Sorrows and Joys

BURY thy sorrows, and they shall riseAs souls to the immortal skies,And there look down like mothers’ eyes.

But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,That suck the honey of the showers,And bloom alike on huts and towers.

So shall thy days be sweet and bright;Solemn and sweet thy starry night,Conscious of love each change of light.

The stars will watch the flowers asleep,The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,And both will mix sensations deep.

With these below, with those above,Sits evermore the brooding dove,Uniting both in bonds of love.

For both by nature are akin;Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,And joy, the juice of life within.

Children of earth are these; and thoseThe spirits of divine repose—Death radiant o’er all human woes.

O, think what then had been thy doom,If homeless and without a tombThey had been left to haunt the gloom!

O, think again what now they are—Motherly love, tho’ dim and far,Imaged in every lustrous star.

For they, in their salvation, knowNo vestige of their former woe,While thro’ them all the heavens do flow.

Thus art thou wedded to the skies,And watched by ever-loving eyes,And warned by yearning sympathies.

THE flower unfolds its dawning cup,And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,At eve it droops with the bliss of day,And dreams in the midnight far away.

So am I in thy sole, sweet glancePressed with a weight of utterance;Lovingly all my leaves unfold,And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.

At eve I droop, for then the swellOf feeling falters forth farewell;—At midnight I am dreaming deep,Of what has been, in blissful sleep.

When—ah! when will love’s own fightWed me alike thro’ day and night,When will the stars with their linking charmsWake us in each other’s arms?

THOU to me art such a springAs the Arab seeks at eve,Thirsty from the shining sands;There to bathe his face and hands,While the sun is taking leave,And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

Thou to me art such a dreamAs he dreams upon the grass,While the bubbling coolness nearMakes sweet music in his ear;And the stars that slowly passIn solitary grandeur o’er him gleam.

Thou to me art such a dawnAs the dawn whose ruddy kissWakes him to his darling steed;And again the desert speed,And again the desert bliss,Lightens thro’ his veins, and he is gone!

‘O SISTER! couldst thou know, as thou wilt know,The bliss above, the reverence below,Enkindled by thy sacrifice for me;Thou wouldst at once with holy ecstasyGive thy warm limbs into the yearning earth.Sleep, Sister! for Elysium’s dawning birth,—And faith will fill thee with what is to be!Sleep, for the Gods are watching over thee!Thy dream will steer thee to perform their will,As silently their influence they instil.O Sister! in the sweetness of thy prime,Thy hand has plucked the bitter flower of death;But this will dower thee with Elysian breath,That fade into a never-fading clime.Dear to the Gods are those that do like theeA solemn duty! for the tyrannyOf kings is feeble to the soul that daresDefy them to fulfil its sacred cares:And weak against a mighty will are men.O, Torch between two brothers! in whose gleamOur slaughtered House doth shine as one again,Tho’ severed by the sword; now may thy dreamKindle desire in thee for us, and thou,Forgetting not thy lover and his vow,Leaving no human memory forgot,Shalt cross, not unattended, the dark streamWhich runs by thee in sleep and ripples not.The large stars glitter thro’ the anxious night,And the deep sky broods low to look at thee:The air is hush’d and dark o’er land and sea,And all is waiting for the morrow light:So do thy kindred spirits wait for thee.O Sister! soft as on the downward rill,Will those first daybeams from the distant hillFall on the smoothness of thy placid brow,Like this calm sweetness breathing thro’ me now:And when the fated sounds shall wake thine eyes,Wilt thou, confiding in the supreme will,In all thy maiden steadfastness arise,Firm to obey and earnest to fulfil;Remembering the night thou didst not sleep,And this same brooding sky beheld thee creep,Defiant of unnatural decree,To where I lay upon the outcast land;Before the iron gates upon the plain;A wretched, graveless ghost, whose wailing chillCame to thy darkened door imploring thee;Yearning for burial like my brother slain;—And all was dared for love and piety!This thought will nerve again thy virgin handTo serve its purpose and its destiny.’She woke, they led her forth, and all was still.

SWATHED round in mist and crown’d with cloud,O Mountain! hid from peak to base—Caught up into the heavens and claspedIn white ethereal arms that makeThy mystery of size sublime!What eye or thought can measure nowThy grand dilating loftiness!What giant crest dispute with theeSupremacy of air and sky!What fabled height with thee compare!Not those vine-terraced hills that seetheThe lava in their fiery cusps;Nor that high-climbing robe of snow,Whose summits touch the morning star,And breathe the thinnest air of life;Nor crocus-couching Ida, warmWith Juno’s latest nuptial lure;Nor Tenedos whose dreamy eyeStill looks upon beleaguered Troy;Nor yet Olympus crown’d with godsCan boast a majesty like thine,O Mountain! hid from peak to base,And image of the awful powerWith which the secret of all things,That stoops from heaven to garment earth,Can speak to any human soul,When once the earthly limits loseTheir pointed heights and sharpened lines,And measureless immensityIs palpable to sense and sight.

NO, no, the falling blossom is no signOf loveliness destroy’d and sorrow mute;The blossom sheds its loveliness divine;—Its mission is to prophecy the fruit.

Nor is the day of love for ever dead,When young enchantment and romance are gone;The veil is drawn, but all the future dreadIs lightened by the finger of the dawn.

Love moves with life along a darker way,They cast a shadow and they call it death:But rich is the fulfilment of their day;The purer passion and the firmer faith.