Letter to Maria Gisborne
Lines:325Movement:Romanticism
The spider spreads her webs, whether she beIn poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leavesHis 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 wroughtTo catch the idle buzzers of the day--But a soft cell, where when that fades away,Memory may clothe in wings my living nameAnd feed it with the asphodels of fame,Which in those hearts which must remember meGrow, making love an immortality. Whoever should behold me now, I wist,Would think I were a mighty mechanist,Bent with sublime Archimedean artTo breathe a soul into the iron heartOf some machine portentous, or strange gin,Which by the force of figured spells might winIts way over the sea, and sport therein;For round the walls are hung dread engines, suchAs Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutchIxion or the Titan:--or the quickWit of that man of God, St. Dominic,To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,Or those in philanthropic council met,Who thought to pay some interest for the debtThey owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,By giving a faint foretaste of damnationTo Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the restWho made our land an island of the blest,When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fireOn Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:--With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,Which fishers found under the utmost cragOf Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smilesUnless in treacherous wrath, as on the mornWhen the exulting elements in scorn,Satiated with destroyed destruction, laySleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,As panthers sleep;--and other strange and dreadMagical forms the brick floor overspread,--Proteus transformed to metal did not makeMore figures, or more strange; nor did he takeSuch shapes of unintelligible brass,Or heap himself in such a horrid massOf 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 shocksOf wave and wind and time.--Upon the tableMore knacks and quips there be than I am ableTo catalogize in this verse of mine:--A pretty bowl of wood--not full of wine,But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drinkWhen at their subterranean toil they swink,Pledging the demons of the earthquake, whoReply to them in lava--cry halloo!And call out to the cities o'er their head,--Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,Crash through the chinks of earth--and then all quaffAnother rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--withinThe walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,In colour like the wake of light that stainsThe Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rainsThe inmost shower of its white fire--the breezeIs still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.And in this bowl of quicksilver--for IYield to the impulse of an infancyOutlasting manhood--I have made to floatA rude idealism of a paper boat:--A hollow screw with cogs--Henry will knowThe thing I mean and laugh at me,--if soHe fears not I should do more mischief.--NextLie bills and calculations much perplexed,With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaintTraced over them in blue and yellow paint.Then comes a range of mathematicalInstruments, for plans nautical and statical,A heap of rosin, a queer broken glassWith ink in it;--a china cup that wasWhat it will never be again, I think,--A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drinkThe liquor doctors rail at--and which IWill quaff in spite of them--and when we dieWe'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 odd hooks,A 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 disarrayOf figures,--disentangle them who may.Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,And some odd volumes of old chemistry.Near those a most inexplicable thing,With lead in the middle--I'm conjecturingHow 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 weird Archimage sit I,Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mindWhich pump up oaths from clergymen, and grindThe gentle spirit of our meek reviewsInto 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 roundWith an inconstant and an idle sound,I heed him more than them--the thunder-smokeIs gathering on the mountains, like a cloakFolded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;The ripe corn under the undulating airUndulates like an ocean;--and the vinesAre trembling wide in all their trellised lines--The murmur of the awakening sea doth fillThe empty pauses of the blast;--the hillLooks hoary through the white electric rain,And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,The interrupted thunder howls; aboveOne chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of LoveOn the unquiet world;--while such things are,How could one worth your friendship heed the warOf 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 beBut are not.--I demand if ever weShall meet as then we met;--and she replies.Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;'I know the past alone--but summon homeMy sister Hope,--she speaks of all to come.'But I, an old diviner, who knew wellEvery false verse of that sweet oracle,Turned to the sad enchantress once again,And sought a respite from my gentle pain,In citing every passage o'er and o'erOf our communion--how on the sea-shoreWe 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 warmUpon my cheek--and how we often madeFeasts for each other, where good will outweighedThe frugal luxury of our country cheer,As well it might, were it less firm and clearThan ours must ever be;--and how we spunA shroud of talk to hide us from the sunOf this familiar life, which seems to beBut is not:--or is but quaint mockeryOf all we would believe, and sadly blameThe jarring and inexplicable frameOf this wrong world:--and then anatomizeThe purposes and thoughts of men whose eyesWere closed in distant years;--or widely guessThe issue of the earth's great business,When we shall be as we no longer are--Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the warOf winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or howYou listened to some interrupted flowOf visionary rhyme,--in joy and painStruck from the inmost fountains of my brain,With little skill perhaps;--or how we soughtThose deepest wells of passion or of thoughtWrought by wise poets in the waste of years,Staining their sacred waters with our tears;Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!Or how I, wisest lady! then enduedThe 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 tongueWhich Calderon over the desert flungOf ages and of nations; and which foundAn echo in our hearts, and with the soundStartled oblivion;--thou wert then to meAs is a nurse--when inarticulatelyA child would talk as its grown parents do.If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blastOut of the forest of the pathless pastThese recollected pleasures?You are nowIn London, that great sea, whose ebb and flowAt once is deaf and loud, and on the shoreVomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.Yet in its depth what treasures! You will seeThat which was Godwin,--greater none than heThough fallen--and fallen on evil times--to standAmong the spirits of our age and land,Before the dread tribunal of "to come"The foremost,--while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscureIn the exceeding lustre and the pureIntense irradiation of a mind,Which, with its own internal lightning blind,Flags wearily through darkness and despair--A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,A hooded eagle among blinking owls.--You will see Hunt--one of those happy soulsWhich are the salt of the earth, and without whomThis world would smell like what it is--a tomb;Who is, what others seem; his room no doubtIs still adorned with 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 learned among some dozensOf female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.And there is he with his eternal puns,Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like dunsThundering 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 lookThings wiser than were ever read in book,Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness.--You will see Hogg,--and I cannot expressHis virtues,--though I know that they are great,Because he locks, then barricades the gateWithin which they inhabit;--of his witAnd 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 thereIs English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,Turned into a Flamingo;--that shy birdThat gleams i' the Indian air--have you not heardWhen a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,His best friends hear no more of him?--but youWill see him, and will like him too, I hope,With the milk-white Snowdonian AntelopeMatched with this cameleopard--his fine witMakes 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 time,Fold itself up for the serener climeOf years to come, and find its recompenseIn that just expectation.--Wit and sense,Virtue and human knowledge; all that mightMake this dull world a business of delight,Are all combined in Horace Smith.--And these.With some exceptions, which I need not teaseYour patience by descanting on,--are allYou and I know in London.I recallMy thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.As water does a sponge, so the moonlightFills 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 wanClimbs 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 standOf Hackney coaches--a brick house or wallFencing some lonely court, white with the scrawlOf our unhappy politics;--or worse--A wretched woman reeling by, whose curseMixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,You must accept in place of serenade--Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuringTo Henry, some unutterable thing.I see a chaos of green leaves and fruitBuilt round dark caverns, even to the rootOf the living stems that feed them--in whose bowersThere sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;Beyond, the surface of the unsickled cornTrembles not in the slumbering air, and borneIn circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,Pale in the open moonshine, but each oneUnder the dark trees seems a little sun,A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astrayFrom the silver regions of the milky way;--Afar the Contadino's song is heard,Rude, but made sweet by distance--and a birdWhich cannot be the Nightingale, and yetI know none else that sings so sweet as itAt this late hour;--and then all is still--Now--Italy or London, which you will! Next winter you must pass with me; I'll haveMy house by that time turned into a graveOf dead despondence and low-thoughted care,And all the dreams which our tormentors are;Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,With everything belonging to them fair!--We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;And ask one week to make another weekAs like his father, as I'm unlike mine,Which is not his fault, as you may divine.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 hostOf syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,And other such lady-like luxuries,--Feasting on which we will philosophize!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 boutOf thought-entangled descant;--as to nerves--With cones and parallelograms and curvesI've sworn to strangle them if once they dareTo bother me--when you are with me there.And they shall never more sip laudanum,From Helicon or Himeros (1);--well, come,And in despite of God and of the devil,We'll make our friendly philosophic revelOutlast the leafless time; till buds and flowersWarn the obscure inevitable hours,Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;--'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.'