Epipsychidion

Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,In my heart's temple I suspend to theeThese votive wreaths of withered memory.

Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,Pourest such music, that it might assuageThe rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;This song shall be thy rose: its petals paleAre dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for everBeat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayedIt over-soared this low and worldly shade,Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breastStains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,Veiling beneath that radiant form of WomanAll that is insupportable in theeOf light, and love, and immortality!Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living FormAmong the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou MirrorIn whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee nowFlash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;I pray thee that thou blot from this sad songAll of its much mortality and wrong,With those clear drops, which start like sacred dewFrom the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

I never thought before my death to seeYouth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,I love thee; though the world by no thin nameWill hide that love from its unvalued shame.Would we two had been twins of the same mother!Or, that the name my heart lent to anotherCould be a sister's bond for her and thee,Blending two beams of one eternity!Yet were one lawful and the other true,These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due.How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.

Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wingsOr, like a dying swan who soars and sings,Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?A well of sealed and secret happiness,Whose waters like blithe light and music are,Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A StarWhich moves not in the moving heavens, alone?A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle toneAmid rude voices? a beloved light?A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to playMake music on, to soothe the roughest dayAnd lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?--I measureThe world of fancies, seeking one like thee,And find--alas! mine own infirmity.

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,In the suspended impulse of its lightness,Were less aethereally light: the brightnessOf her divinest presence trembles throughHer limbs, as underneath a cloud of dewEmbodied in the windless heaven of JuneAmid the splendour-winged stars, the MoonBurns, inextinguishably beautiful:And from her lips, as from a hyacinth fullOf honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stopsOf planetary music heard in trance.In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,The sunbeams of those wells which ever leapUnder the lightnings of the soul--too deepFor the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.The glory of her being, issuing thence,Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shadeOf unentangled intermixture, madeBy Love, of light and motion: one intenseDiffusion, one serene Omnipresence,Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowingWith the unintermitted blood, which thereQuivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like airThe crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)Continuously prolonged, and ending never,Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furledWhich penetrates and clasps and fills the world;Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dressAnd her loose hair; and where some heavy tressThe air of her own speed has disentwined,The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;And in the soul a wild odour is feltBeyond the sense, like fiery dews that meltInto the bosom of a frozen bud.--See where she stands! a mortal shape induedWith love and life and light and deity,And motion which may change but cannot die;An image of some bright Eternity;A shadow of some golden dream; a SplendourLeaving the third sphere pilotless; a tenderReflection of the eternal Moon of LoveUnder whose motions life's dull billows move;A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;A Vision like incarnate April, warning,With smiles and tears, Frost the AnatomyInto his summer grave.Ah, woe is me!What have I dared? where am I lifted? howShall I descend, and perish not? I knowThat Love makes all things equal: I have heardBy mine own heart this joyous truth averred:The spirit of the worm beneath the sodIn love and worship, blends itself with God.

Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the FateWhose course has been so starless! O too lateBeloved! O too soon adored, by me!For in the fields of ImmortalityMy spirit should at first have worshipped thine,A divine presence in a place divine;Or should have moved beside it on this earth,A shadow of that substance, from its birth;But not as now:--I love thee; yes, I feelThat on the fountain of my heart a sealIs set, to keep its waters pure and brightFor thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight.We--are we not formed, as notes of music are,For one another, though dissimilar;Such difference without discord, as can makeThose sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shakeAs trembling leaves in a continuous air?

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dareBeacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.I never was attached to that great sect,Whose doctrine is, that each one should selectOut of the crowd a mistress or a friend,And all the rest, though fair and wise, commendTo cold oblivion, though it is in the codeOf modern morals, and the beaten roadWhich those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,Who travel to their home among the deadBy the broad highway of the world, and soWith one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,The dreariest and the longest journey go.

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,That to divide is not to take away.Love is like understanding, that grows bright,Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,Imagination! which from earth and sky,And from the depths of human fantasy,As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fillsThe Universe with glorious beams, and killsError, the worm, with many a sun-like arrowOf its reverberated lightning. NarrowThe heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,The life that wears, the spirit that createsOne object, and one form, and builds therebyA sepulchre for its eternity.

Mind from its object differs most in this:Evil from good; misery from happiness;The baser from the nobler; the impureAnd frail, from what is clear and must endure.If you divide suffering and dross, you mayDiminish till it is consumed away;If you divide pleasure and love and thought,Each part exceeds the whole; and we know notHow much, while any yet remains unshared,Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:This truth is that deep well, whence sages drawThe unenvied light of hope; the eternal lawBy which those live, to whom this world of lifeIs as a garden ravaged, and whose strifeTills for the promise of a later birthThe wilderness of this Elysian earth.

There was a Being whom my spirit oftMet on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,Amid the enchanted mountains, and the cavesOf divine sleep, and on the air-like wavesOf wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floorPaved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,Under the gray beak of some promontoryShe met me, robed in such exceeding glory,That I beheld her not. In solitudesHer voice came to me through the whispering woods,And from the fountains, and the odours deepOf flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleepOf the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,Breathed but of HER to the enamoured air;And from the breezes whether low or loud,And from the rain of every passing cloud,And from the singing of the summer-birds,And from all sounds, all silence. In the wordsOf antique verse and high romance,--in form,Sound, colour--in whatever checks that StormWhich with the shattered present chokes the past;And in that best philosophy, whose tasteMakes this cold common hell, our life, a doomAs glorious as a fiery martyrdom;Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.--

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youthI sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,And towards the lodestar of my one desire,I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flightIs as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphereA radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.--But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet,Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,I would have followed, though the grave betweenYawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'Then I--'Where?'--the world's echo answered 'where?'And in that silence, and in my despair,I questioned every tongueless wind that flewOver my tower of mourning, if it knewWhither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;And murmured names and spells which have controlOver the sightless tyrants of our fate;But neither prayer nor verse could dissipateThe night which closed on her; nor uncreateThat world within this Chaos, mine and me,Of which she was the veiled Divinity,The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:And therefore I went forth, with hope and fearAnd every gentle passion sick to death,Feeding my course with expectation's breath,Into the wintry forest of our life;And struggling through its error with vain strife,And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,Seeking among those untaught forestersIf I could find one form resembling hers,In which she might have masked herself from me.There,--One, whose voice was venomed melodySate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,Her touch was as electric poison,--flameOut of her looks into my vitals came,And from her living cheeks and bosom flewA killing air, which pierced like honey-dewInto the core of my green heart, and layUpon its leaves; until, as hair grown grayO'er a young brow, they hid its unblown primeWith ruins of unseasonable time.

In many mortal forms I rashly soughtThe shadow of that idol of my thought.And some were fair--but beauty dies away:Others were wise--but honeyed words betray:And One was true--oh! why not true to me?Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,Wounded and weak and panting; the cold dayTrembled, for pity of my strife and pain.When, like a noonday dawn, there shone againDeliverance. One stood on my path who seemedAs like the glorious shape which I had d reamedAs is the Moon, whose changes ever runInto themselves, to the eternal Sun;The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flameWhich ever is transformed, yet still the same,And warms not but illumines. Young and fairAs the descended Spirit of that sphere,She hid me, as the Moon may hide the nightFrom its own darkness, until all was brightBetween the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,She led me to a cave in that wild place,And sate beside me, with her downward faceIllumining my slumbers, like the MoonWaxing and waning o'er Endymion.And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,And all my being became bright or dimAs the Moon's image in a summer sea,According as she smiled or frowned on me;And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:--For at her silver voice came Death and Life,Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,And through the cavern without wings they flew,And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.'I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lipsThen shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;--And how my soul was as a lampless sea,And who was then its Tempest; and when She,The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frostCrept o'er those waters, till from coast to coastThe moving billows of my being fellInto a death of ice, immovable;--And then--what earthquakes made it gape and split,The white Moon smiling all the while on it,These words conceal:--If not, each word would beThe key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!

At length, into the obscure Forest cameThe Vision I had sought through grief and shame.Athwart that wintry wilderness of thornsFlashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,And from her presence life was radiatedThrough the gray earth and branches bare and dead;So that her way was paved, and roofed aboveWith flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;And music from her respiration spreadLike light,--all other sounds were penetratedBy the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,So that the savage winds hung mute around;And odours warm and fresh fell from her hairDissolving the dull cold in the frore air:Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,When light is changed to love, this glorious OneFloated into the cavern where I lay,And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clayWas lifted by the thing that dreamed belowAs smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glowI stood, and felt the dawn of my long nightWas penetrating me with living light:I knew it was the Vision veiled from meSo many years--that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,This world of loves, this ME; and into birthAwaken all its fruits and flowers, and dartMagnetic might into its central heart;And lift its billows and its mists, and guideBy everlasting laws, each wind and tideTo its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;And lull its storms, each in the craggy graveWhich was its cradle, luring to faint bowersThe armies of the rainbow-winged showers;And, as those married lights, which from the towersOf Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globeIn liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;And all their many-mingled influence blend,If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;--So ye, bright regents, with alternate swayGovern my sphere of being, night and day!Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;And, through the shadow of the seasons three,From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,Light it into the Winter of the tomb,Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,Who drew the heart of this frail UniverseTowards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,Alternating attraction and repulsion,Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;Oh, float into our azure heaven again!Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;The living Sun will feed thee from its urnOf golden fire; the Moon will veil her hornIn thy last smiles; adoring Even and MornWill worship thee with incense of calm breathAnd lights and shadows; as the star of DeathAnd Birth is worshipped by those sisters wildCalled Hope and Fear--upon the heart are piledTheir offerings,--of this sacrifice divineA World shall be the altar.Lady mine,Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birthWhich from its heart of hearts that plant puts forthWhose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,Will be as of the trees of Paradise.

The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.To whatsoe'er of dull mortalityIs mine, remain a vestal sister still;To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,Not mine but me, henceforth be thou unitedEven as a bride, delighting and delighted.The hour is come:--the destined Star has risenWhich shall descend upon a vacant prison.The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick setThe sentinels--but true Love never yetWas thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:Like lightning, with invisible violencePiercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,Who rides upon a thought, and makes his wayThrough temple, tower, and palace, and the arrayOf arms: more strength has Love than he or they;For it can burst his charnel, and make freeThe limbs in chains, the heart in agony,The soul in dust and chaos.Emily,A ship is floating in the harbour now,A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;There is a path on the sea's azure floor,No keel has ever ploughed that path before;The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;The merry mariners are bold and free:Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?Our bark is as an albatross, whose nestIs a far Eden of the purple East;And we between her wings will sit, while Night,And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,Treading each other's heels, unheededly.It is an isle under Ionian skies,Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,And, for the harbours are not safe and good,This land would have remained a solitudeBut for some pastoral people native there,Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden airDraw the last spirit of the age of gold,Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,With ever-changing sound and light and foam,Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;And all the winds wandering along the shoreUndulate with the undulating tide:There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,As clear as elemental diamond,Or serene morning air; and far beyond,The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and hallsBuilt round with ivy, which the waterfallsIllumining, with sound that never failsAccompany the noonday nightingales;And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;The light clear element which the isle wearsIs heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,And dart their arrowy odour through the brainTill you might faint with that delicious pain.And every motion, odour, beam and tone,With that deep music is in unison:Which is a soul within the soul--they seemLike echoes of an antenatal dream.--It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never lightUpon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, theySail onward far upon their fatal way:The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalmTo other lands, leave azure chasms of calmOver this isle, or weep themselves in dew,From which its fields and woods ever renewTheir green and golden immortality.And from the sea there rise, and from the skyThere fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,Till the isle's beauty, like a naked brideGlowing at once with love and loveliness,Blushes and trembles at its own excess:Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no lessBurns in the heart of this delicious isle,An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smileUnfolds itself, and may be felt, not seenO'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,Filling their bare and void interstices.--But the chief marvel of the wildernessIs a lone dwelling, built by whom or howNone of the rustic island-people know:'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its heightIt overtops the woods; but, for delight,Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crimeHad been invented, in the world's young prime,Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,An envy of the isles, a pleasure-houseMade sacred to his sister and his spouse.It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,But, as it were Titanic; in the heartOf Earth having assumed its form, then grownOut of the mountains, from the living stone,Lifting itself in caverns light and high:For all the antique and learned imageryHas been erased, and in the place of itThe ivy and the wild-vine interknitThe volumes of their many-twining stems;Parasite flowers illume with dewy gemsThe lampless halls, and when they fade, the skyPeeps through their winter-woof of traceryWith moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--Working mosaic on their Parian floors.And, day and night, aloof, from the high towersAnd terraces, the Earth and Ocean seemTo sleep in one another's arms, and dreamOf waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that weRead in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowedThee to be lady of the solitude.--And I have fitted up some chambers thereLooking towards the golden Eastern air,And level with the living winds, which flowLike waves above the living waves below.--I have sent books and music there, and allThose instruments with which high Spirits callThe future from its cradle, and the pastOut of its grave, and make the present lastIn thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,Folded within their own eternity.Our simple life wants little, and true tasteHires not the pale drudge Luxury, to wasteThe scene it would adorn, and therefore still,Nature with all her children haunts the hill.The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yetKeeps up her love-lament, and the owls flitRound the evening tower, and the young stars glanceBetween the quick bats in their twilight dance;The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlightBefore our gate, and the slow, silent nightIs measured by the pants of their calm sleep.Be this our home in life, and when years heapTheir withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,Let us become the overhanging day,The living soul of this Elysian isle,Conscious, inseparable, one. MeanwhileWe two will rise, and sit, and walk together,Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,And wander in the meadows, or ascendThe mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bendWith lightest winds, to touch their paramour;Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,Under the quick, faint kisses of the seaTrembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,--Possessing and possessed by all that isWithin that calm circumference of bliss,And by each other, till to love and liveBe one:--or, at the noontide hour, arriveWhere some old cavern hoar seems yet to keepThe moonlight of the expired night asleep,Through which the awakened day can never peep;A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rainWhose drops quench kisses till they burn again.And we will talk, until thought's melodyBecome too sweet for utterance, and it dieIn words, to live again in looks, which dartWith thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,Harmonizing silence without a sound.Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,And our veins beat together; and our lipsWith other eloquence than words, eclipseThe soul that burns between them, and the wellsWhich boil under our being's inmost cells,The fountains of our deepest life, shall beConfused in Passion's golden purity,As mountain-springs under the morning sun.We shall become the same, we shall be oneSpirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,Till like two meteors of expanding flame,Those spheres instinct with it become the same,Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever stillBurning, yet ever inconsumable:In one another's substance finding food,Like flames too pure and light and unimbuedTo nourish their bright lives with baser prey,Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:One hope within two wills, one will beneathTwo overshadowing minds, one life, one death,One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,And one annihilation. Woe is me!The winged words on which my soul would pierceInto the height of Love's rare Universe,Are chains of lead around its flight of fire--I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,And say:--'We are the masters of thy slave;What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?'Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet,But its reward is in the world divineWhich, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.'So shall ye live when I am there. Then hasteOver the hearts of men, until ye meetMarina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,And bid them love each other and be blessed:And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,And come and be my guest,--for I am Love's.