V. LONGING.
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ome to me in my dreams, and thenBy day I shall be well again!For then the night will more than payThe hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,A messenger from radiant climes,And smile on thy new world, and beAs kind to others as to me! Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,Come now, and let me dream it truth;And part my hair, and kiss my brow,And say, _My love! why sufferest thou?_ Come to me in my dreams, and thenBy day I shall be well again!For then the night will more than payThe hopeless longing of the day. _DESPONDENCY._ The thoughts that rain their steady glowLike stars on life’s cold sea,Which others know, or say they know,--They never shone for me. Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky,But they will not remain.They light me once, they hurry by,And never come again. _SELF-DECEPTION._ Say, what blinds us, that we claim the gloryOf possessing powers not our share?--Since man woke on earth, he knows his story;But, before we woke on earth, we were. Long, long since, undowered yet, our spiritRoamed, ere birth, the treasuries of God;Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit,Asked an outfit for its earthly road. Then, as now, this tremulous, eager beingStrained and longed, and grasped each gift it saw;Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeingStaved us back, and gave our choice the law. Ah! whose hand that day through heaven guidedMan’s new spirit, since it was not we?Ah! who swayed our choice, and who decidedWhat our gifts and what our wants should be? For, alas! he left us each retainingShreds of gifts which he refused in full;Still these waste us with their hopeless straining,Still the attempt to use them proves them null. And on earth we wander, groping, reeling;Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling,Failed to place that master-feeling clear. We but dream we have our wished-for powers;Ends we seek, we never shall attain.Ah! _some_ power exists there, which is ours?_Some_ end is there, we indeed may gain? _DOVER BEACH._ The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast, the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,Begin and cease, and then again begin,With tremulous cadence slow, and bringThe eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Ægean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery: weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The sea of faithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. _GROWING OLD._ What is it to grow old?Is it to lose the glory of the form,The lustre of the eye?Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?--Yes, but not this alone. Is it to feel our strength--Not our bloom only, but our strength--decay?Is it to feel each limbGrow stiffer, every function less exact,Each nerve more loosely strung? Yes, this, and more; but not,Ah! ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be.’Tis not to have our lifeMellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,--A golden day’s decline. ’Tis not to see the worldAs from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,And heart profoundly stirred;And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,The years that are no more. It is to spend long days,And not once feel that we were ever young;It is to add, immuredIn the hot prison of the present, monthTo month with weary pain. It is to suffer this,And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.Deep in our hidden heartFesters the dull remembrance of a change,But no emotion,--none. It is--last stage of all--When we are frozen up within, and quiteThe phantom of ourselves,To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost,Which blamed the living man. _THE PROGRESS OF POESY._
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