a Spirit.
• Liberty.
• To —
• The Isle.
• To —
• Time.
• Lines.
• A Song.
• The World’s Wanderers.
• A Dirge.
• Lines.
• Dirge For the Year.
• Sonnet I.
• Sonnet II. Political Greatness.
• Sonnet III.
• Sonnet IV.
• Fragments.
• Ginevra. *
• Charles the First. Fragments.
• Prince Athanase. Part II.
• Mazenghi. *
• The Woodman and the Nightingale.
• To the Moon.
• Song For Tasso.
• The Waning Moon.
• Epitaph.
• Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude.
• Translations.
• Hymn to Mercury. Translated From the Greek of Homer
• The Cyclops; a Satyric Drama.
• Translation From Moschus.
• Scenes From the “magico Prodigioso” of Calderon.
• Scenes From the Faust of GoËthe.

LETTER TO —

Leghorn, July 1, 1820.

• • The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
  • In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
  • The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves
  • His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
  • So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
  • Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
  • From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—
  • No net of words in garish colours wrought
  • To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
  • But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
  • Memory may clothe in wings my living name
  • And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
  • Which in those hearts which most remember me
  • Grow, making love an immortality.
• • Whoever should behold me now, I wist,
  • Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
  • Bent with sublime Archimedean art
  • To breathe a soul into the iron lieart
  • Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
  • Which by the force of figured spells might win
  • Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
  • For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
  • As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
  • Ixion or the Titan:—or the quick
  • Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,
  • To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic;
  • Or those in philosophic councils met,
  • Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
  • They owed * * * * * *
  • By giving a faint foretaste of damnation
  • To Shakespear, Sidney, Spenser and the rest
  • Who made our land an island of the blest,
  • When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
  • On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire:—
  • With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
  • Which fishes found under the utmost crag
  • Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
  • Where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles
  • Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
  • When the exulting elements in scorn
  • Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
  • Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
  • As panthers sleep:—and other strange and dread
  • Magical forms the brick floor overspread—
  • Proteus transformed to metal did not make
  • More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
  • Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
  • Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
  • Of tin and iron not to be understood,
  • And forms of unimaginable wood,
  • To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
  • Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
  • The elements of what will stand the shocks
  • Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table
  • More knacks and quips there be than I am able
  • To catalogize in this verse of mine:—
  • A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
  • But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
  • When at their subterranean toil they swink,
  • Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who
  • Reply to them in lava-cry, halloo!
  • And call out to the cities o’er their head,—
  • Roofs, towns and shrines,—the dying and the dead
  • Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff
  • Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
  • This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within
  • The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
  • In colour like the wake of light that stains
  • The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
  • The inmost shower of it’s white fire—the breeze
  • Is still—blue heaven smiles over the pale seas.
  • And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I
  • Yield to the impulse of an infancy
  • Outlasting manhood—I have made to float
  • A rude idealism of a paper boat—
  • A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know
  • The thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so
  • He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next
  • Lie bills and calculations much perplext,
  • With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint
  • Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
  • Then comes a range of mathematical
  • Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
  • A heap of rosin, a green broken glass
  • With ink in it;—a china cup that was
  • What it will never be again, I think,
  • A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
  • The liquor doctors rail at—and which I
  • Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die
  • We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
  • And cry out,—heads or tails? where’er we be.
  • Near that a dusty paint box, some old hooks,
  • An half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
  • Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
  • To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
  • Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
  • Of figures,—disentangle them who may.
  • Baron de Tott’s memoirs beside them lie,
  • And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
  • Near them a most inexplicable thing,
  • With least in the middle—I’m conjecturing
  • How to make Henry understand;—but—no,
  • I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
  • This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
  • Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.
• • And here like some weïrd Archimage sit I,
  • Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
  • The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
  • Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
  • The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
  • Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
  • Ruffling the ocean of their self content;—
  • I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,
  • But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
  • With an inconstant and an idle sound,
  • I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
  • Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
  • Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
  • The ripe corn under the undulating air
  • Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines
  • Are trembling wide in all their trelliced lines—
  • The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
  • The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill
  • Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
  • And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
  • The interrupted thunder howls; above
  • One chasm of heaven smiles, like the age of love
  • On the unquiet world;—while such things are,
  • How could one worth your friendship heed the war
  • Of worms? The shriek of the world’s carrion jays,
  • Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
• • You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees
  • In vacant chairs, your absent images,
  • And points where once you sat, and now should be
  • But are not.—I demand if ever we
  • Shall meet as then we met;—and she replies,
  • Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
  • “I know the past alone—but summon home
  • My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come.”
  • But I, an old diviner, who know well
  • Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
  • Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
  • And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
  • In acting every passage o’er and o’er
  • Of our communion.—How on the sea shore
  • We watched the ocean and the sky together,
  • Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
  • How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,
  • And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
  • Upon my cheek:—and how we often made
  • Treats for each other, where good will outweighed
  • The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
  • As it well might, were it less firm and clear
  • Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun
  • A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
  • Of this familiar life, which seems to be
  • But is not,—or is but quaint mockery
  • Of all we would believe; or sadly blame
  • The jarring and inexplicable frame
  • Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize
  • The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
  • Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess
  • The issue of the earth’s great business,
  • When we shall be as we no longer are;
  • Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
  • Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; or how
  • You listened to some interrupted flow
  • Of visionary rhyme;—in joy and pain
  • Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
  • With little skill perhaps;—or how we sought
  • Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
  • Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
  • Staining the sacred waters with our tears;
  • Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
  • Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
  • The language of a land which now is free,
  • And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
  • Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,
  • And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
  • “My name is Legion!”—that majestic tongue
  • Which Calderon over the desart flung
  • Of ages and of nations; and which found
  • An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
  • Startled oblivion;—thou wert then to me
  • As is a nurse—when inarticulately
  • A child would talk as its grown parents do.
  • If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
  • If hawks chase doves through the aerial way,
  • Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
  • Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast
  • Out of the forest of the pathless past
  • These recollected pleasures?
• • You are now
  • In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
  • At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
  • Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
  • Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
  • * * * * * * *
  • You will see C—; he who sits obscure
  • In the exceeding lustre and the pure
  • Intense irradiation of a mind,
  • Which, with its own internal lustre blind,
  • Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
  • A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
  • A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
  • You will see H—t; one of those happy souls
  • Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
  • This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
  • Who is, what others seem;—his room no doubt
  • Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
  • With graceful flowers, tastefully placed about;
  • And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
  • And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,
  • The gifts of the most learn’d among some dozens
  • Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
  • And there is he with his eternal puns,
  • Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
  • Thundering for money at a poet’s door;
  • Alas! it is no use to say, “I’m poor!”
  • Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
  • Things wiser than were ever said in book,
  • Except in Shakespear’s wisest tenderness.
  • You will see H—, and I cannot express
  • His virtues, though I know that they are great,
  • Because he locks, then barricades, the gate
  • Within which they inhabit;—of his wit
  • And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.
  • He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
  • One of the richest of the deep. And there
  • Is English P— with his mountain Fair
  • Turned into a Flamingo,—that shy bird
  • That gleams i’the Indian air. Have you not heard
  • When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
  • His best friends hear no more of him? but you
  • Will see him and will like him too, I hope,
  • With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
  • Matched with this cameleopard; his fine wit
  • Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
  • A strain too learned for a shallow age,
  • Too wise for selfish bigots;—let his page
  • Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,
  • Fold itself up for a serener clime
  • Of years to come, and find its recompense
  • In that just expectation. Wit and sense,
  • Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
  • Make this dull world a business of delight,
  • Are all combined in H. S.—And these,
  • With some exceptions, which I need not teaze
  • Your patience by descanting on, are all
  • You and I know in London.
• • I recal
  • My thoughts and bid you look upon the night.
  • As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
  • Fills the void, hollow, universal air.
  • What see you?—Unpavilioned heaven is fair,
  • Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
  • Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
  • Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;
  • Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,
  • Piloted by the many wandering blast,
  • And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast.
  • All this is beautiful in every land.
  • But what see you beside? A shabby stand
  • Of hackney-coaches—a brick house or wall,
  • Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
  • Of our unhappy politics;—or worse—
  • A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
  • Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,
  • You must accept in place of serenade—
• • I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
  • Built round dark caverns, even to the root
  • Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers
  • There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
  • Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
  • Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
  • In circles quaint, and ever changing dance,
  • Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance
  • Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
  • Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
  • A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
  • From the silver regions of the milky way.
  • Afar the Contadino’s song is heard,
  • Rude, but made sweet by distance;—and a bird
  • Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet
  • I know none else that sings so sweet as it
  • At this late hour;—and then all is still:—
  • Now Italy or London, which you will!
• • Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have
  • My house by that time turned into a grave
  • Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
  • And all the dreams which our tormentors are,
  • Oh that H— — and — were there,
  • With every thing belonging to them fair!—
  • We will have books; Spanish, Italian, Greek,
  • * * * * * * *
  • * * * * * * *
  • * * * * * * *
  • Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
  • Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;
  • Custards for supper, and an endless host
  • Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
  • And other such lady-like luxuries,—
  • Feasting on which we will philosophise.
  • And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood,
  • To thaw the six weeks winter in our blood.
  • And then we’ll talk;—what shall we talk about?
  • Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
  • Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves
  • With cones and parallelograms and curves,
  • I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare
  • To bother me,—when you are with me there.
  • And they shall never more sip laudanum
  • From Helicon or Himeros;* —we’ll come
  • And in despite of * * * and of the devil,
  • Will make our friendly philosophic revel
  • Outlast the leafless time;—till buds and flowers
  • Warn the obscure, inevitable hours
  • Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;—
  • “To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

[* ]Ἰμεϰος, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonyme of Love.