The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 91

THE LOVE OF MATURER YEARS.

Nay, soother, do not dream thine art Can altar Nature's stern decree; Or give me back the younger heart, Whose tablets had been clear to thee.

Why seek, fair child, to pierce the dark That wraps the giant wrecks of old?

Thou wert not with me in the ark, When o'er my life the deluge roll'd.

To thee, reclining by the verge, The careless waves in music flow To me the ripple sighs the dirge Of my lost native world below.

Her tranquil arch as Iris builds Above the Anio's torrent roar, Thy life is in the life it gilds, Born of the wave it trembles o'er.

For thee a glory leaves the skies If from thy side a step depart; Thy sunlight beams from human eyes, Thy world is in one human heart.

And in the woman's simple creed Since first the helpmate's task began, Thou ask'st what more than love should need The stern insatiate soul of Man.

No more, while youth with vernal gale Breathes o'er the brief Arcadia still;-- But when the Wanderer quits the vale, But when the footstep scales the hill,

But when with awe the wide expanse, The Pilgrim's earnest eyes explore, How shrinks the land of sweet Romance, A speck--it was the world before!

And, hark, the Dorian fifes succeed The pastoral reeds of Arcady: Lo, where the Spartan meets the Mede, Near Tempe lies--Thermopyle!

Each onward step in hardy life, Each scene that memory halts to scan, Demands the toil, records the strife,-- And love but once is all to man.

Weep'st thou, fair infant, wherefore weep?

Long ages since the Persian sung "The zephyr to the rose should keep, And youth should only love the young."

Ay, lift those chiding eyes of thine; The trite, ungenerous moral scorn!

The diamond's home is in the mine, The violet's birth beneath the thorn;

There, purer light the diamond gives Than when to baubles shaped the ray; There, safe at least the violet lives From hands that clasp--to cast away.

Bloom still beside the mournful heart, Light still the caves denied the star; Oh Eve, with Eden pleased to part, Since Eden needs no comforter!

My soft Arcadian, from thy bower I hear thy music on the hill; And bless the note for many an hour When I too--am Arcadian still.

Whene'er the face of Heaven appears, As kind as once it smiled on me, I'll steal adown the mount of years, And come--a youth once more, to thee.

From bitter grief and iron wrong When Memory sets her captive free, When joy is in the skylark's song, My blithesome steps shall bound to thee;

When Thought, the storm-bird, shrinks before The width of nature's clouded sea, A voice shall charm it home on sh.o.r.e, To share the halcyon's nest with thee:

Lo, how the faithful verse escapes The varying chime that laws decree, And, like my heart, attracted, shapes Each wandering fancy back--to _thee_.

THE EVERLASTING GRAVE-DIGGER.

Methought I stood amidst a burial-place And saw a phantom ply the s.e.xton's trade, Pale o'er the charnel bow'd the phantom's face, Noiseless the phantom spade Gleam'd in the stars.

Wondering I ask'd, "Whose grave dost thou prepare?"

The labouring ghost disdainful paused and said, "To dig the grave is Death my father's care, I disinter the dead Under the stars."

Therewith he cast a skull before my feet, A skull with worms encircled, and a crown, And mouldering shreds of Beauty's winding-sheet.

Chilling and cheerless down Shimmer'd the stars.

"And of the Past," I sigh'd, "are these alone The things disburied? spare the dread repose, Or bring once more the monarch to his throne, To Beauty's cheek the rose."

Cloud wrapt the stars,

While the pale s.e.xton answer'd, "Fool, away!

Thou ask'st of Memory that which Faith must give; Mine is the task to disinter the clay, Hers to bid life revive,"-- Cloud left the stars.

THE DISPUTE OE THE POETS.

An idyll scene of happy Sicily!

Out from its sacred grove on gra.s.sy slopes Smiles a fair temple, vow'd to some sweet Power Of Nature deified. In broad degrees From flower-wreath'd porticos the shining stairs, Through tiers of Myrtle in Corinthian urns, Glide to the shimmer of an argent lake.

Calm rest the swans upon the gla.s.sy wave, Save where the younger cygnets, newly-pair'd, Through floating brakes of water-lilies, sail Slowly in sunlight down to islets dim.

But farther on, the lake subsides away Into the lapsing of a shadowy rill Melodious with the chime of falls as sweet As (heard by Pan in Arethusan glades) The silvery talk of meeting Naades.

Where cool the sunbeam slants through ilex-boughs, The fane above them and the rill below, Two forms recline; nor, e'er in Arcady Did fairer Manhood win an Oread's love, Or lift diviner brows to earliest stars.

The one of brighter hues, and darker curls Cl.u.s.tering and purple as the fruit o' the vine, Seem'd like that Summer-Idol of rich life Whom sensuous Greece, inebriate with delight, From Orient myth and symbol-worship brought To blue Cithaeron blithe with bounding faun And wood-nymph wild,--Nature's young Lord, Iacchus!

Bent o'er the sparkling brook, with careless hand From sedge or sward, he pluck'd or reed or flower, Casting away light wreaths on playful waves; While,--as the curious ripple murmur'd round Its odorous prey, and eddying whirl'd it on O'er pebbles glancing sheen to sunny falls,-- He laugh'd, as childhood laughs, in such frank glee The very leaves upon the ilex danced Joyous, as at some mirthful wind in May.

The other, though the younger, more serene, And to the casual gaze severer far, To that bright comrade-shape; by contrast seem'd As serious Morn, star-crown'd on Spartan hills, To Noon, when hyacinths flush through Enna's vales, Or murmurous winglets hum 'mid Indian palms.

Such beauty his as the first Dorian bore From the far birthplace of Homeric men, Beyond the steeps of Boreal Thessaly, When to the swart Pelasgic Autocthon The blue-eyed Pallas came with lifted spear, And, her twin type of the fair-featured North.

Phoebus, the archer with the golden hair.

Bright was the one as Syrian Adon-ai, Charming the G.o.ddess born from roseate seas; And while the other, leaning on his lyre, Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes From flower and wave to the remotest hill On which the soft horizon melted down, Ev'n so methought had gazed Endymion, With looks estranged from the luxuriant day, To the far Latmos steep--where holy dreams Nightly renew'd the kisses of the Moon.

Entranced I stood, and held my breath to hear The words that seem'd to warm upon their lips, As if such contest as two Nightingales Wage, emulous in music, on the peace That surely dwelt between them, had anon Forced its mellifluous anger:--

Then I learn'd That the fair Two were orphans, rear'd to youth Song and the lyre, where ringdoves coo remote, And loitering bees cull sweets in Hyblan dells: And that their discord, as their union, grew Out of their rivalry in lyre and song.

Therewith did each in the accustom'd war Of pastoral singers in Sicilian noons Strive for his Right--(O Memory aid me now!) In the sweet quarrel of alternate hymns.

ANTHIOS.

As the sunlight that plays on a stream, As the zephyr that rustles a leaf, On my soul comes the joy of the beam, And a zephyr can stir it to grief.

Whether pleasure or pain be decreed, My voice but in music is heard; By the sunny wave murmurs the reed; From the sighing leaf carols the bird.--

LYKEGENES.