The Woodman and the Nightingale
Lines:239Movement:Romanticism
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune(I think such hearts yet never came to good)Hated to hear, under the stars or moon, One nightingale in an interfluous woodSatiate the hungry dark with melody;--And as a vale is watered by a flood, Or as the moonlight fills the open skyStruggling with darkness--as a tuberosePeoples some Indian dell with scents which lie Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,The singing of that happy nightingaleIn this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,Was interfused upon the silentness;The folded roses and the violets pale Heard her within their slumbers, the abyssOf heaven with all its planets; the dull earOf the night-cradled earth; the loneliness Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphereAnd every flower and beam and cloud and wave,And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,And every silver moth fresh from the grave Which is its cradle--ever from belowAspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,To be consumed within the purest glow Of one serene and unapproached star,As if it were a lamp of earthly light,Unconscious, as some human lovers are, Itself how low, how high beyond all heightThe heaven where it would perish!--and every formThat worshipped in the temple of the night Was awed into delight, and by the charmGirt as with an interminable zone,Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivionOut of their dreams; harmony became loveIn every soul but one. ... And so this man returned with axe and sawAt evening close from killing the tall treen,The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever greenThe pavement and the roof of the wild copse,Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene With jagged leaves,--and from the forest topsSinging the winds to sleep--or weeping oftFast showers of aereal water-drops Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;--Around the cradles of the birds aloft They spread themselves into the lovelinessOf fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowersHang like moist clouds:--or, where high branches kiss, Make a green space among the silent bowers,Like a vast fane in a metropolis,Surrounded by the columns and the towers All overwrought with branch-like traceriesIn which there is religion--and the mutePersuasion of unkindled melodies, Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the luteOf the blind pilot-spirit of the blastStirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passedTo such brief unison as on the brainOne tone, which never can recur, has cast,One accent never to return again. ... The world is full of Woodmen who expelLove's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,And vex the nightingales in every dell. Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchangeRuins the merchants of such thriftless trade,Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearnSuch bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn. A massy tower yet overhangs the town,A scattered group of ruined dwellings now... ... Another scene are wise Etruria knewIts second ruin through internal strifeAnd tyrants through the breach of discord threwThe chain which binds and kills. As death to life,As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison. In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured goldWas brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:A Sacrament more holy ne'er of oldEtrurians mingled mid the shades forlornOf moon-illumined forests, when... And reconciling factions wet their lipsWith that dread wine, and swear to keep each spiritUndarkened by their country's last eclipse... ... Was Florence the liberticide? that bandOf free and glorious brothers who had planted,Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,A nation amid slaveries, disenchantedOf many impious faiths--wise, just--do they,Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey? O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory,Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:--The light-invested angel PoesyWas drawn from the dim world to welcome thee. And thou in painting didst transcribe all taughtBy loftiest meditations; marble knewThe sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought,The grace of his own power and freedom grew.And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,Thou wart among the false...was this thy crime? Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twineOf direst weeds hangs garlanded--the snakeInhabits its wrecked palaces;--in thineA beast of subtler venom now doth makeIts lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own. The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,And love and freedom blossom but to wither;And good and ill like vines entangled are,So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;--Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then makeThy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake. 10a. Marenghi was a Florentine;If he had wealth, or children, or a wifeOr friends, or cherished thoughts which twineThe sights and sounds of home with life's own lifeOf these he was despoiled and Florence sent... ... No record of his crime remains in story,But if the morning bright as evening shone,It was some high and holy deed, by gloryPursued into forgetfulness, which wonFrom the blind crowd he made secure and freeThe patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy. For when by sound of trumpet was declaredA price upon his life, and there was setA penalty of blood on all who sharedSo much of water with him as might wetHis lips, which speech divided not--he wentAlone, as you may guess, to banishment. Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,Month after month endured; it was a feastWhene'er he found those globes of deep-red goldWhich in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,And where the huge and speckled aloe made,Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,-- He housed himself. There is a point of strandNear Vado's tower and town; and on one sideThe treacherous marsh divides it from the land,Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,And on the other, creeps eternally,Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and fewBut things whose nature is at war with life--Snakes and ill worms--endure its mortal dew.The trophies of the clime's victorious strife--And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there. And at the utmost point...stood thereThe relics of a reed-inwoven cot,Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murdererHad lived seven days there: the pursuit was hotWhen he was cold. The birds that were his graveFell dead after their feast in Vado's wave. There must have burned within Marenghi's breastThat fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon...More joyous than free heaven's majestic copeTo his oppressor), warring with decay,--Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day. Nor was his state so lone as you might think.He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,And every seagull which sailed down to drinkThose freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.And each one, with peculiar talk and play,Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away. And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at nightCame licking with blue tongues his veined feet;And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,In many entangled figures quaint and sweetTo some enchanted music they would dance--Until they vanished at the first moon-glance. He mocked the stars by grouping on each weedThe summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could readIts pictured path, as on bare spots of lawnIts delicate brief touch in silver weavesThe likeness of the wood's remembered leaves. And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like ironQuivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshakenOf mountains and blue isles which did environWith air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--And feel ... liberty. And in the moonless nights when the dun oceanHeaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,Starting from dreams...Communed with the immeasurable world;And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. His food was the wild fig and strawberry;The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blastShakes into the tall grass; or such small fryAs from the sea by winter-storms are cast;And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he foundKnotted in clumps under the spongy ground. And so were kindled powers and thoughts which madeHis solitude less dark. When memory came(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),His spirit basked in its internal flame,--As, when the black storm hurries round at night,The fisher basks beside his red firelight. Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,Like billows unawakened by the wind,Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.His couch... ... And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planetA black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,Like the dark ghost of the unburied evenStriding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,-- The thought of his own kind who made the soulWhich sped that winged shape through night and day,--The thought of his own country... ...