Poems
When the blasts of winter appear?
To Tirzah
Whate’er is born of mortal birth
Must be consumed with the earth,
To rise from generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
The sexes sprung from shame and pride,
Blowed in the morn, in evening died;
But mercy changed death into sleep;
The sexes rose to work and weep.
Thou, mother of my mortal part,
With cruelty didst mould my heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst blind my nostrils, eyes, and ears,
Didst close my tongue in senseless clay,
And me to mortal life betray.
The death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
The Voice of the Ancient
Bard
Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel—they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.
Section IV
Daybreak
To find the western path,
Right through the gates of wrath
I urge my way;
Sweet morning leads me on;
With soft repentant moan
I see the break of day.
The war of swords and spears,
Melted by dewy tears,
Exhales on high;
The sun is freed from fears,
And with soft grateful tears
Ascends the sky.
The Wild Flower’s Song
As I wandered in the forest
The green leaves among,
I heard a wild flower
Singing a song.
“I slept in the earth
In the silent night;
I murmured my thoughts,
And I felt delight.
“In the morning I went,
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy,
But I met with scorn.”
The Birds
HE
Where thou dwellest, in what grove,
Tell me, fair one, tell me, love;
Where thou thy charming nest dost build,
O thou pride of every field!
SHE
Yonder stands a lonely tree:
There I live and mourn for thee.
Morning drinks my silent tear,
And evening winds my sorrow bear.
HE
O thou summer’s harmony,
I have lived and mourned for thee;
Each day I moan along the wood,
And night hath heard my sorrows loud.
SHE
Dost thou truly long for me?
And am I thus sweet to thee?
Sorrow now is at an end,
O my lover and my friend!
HE
Come! on wings of joy we’ll fly
To where my bower is hung on high;
Come, and make thy calm retreat
Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.
The Land of Dreams
Awake, awake, my little boy!
Thou wast thy mother’s only joy.
Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep?
Awake! thy father doth thee keep.
“O, what land is the land of dreams?
What are its mountains and what are its streams?
O father! I saw my mother there,
Among the lilies by waters fair.
“Among the lambs clothed in white,
She walked with her Thomas in sweet delight.
I wept for joy, like a dove I mourn—
O, when shall I again return?”
Dear child! I also by pleasant streams
Have wandered all night in the land of dreams;
But, though calm and warm the waters wide,
I could not get to the other side.
“Father, O father! what do we here,
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The land of dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.”
To Mr. Butts
To my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light,
On the yellow sands sitting.
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams
From heaven’s high streams.
Over sea, over land,
My eyes did expand
Into regions of air,
Away from all care;
Into regions of fire,
Remote from desire;
The light of the morning
Heaven’s mountains adorning.
In particles bright,
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
Amazed and in fear
I each particle gazed,
Astonished, amazed;
For each was a man
Human-formed. Swift I ran,
For they beckoned to me,
Remote by the sea,
Saying: “Each grain of sand,
Every stone on the land,
Each rock and each hill,
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.”
I stood in the streams
Of heaven’s bright beams,
And saw Felpham sweet
Beneath my bright feet,
In soft female charms;
And in her fair arms
My shadow I knew,
And my wife’s shadow too,
And my sister and friend.
We like infants descend
In our shadows on earth,
Like a weak mortal birth.
My eyes more and more,
Like a sea without shore,
Continue expanding,
The heavens commanding,
Till the jewels of light,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appeared as one man,
Who complacent began
My limbs to infold
In his beams of bright gold;
Like dross purged away
All my mire and my clay.
Soft consumed in delight,
In his bosom sun-bright
I remained. Soft he smiled,
And I heard his voice mild,
Saying: “This is my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea and deep gulph.
These are guards of my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold!”
And the voice faded mild,—
I remained as a child;
All I ever had known
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appeared on the sea.
To Mrs. Butts
Wife of the friend of those I most revere,
Receive this tribute from a heart sincere;
Go on in virtuous seed-sowing on mould
Of human vegetation, and behold
Your harvest springing to eternal life,
Parent of youthful minds, and happy wife.
To My Dear Friend, Mrs.
Anna Flaxman
This song to the flower of Flaxman’s joy;
To the blossom of hope, for a sweet decoy;
Do all that you can, or all that you may,
To entice him to Felpham and far away.
Away to sweet Felpham, for heaven is there,
The ladder of angels descends through the air;
On the turret its spiral does softly descend,
Through the village then winds, at my cot it does end.
You stand in the village and look up to heaven;
The precious stones glitter on flight seventy-seven;
And my brother is there; and my friend and thine
Descend and ascend with the bread and the wine.
The bread of sweet thought and the wine of delight
Feed the village of Felpham by day and by night;
And at his own door the bless’d hermit does stand,
Dispensing, unceasing, to all the wide land.
The Keys of the Gates of Paradise
The caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy mother’s grief.
My Eternal Man set in repose,
The Female from his darkness rose;
And she found me beneath a tree,
A mandrake, and in her veil hid me.
Serpent reasonings us entice
Of good and evil, virtue, vice.
Doubt self-jealous, watery folly,
Struggling through Earth’s melancholy.
Naked in air, in shame and fear,
Blind in fire, with shield and spear,
Two horrid reasoning cloven fictions,
In doubt which is self-contradiction,
A dark hermaphrodite I stood,—
Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me, flew the flaming sword;
Round her, snowy whirlwinds roared,
Freezing her veil, the mundane shell.
I rent the veil where the dead dwell:
When weary man enters his cave,
He meets his Saviour in the grave.
Some find a female garment there,
And some a male, woven with care,
Lest the sexual garments sweet
Should grow a devouring winding-sheet.
One dies! alas! the living and dead!
One is slain, and one is fled!
In vain-glory hatched and nursed,
By double spectres, self-accursed.
My son! my son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
On the shadows of the moon,
Climbing through night’s highest noon:
In Time’s ocean falling, drowned:
In aged ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipped the wings
Of all sublunary things:
And in depths of icy dungeons
Closed the father and the sons;
But, when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,