Part 13

And visitations, that do often use, Remote, unhappy, inauspicious sense Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse, And what dark ’gan, dark ended, in me did commence.

I thought of spirit wronged by mortal ills, And my flesh rotting on my fate’s dull stake; And how self-scornèd they the bounty fills Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take.

I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time, In predecease of his just-sickening song; Of him that set, wrapt in his radiant rhyme, Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long.

But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,— O then, no more but even a soulless corse! Nay, my Delight dies not; ’tis I should be Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force.

Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place, Apollo’s song-bowed Scythian, I go on; Making in all my home, with pliant ways, But, provident of change, putting forth root in none.

Now, with starved brain, sick body, patience galled With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky Fell sudden little rain, scarce to be called A shower, which of the instant was gone wholly by.

What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair. Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:— ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘even so, my brother the good Cloud?’

It was a pilgrim of the fields of air, Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest, And in a little forth again did fare, And in all places was a stranger and a guest.

It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills; It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay, And with the thunder walked upon the lonely hills.

And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn, It drew the sustenance whereby it grew Perfect in bosom for the married Morn, And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new.

Its also darkness of the face withdrawn, And the long waiting for the little light, So long in life so little. Like a fawn It fled with tempest breathing hard at heel of flight;

And having known full East, did not disdain To sit in shadow and oblivious cold, Save what all loss doth of its loss retain, And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold.

Right poet! who thy rightness to approve, Having all liberty, didst keep all measure, And with a firmament for ranging, move But at the heavens’ uncomprehended pleasure.

With amplitude unchecked, how sweetly thou Didst wear the ancient custom of the skies, And yoke of used prescription; and thence how Find gay variety no license could devise!

As we the quested beauties better wit Of the one grove our own than forests great, Restraint, by the delighted search of it, Turns to right scope. For lovely moving intricate

Is put to fair devising in the curb Of ordered limit; and all-changeful Hermes Is Terminus as well. Yet we perturb Our souls for latitude, whose strength in bound and term is.

How far am I from heavenly liberty, That play at policy with change and fate, Who should my soul from foreign broils keep free, In the fast-guarded frontiers of its single state!

Could I face firm the Is, and with To-be Trust Heaven; to Heaven commit the deed, and do; In power contained, calm in infirmity, And fit myself to change with virtue ever new;

Thou hadst not shamed me, cousin of the sky, Thou wandering kinsman, that didst sweetly live Unnoted, and unnoted sweetly die, Weeping more gracious song than any I can weave;

Which these gross-tissued words do sorely wrong. Thou hast taught me on powerlessness a power; To make song wait on life, not life on song; To hold sweet not too sweet, and bread for bread though sour;

By law to wander, to be strictly free. With tears ascended from the heart’s sad sea, Ah, such a silver song to Death could I Sing, Pain would list, forgetting Pain to be, And Death would tarry marvelling, and forget to die!

TO THE SINKING SUN

HOW graciously thou wear’st the yoke Of use that does not fail! The grasses, like an anchored smoke, Ride in the bending gale; This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna, And fire-dropt as a seraph’s mail.

Here every eve thou stretchest out Untarnishable wing, And marvellously bring’st about Newly an olden thing; Nor ever through like-ordered heaven Moves largely thy grave progressing.

Here every eve thou goest down Behind the self-same hill, Nor ever twice alike go’st down Behind the self-same hill; Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower Possessed with glory past its will.

Not twice alike! I am not blind, My sight is live to see; And yet I do complain of thy Weary variety. O Sun! I ask thee less or more, Change not at all, or utterly!

O give me unprevisioned new, Or give to change reprieve! For new in me is olden too, That I for sameness grieve. O flowers! O grasses! be but once The grass and flower of yester-eve!

Wonder and sadness are the lot Of change: thou yield’st mine eyes Grief of vicissitude, but not Its penetrant surprise. Immutability mutable Burthens my spirit and the skies.