Perennial spring of life's divinest joys!
Source of our dearest bliss and darkest woe!
Thy power creates, thy power, alas! destroys
Dreams that with magic, heaven-caught splendors glow.
From thy resistless, charmed influence flow
Transports that raise the enraptured, ravished mind
To heights supernal or in depths below
Imaginable blackness plunge it. Blind
And helpless as thou art thy fetters conquerors bind.
Thou buildest upon clouds fair palaces,
Whose halls with bright creations thou dost fill,
Ethereal habitants of rosy skics,
Evoked to being at thy potent will.
Like Memnon's statue moved by cunning skill
The slumbering soul thy rising beam salutes,
Awaked by thee to rapture's sweetest thrill;
The alchemist divine whose touch transmutes
To gold, thou givest to earth of Heaven the attributes.
Yet would I not invoke thy hallowed power
Lightly our mean and sordid life to grace.
Too sacred thou, of earth celestial dower,
To find in slaves' or tyrants' homes a place;
Yet, oh, the hope that thou our stubborn race
Mayest yet regenerate let me not lose;
That thou into our instincts blind and base
Of purer light the spirit mayest transfuse,
And round our mortal state immortal joys diffuse.
Shine ever, else, celestial Love! a star
In the far heaven of the Unattained,
Sending thy beams serenely from afar,
By mists of earth's chill atmosphere unstained;
From springs exhaustless thy clear light sustained,
Life's bark o'er trackless waters safe to guide,
Until her haven of repose be gained;
Lest from thy high sphere fallen it betide
A thing of senseless matter Youth's fond dreams deride.
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A sunny slope by hills encompassed round,
Whose summits fade into the bending sky,
With glory of primeval forests crowned,
That veil in vaporous robes their majesty;
While of the sea the waters shadowy,
Glimmer through sudden breaks in glimpses caught
Far in the hazy distance, silently
Stirring the hidden depths of slumbering thought
With fancies vague and sweet, like zephyrs perfume-fraught.
A limpid stream, now hidden among trees,
Now flashing into light, o'er amber sands,
That ceaseless babbles of Earth's mysteries,
Of cloud-borne tidings from far tropic lands,
Of ships hope-freighted, wrecked on foreign strands,
Of Youth and Joy, of Sorrow and of Death;
(But Nature wills that whoso understands
Of grief the speech, alone interpreteth
The note discordant heard Earth's sweetest strain beneath.)
A stately dwelling crowns the green ascent,
Embowered in trees and hung with trailing vines;
Lifting its turrets to the orient,
That catch the sun's first golden beam that shines
Beyond the hills, his last when he declines;
And where the woods a wilder aspect take
At sultry noon the shadow of the pines
A still retreat for charmëd revery make,
Fresh as the gelid depths of some crystalline lake.
High over all the deep and liquid blue
Of heaven serenely smiles, untroubled here
By baleful mists the soul's aspiring view
That intercept, seeking her native sphere;
Soft odorous winds the tepid atmosphere
Stir gently, rocking cradled buds to dreams
Of all delights that subtly minister
To that of being—melody of streams
Or birds; of sun or star bright dew-reflected beams.
Such was the spot where Eden bloomed again
For two of mortal mould; fair as ere Death
Had cast his shadow over Earth, or Sin
Blighted her fairest bloom with poisoned breath.
Here Love now crowns them with immortal wreath,
And Nature offers her divinest draught
In sacramental pomp; on wings of Faith,
Dissolved in rapture from Love's chalice quaffed,
Their souls to realms supernal airs celestial waft.
Here the enchanted hours on noiseless wing—
Each bearing gifts of fairest bloom to lay
Before them of the lavish wealth of Spring—
Breathing sweet odors, glided swift away,
Till Summer followed in the steps of May,
Trailing her gorgeous robes upon the ground,
With flowers of every varied color gay;
Her laughing brow with blushing roses crowned,
And scattering as she passed Delights and Joys around.
And Learning brought her treasures to impart
A subtler charm to those that Nature wore;
For Julian in the magic realm of Art
Had wandered far; his mind in the world's lore
Had steeped; his inner vision, to the core
Piercing of things, discerned behind the dense
Dull mask of senseless matter that they bore,
The soul that gave them being, intense
And full his life of all life owned the influence.
At the clear springs his spirit had drunk deep
Of Wisdom's sacred stream; so was he strong
To do or suffer that his soul might keep
Her whiteness undefiled amid the throng
Of worldlings weak or wicked; he still clung
To boyhood's bright illusions, and his faith
Ended to witness the Empire of Wrong
Still greenly bloomed; the desolating breath
Of Time no dear hope yet, no joy, had laid in death.
Oft had his soul with noble ardor glowed,
Dilating to the measure of his trust,
From off the chains of bondage that corrode
The souls of men with strength-consuming rust,
Some link to strike, Evil some deadly thrust
To give with Truth's bright sword; so should his name
Live in men's hearts; nor in forgotten dust
Moulder, in death's divorce, his mortal frame,
But, hallowed, share the immortality of Fame.
A lofty soul that dwelt in antique mould,
Where grace and strength were blent in just degree;
An ardent spirit that might not grow cold
Or stern, but sat in bright serenity;
A mind that, self-contained, was clear and free;
A heart attuned to Nature's varied moods,
But to the accents of Humanity
Vibrating longest; amid multitudes
At home, yet not alone in voiceless solitudes.
Love's charmëd hand had never touched the chords
Of being, drawing thence their sweetest tone;
Revealing to his soul in burning words
The gospel whose glad promises atone
For all of bitterness the heart hath known,
Or yet may know, until, effulgent bright,
Broke on his soul the glory of the dawn
Before whose splendor paled each lesser light
Of life's horizon, sunk into Oblivion's night.
Transfigured by its beams Violet stood,
A radiant vision of celestial mould;
The chosen priestess of the Fair and Good,
Whose advent Youth's bright dreams had oft foretold.
Imagination, borne on pinion bold
And strong to heights unseen of mortal eye,
Beyond the realm of Reason, clear and cold,
No fairer dream of mortal destiny
Had pictured than the dear and sweet reality.
Seated beneath the shade of some old oak
Oft would they watch the blue and silent sky,
Whose tranquil depths to their young bosoms spoke
Of love enduring through Infinity.
Oft would they watch the clouds that floated by,
And picture there some island where the blest,
Freed from Earth's trammels, through eternity
Might dwell; some haven of ecstatic rest
That Fancy with unfading beauty would invest.
And oft would Violet in the sweet tongue
Of her own land some antique ballad sing,
Whose cadences the forest shades among
Like echoes from another sphere would ring;
Or tones with soul-taught sweetness ravishing,
Veiled in the accents of some song-adept,
From out the depths of her own heart would spring,
That all unconscious there will now had slept,
And waking, round them both the chain of silence kept.
And many a bright creation Julian wove
From his own fancy; many an old romance
He would recount, or tale of hapless love,
With voice commoved, or pity-laden glance;
Whereat, with gently-troubled countenance,
Would Violet sigh; and thus the flame they fed
Of love, that sought such maskëd utterance:
And legends wild and fairy tales they read;
Stringing bright gems of Fancy on Truth's golden thread.
And thus they yielded to the subtle power
That breathed in every gale, exhaled unseen
From out the perfumed calyx of each flower,
And every tender shoot of living green;
Softly it wrapped them in the tremulous sheen
That over forest, hill and valley lay,
Transfiguring all it touched—the smile serene
Of the great Soul that animates the clay
Of earth, and rules the world with mild, benignant sway.
And as a seed draws from the soft, moist earth
Its nourishment, and hid beneath the mould,
Breaks from its shell and silently puts forth
Its tender shoots until the manifold
Powers by which its being is controlled
Impel its growth to seek the vital air,
Then dews and sunshine its young leaves unfold,
And on the senses it breaks unaware,
Of sweetness and of beauty a creation rare—
So did the flower of love its leaves expand,
Greeting the day with sudden light and bloom;
Fed by soft dews, by airs celestial fanned,
It sheds around a ravishing perfume.
Of torrid heats unconscious that consume,
Or frosts that blight, it bares its glowing heart
To the transfiguring splendors that illume
Its beauty; all things to its bloom impart
Their fairest, and become of its own life a part.
O hour supreme! when first the golden chain
Of speech unites two souls that silently
Had intertwined their being. Love's sweet pain
Is changed to rapture when this melody
Divine gives vague, mute bliss reality.
Hopes, like young birds that from their downy nest
To dare their fate, eager yet timid fly,
Grow bold when in security they rest,
And fearless plume their wings, to higher flights addressed.
And now Love's lotus-flower steeps their souls
In sweet oblivion of all life had held,
Beyond the fairy picture time unrolls
Before their charmëd gaze—a glimpse revealed
Of Heaven to mortal vision. Time can yield
In all his course no fairer, dearer hour;
In Joy's bright meteor-blaze her beams concealed,
The star of Hope has lost her useless power,
Of Sorrow's dreary night her milder light the dower.
The golden circle of Humanity
Is narrowed to themselves. For them alone
Was Earth created, joyous, fair and free,
The realm where each the other would enthrone,
Sole sovereign whose dear sway all things should own
In glad obedience—egotism sublime
Of Youth and Love, whose faith may well atone
For the cold wisdom with which hoary Time
Crowns the steep height that Age with faltering step must climb.