Poems of James Russell Lowell Part 25

PROMETHEUS.

One after one the stars have risen and set, Sparkling upon the h.o.a.rfrost on my chain: The Bear, that prowled all night about the fold Of the North-star, hath shrunk into his den, Scared by the blithesome footsteps of the Dawn, Whose blushing smile floods all the Orient; And now bright Lucifer grows less and less, Into the heaven's blue quiet deep-withdrawn.

Sunless and starless all, the desert sky Arches above me, empty as this heart For ages hath been empty of all joy, Except to brood upon its silent hope, As o'er its hope of day the sky doth now.

All night have I heard voices: deeper yet The deep low breathing of the silence grew, While all about, m.u.f.fled in awe, there stood Shadows, or forms, or both, clear-felt at heart, But, when I turned to front them, far along Only a shudder through the midnight ran, And the dense stillness walled me closer round.

But still I heard them wander up and down That solitude, and flappings of dusk wings Did mingle with them, whether of those hags Let slip upon me once from Hades deep, Or of yet direr torments, if such be, I could but guess; and then toward me came A shape as of a woman: very pale It was, and calm; its cold eyes did not move, And mine moved not, but only stared on them.

Their fixed awe went through my brain like ice, A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as if it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead And palsy-struck it looked. Then all sounds merged Into the rising surges of the pines, Which, leagues below me, clothing the gaunt loins Of ancient Caucasus with hairy strength, Sent up a murmur in the morning wind, Sad as the wail that from the populous earth All day and night to high Olympus soars, Fit incense to thy wicked throne, O Jove!

Thy hated name is tossed once more in scorn From off my lips, for I will tell thy doom.

And are these tears? Nay, do not triumph, Jove, They are wrung from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those spa.r.s.e drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm high-curled and black Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break.

Why art thou made a G.o.d of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force?

True Power was never born of brutish Strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the s.h.a.ggy dugs Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunderbolts, That quell the darkness for a s.p.a.ce, so strong As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself?

Why art thou made a G.o.d of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile?

Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save?

Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; When thine is finished, thou art known no more: There is a higher purity than thou, And higher purity is greater strength; Thy nature is thy doom, at which thy heart Trembles behind the thick wall of thy might.

Let man but hope, and thou art straightway chilled With thought of that drear silence and deep night Which, like a dream, shall swallow thee and thine: Let man but will, and thou art G.o.d no more, More capable of ruin than the gold And ivory that image thee on earth.

He who hurled down the monstrous t.i.tan-brood Blinded with lightnings, with rough thunders stunned, Is weaker than a simple human thought.

My slender voice can shake thee, as the breeze, That seems but apt to stir a maiden's hair, Sways huge Ocea.n.u.s from pole to pole: For I am still Prometheus, and foreknow In my wise heart the end and doom of all.

Yes, I am still Prometheus, wiser grown By years of solitude,--that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,--and long commune With this eternal silence;--more a G.o.d, In my long-suffering and strength to meet With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism, Girt with thy baby-toys of force and wrath.

Yes, I am that Prometheus who brought down The light to man, which thou, in selfish fear, Hadst to thyself usurped,--his by sole right, For Man hath right to all save Tyranny,-- And which shall free him yet from thy frail throne.

Tyrants are but the sp.a.w.n of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on, Who, could they win a glimmer of the light, And see that Tyranny is always weakness, Or Fear with its own bosom ill at ease, Would laugh away in scorn the sand-wove chain Which their own blindness feigned for adamant.

Wrong ever builds on quicksands, but the Right To the firm centre lays its moveless base.

The tyrant trembles, if the air but stirs The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale, Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will.

So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away thy crumbling altars, Jove!

And, wouldst thou know of my supreme revenge Poor tyrant, even now dethroned in heart, Realmless in soul, as tyrants ever are, Listen! and tell me if this bitter peak, This never-glutted vulture, and these chains Shrink not before it; for it shall befit A sorrow-taught, unconquered t.i.tan-heart.

Men, when their death is on them, seem to stand On a precipitous crag that overhangs The abyss of doom, and in that depth to see, As in a gla.s.s, the features dim and vast Of things to come, the shadows, as it seems, Of what have been. Death ever fronts the wise; Not fearfully, but with clear promises Of larger life, on whose broad vans upborne, Their out-look widens, and they see beyond The horizon of the Present and the Past, Even to the very source and end of things.

Such am I now: immortal woe hath made My heart a seer, and my soul a judge Between the substance and the shadow of Truth.

The sure supremeness of the Beautiful, By all the martyrdoms made doubly sure Of such as I am, this is my revenge, Which of my wrongs builds a triumphal arch, Through which I see a sceptre and a throne.

The pipings of glad shepherds on the hills, Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee,-- The songs of maidens pressing with white feet The vintage on thine altars poured no more,-- The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath Dim grape-vine bowers, whose rosy bunches press Not half so closely their warm cheeks, unpaled By thoughts of thy brute l.u.s.t,--the hive-like hum Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea,-- Even the spirit of free love and peace, Duty's sure recompense through life and death,-- These are such harvests as all master-spirits Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs; These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge: For their best part of life on earth is when, Long after death, prisoned and pent no more, Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become Part of the necessary air men breathe; When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud, They shed down light before us on life's sea, That cheers us to steer onward still in hope.

Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea, In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts; The lightning and the thunder, all free things, Have legends of them for the ears of men.

All other glories are as falling stars, But universal Nature watches theirs: Such strength is won by love of human kind.

Not that I feel that hunger after fame, Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with; But that the memory of n.o.ble deeds Cries, shame upon the idle and the vile, And keeps the heart of Man forever up To the heroic level of old time.

To be forgot at first is little pain To a heart conscious of such high intent As must be deathless on the lips of men; But, having been a name, to sink and be A something which the world can do without, Which, having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,--this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs.

Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak,-- Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable G.o.d!

But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A G.o.d among my brethren weak and blind,-- Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon.

But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I Am what myself have made,--a nature wise With finding in itself the types of all,-- With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,-- Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.

Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love, By whom and for whose glory, ye shall cease: And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard From out the pitiless glooms of Chaos, I Shall be a power and a memory, A name to fright all tyrants with, a light Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong, Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake Huge echoes that from age to age live on In kindred spirits, giving them a sense Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung: And many a glazing eye shall smile to see The memory of my triumph, (for to meet Wrong with endurance, and to overcome The present with a heart that looks beyond, Are triumph,) like a prophet eagle, perch Upon the sacred banner of the Right.

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth; But Good, once put in action or in thought, Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down The ripe germs of a forest. Thou; weak G.o.d, Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul, Fresh-living still in the serene abyss, In every heaving shall partake, that grows From heart to heart among the sons of men,-- As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs Far through the aegean from roused isle to isle,-- Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines, And mighty rents in many a cavernous error That darkens the free light to man:--This heart, Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall In all the throbbing exultations share That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all The glorious agonies of martyr-spirits,-- Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds That veil the future, showing them the end,-- Pain's th.o.r.n.y crown for constancy and truth, Girding the temples like a wreath of stars.

This is a thought, that, like a fabled laurel, Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow On the h.o.a.r brows of aged Caucasus: But, O thought far more blissful, they can rend This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star!

Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove!

Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long, Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still, In its invincible manhood, overtops Thy puny G.o.dship, as this mountain doth The pines that moss its roots. O, even now, While from my peak of suffering I look down, Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face, Shone all around with love, no man shall look But straightway like a G.o.d he is uplift Unto the throne long empty for his sake, And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams By his free inward nature, which nor thou, Nor any anarch after thee, can bind From working its great doom,--now, now set free This essence, not to die, but to become Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt The palaces of tyrants, to hunt off, With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings And hideous sense of utter loneliness, All hope of safety, all desire of peace, All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,-- Part of that spirit which doth ever brood In patient calm on the unpilfered nest Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world, Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust In the unfailing energy of Good, Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make Of some o'erbloated wrong,--that spirit which Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man, Like acorns among grain, to grow and be A roof for freedom in all coming time!

But no, this cannot be; for ages yet, In solitude unbroken, shall I hear The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout, And Euxine answer with a m.u.f.fled roar, On either side storming the giant walls Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam, (Less, from my height, than flakes of downy snow,) That draw back baffled but to hurl again, s.n.a.t.c.hed up in wrath and horrible turmoil, Mountain on mountain, as the t.i.tans erst, My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove, Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad In vain emprise. The moon will come and go With her monotonous vicissitude; Once beautiful, when I was free to walk Among my fellows, and to interchange The influence benign of loving eyes, But now by aged use grown wearisome;-- False thought! most false! for how could I endure These crawling centuries of lonely woe Unshamed by weak complaining, but for thee, Loneliest, save me, of all created things, Mild-eyed Astarte, my best comforter, With thy pale smile of sad benignity?

Year after year will pa.s.s away and seem To me, in mine eternal agony, But as the shadows of dumb summer clouds, Which I have watched so often darkening o'er The vast Sarmatian plain, league-wide at first, But, with still swiftness lessening on and on Till cloud and shadow meet and mingle where The gray horizon fades into the sky, Far, far to the northward. Yes, for ages yet Must I lie here upon my altar huge, A sacrifice for man. Sorrow will be, As it hath been, his portion; endless doom, While the immortal with the mortal linked Dreams of its wings and pines for what it dreams, With upward yearn unceasing. Better so: For wisdom is meek sorrow's patient child, And empire over self, and all the deep Strong charities that make men seem like G.o.ds; And love, that makes them be G.o.ds, from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s Sucks in the milk that makes mankind one blood.

Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, Having two faces, as some images Are carved, of foolish G.o.ds; one face is ill; But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, As are all hearts, when we explore their depths.

Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left; And faith, which is but hope grown wise; and love And patience, which at last shall overcome.

1843.

SONG.

Violet! sweet violet!

Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?

Or with gladness are they full, For the night so beautiful, And longing for those far-off spheres?

Loved-one of my youth thou wast, Of my merry youth, And I see, Tearfully, All the fair and sunny past, All its openness and truth, Ever fresh and green in thee As the moss is in the sea.

Thy little heart, that hath with love Grown colored like the sky above, On which thou lookest ever, Can it know All the woe Of hope for what returneth never, All the sorrow and the longing To these hearts of ours belonging?

Out on it! no foolish pining For the sky Dims thine eye, Or for the stars so calmly shining; Like thee let this soul of mine Take hue from that wherefor I long, Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, Not satisfied with hoping--but divine.

Violet! dear violet!

Thy blue eyes are only wet With joy and love of him who sent thee, And for the fulfilling sense Of that glad obedience Which made thee all that Nature meant thee!

1841.

ROSALINE.

Thou look'dst on me all yesternight, Thine eyes were blue, thy hair was bright As when we murmured our troth-plight Beneath the thick stars, Rosaline!

Thy hair was braided on thy head, As on the day we two were wed, Mine eyes scarce knew if thou wert dead, But my shrunk heart knew, Rosaline!

The death-watch ticked behind the wall, The blackness rustled like a pall, The moaning wind did rise and fall Among the bleak pines, Rosaline!

My heart beat thickly in mine ears; The lids may shut out fleshly fears, But still the spirit sees and hears,-- Its eyes are lidless, Rosaline!

A wildness rushing suddenly, A knowing some ill-shape is nigh, A wish for death, a fear to die,-- Is not this vengeance, Rosaline?

A loneliness that is not lone, A love quite withered up and gone, A strong soul trampled from its throne,-- What wouldst thou further, Rosaline?

'Tis drear such moonless nights as these, Strange sounds are out upon the breeze, And the leaves shiver in the trees, And then thou comest, Rosaline!

I seem to hear the mourners go, With long black garments trailing slow, And plumes anodding to and fro, As once I heard them, Rosaline!

Thy shroud is all of snowy white, And, in the middle of the night, Thou standest moveless and upright, Gazing upon me, Rosaline!

There is no sorrow in thine eyes, But evermore that meek surprise,-- O, G.o.d! thy gentle spirit tries To deem me guiltless, Rosaline!

Above thy grave the robin sings, And swarms of bright and happy things Flit all about with sunlit wings,-- But I am cheerless, Rosaline!