REGRETS

BRIEF glimpses of the bright celestial spheres,

False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams,

Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame,

The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud,

The sinking of the downward-falling star,—

All these are pictures of the changing moods

Borne through the midnight stillness of my soul.

Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock,

Prey to the vulture of a vast desire

That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands

And steal a moment's freedom from the beak,

The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes;

Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;

“Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust

Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies

Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee,

Unchanging as the belt Orion wears,

Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown,

The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!”

And so she twines the fetters with the flowers

Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird

Stoops to his quarry,— then to feed his rage

Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood

And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night

Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek,

And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes.

All for a line in some unheeded scroll;

All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns,

“Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod

Where squats the jealous nightmare men call

Fame!”

I marvel not at him who scorns his kind

And thinks not sadly of the time foretold

When the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck,

A slag, a cinder drifting through the sky

Without its crew of fools! We live too long,

And even so are not content to die,

But load the mould that covers up our bones

With stones that stand like beggars by the road

And show death's grievous wound and ask for tears;

Write our great books to teach men who we are,

Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase

The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray

For alms of memory with the after time,

Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wear

Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold

And the moist life of all that breathes shall die;

Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise,

Would have us deem, before its growing mass,

Pelted with star-dust, stoned with meteor-balls,

Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last

Man and his works and all that stirred itself

Of its own motion, in the fiery glow

Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb

Shines a new sun for earths that shall be born.

I am as old as Egypt to myself,

Brother to them that squared the pyramids

By the same stars I watch. I read the page

Where every letter is a glittering world,

With them who looked from Shinar's clay-built towers,

Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland sea

Had missed the fallen sister of the seven.

I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown,

Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth,

Quit all communion with their living time.

I lose myself in that ethereal void,

Till I have tired my wings and long to fill

My breast with denser air, to stand, to walk

With eyes not raised above my fellow-men.

Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm,

I ask to change the myriad lifeless worlds

I visit as mine own for one poor patch

Of this dull spheroid and a little breath

To shape in word or deed to serve my kind.

Was ever giant's dungeon dug so deep,

Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong,

Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught

The false wife mingles for the trusting fool,

As he whose willing victim is himself,

Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?