SYNESIUS.

I dwell amid the city ever.

The great humanity which beats

Its life along the stony streets,

Like a strong and unsunned river

In a self-made course,

I sit and hearken while it rolls.

Very sad and very hoarse

Certes is the flow of souls;

Infinitest tendencies

By the finite prest and pent,

In the finite, turbulent:

How we tremble in surprise

When sometimes, with an awful sound,

God's great plummet strikes the ground!

The champ of the steeds on the silver bit,

As they whirl the rich man's carriage by;

The beggar's whine as he looks at it,—

But it goes too fast for charity;

The trail on the street of the poor man's broom,

That the lady who walks to her palace-home,

On her silken skirt may catch no dust;

The tread of the business-men who must

Count their per-cents by the paces they take;

The cry of the babe unheard of its mother

Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other

Laid yesterday where it will not wake;

The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks

Held out in the smoke, like stars by day;

The gin-door's oath that hollowly chinks

Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate;

The cabman's cry to get out of the way;

The dustman's call down the area-grate;

The young maid's jest, and the old wife's scold,

The haggling talk of the boys at a stall,

The fight in the street which is backed for gold,

The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall;

The drop on the stones of the blind man's staff

As he trades in his own grief's sacredness,

The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh,

The hum upon‘ Change, and the organ's grinding,

( The grinder's face being nevertheless

Dry and vacant of even woe

While the children's hearts are leaping so

At the merry music's winding;)

The black-plumed funeral's creeping train,

Long and slow ( and yet they will go

As fast as Life though it hurry and strain! )

Creeping the populous houses through

And nodding their plumes at either side,—

At many a house, where an infant, new

To the sunshiny world, has just struggled and cried,—

At many a house where sitteth a bride

Trying to-morrow's coronals

With a scarlet blush to-day:

Slowly creep the funerals,

As none should hear the noise and say

“The living, the living must go away

To multiply the dead.”

Hark! an upward shout is sent,

In grave strong joy from tower to steeple

The bells ring out,

The trumpets sound, the people shout,

The young queen goes to her Parliament.

She turneth round her large blue eyes

More bright with childish memories

Than royal hopes, upon the people;

On either side she bows her head

Lowly, with a queenly grace

And smile most trusting-innocent,

As if she smiled upon her mother;

The thousands press before each other

To bless her to her face;

And booms the deep majestic voice

Through trump and drum,— “May the queen rejoice

In the people's liberties!”

I dwell amid the city,

And hear the flow of souls in act and speech,

For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly:

I hear the confluence and sum of each,

And that is melancholy!

Thy voice is a complaint, O crowned city,

The blue sky covering thee like God's great pity.

O blue sky! it mindeth me

Of places where I used to see

Its vast unbroken circle thrown

From the far pale-peaked hill

Out to the last verge of ocean,

As by God's arm it were done

Then for the first time, with the emotion

Of that first impulse on it still.

Oh, we spirits fly at will

Faster than the winged steed

Whereof in old book we read,

With the sunlight foaming back

From his flanks to a misty wrack,

And his nostril reddening proud

As he breasteth the steep thundercloud,—

Smoother than Sabrina's chair

Gliding up from wave to air,

While she smileth debonair

Yet holy, coldly and yet brightly,

Like her own mooned waters nightly,

Through her dripping hair.

Very fast and smooth we fly,

Spirits, though the flesh be by;

All looks feed not from the eye

Nor all hearings from the ear:

We can hearken and espy

Without either, we can journey

Bold and gay as knight to tourney,

And, though we wear no visor down

To dark our countenance, the foe

Shall never chafe us as we go.

I am gone from peopled town!

It passeth its street-thunder round

My body which yet hears no sound,

For now another sound, another

Vision, my soul's senses have —

O'er a hundred valleys deep

Where the hills’ green shadows sleep

Scarce known because the valley-trees

Cross those upland images,

O'er a hundred hills each other

Watching to the western wave,

I have travelled,— I have found

The silent, lone, remembered ground.

I have found a grassy niche

Hollowed in a seaside hill,

As if the ocean-grandeur which

Is aspectable from the place,

Had struck the hill as with a mace

Sudden and cleaving. You might fill

That little nook with the little cloud

Which sometimes lieth by the moon

To beautify a night of June;

A cavelike nook which, opening all

To the wide sea, is disallowed

From its own earth's sweet pastoral:

Cavelike, but roofless overhead

And made of verdant banks instead

Of any rocks, with flowerets spread

Instead of spar and stalactite,

Cowslips and daisies gold and white:

Such pretty flowers on such green sward,

You think the sea they look toward

Doth serve them for another sky

As warm and blue as that on high.

And in this hollow is a seat,

And when you shall have crept to it,

Slipping down the banks too steep

To be o'erbrowzed by the sheep,

Do not think — though at your feet

The cliffs disrupt — you shall behold

The line where earth and ocean meet;

You sit too much above to view

The solemn confluence of the two:

You can hear them as they greet,

You can hear that evermore

Distance-softened noise more old

Than Nereid's singing, the tide spent

Joining soft issues with the shore

In harmony of discontent,

And when you hearken to the grave

Lamenting of the underwave,

You must believe in earth's communion

Albeit you witness not the union.

Except that sound, the place is full

Of silences, which when you cull

By any word, it thrills you so

That presently you let them grow

To meditation's fullest length

Across your soul with a soul's strength:

And as they touch your soul, they borrow

Both of its grandeur and its sorrow,

That deathly odour which the clay

Leaves on its deathlessness alway.

Alway! alway? must this be?

Rapid Soul from city gone,

Dost thou carry inwardly

What doth make the city's moan?

Must this deep sigh of thine own

Haunt thee with humanity?

Green visioned banks that are too steep

To be o'erbrowzed by the sheep,

May all sad thoughts adown you creep

Without a shepherd? Mighty sea,

Can we dwarf thy magnitude

And fit it to our straitest mood?

O fair, fair Nature, are we thus

Impotent and querulous

Among thy workings glorious,

Wealth and sanctities, that still

Leave us vacant and defiled

And wailing like a soft-kissed child,

Kissed soft against his will?

God, God!

With a child's voice I cry,

Weak, sad, confidingly —

God, God!

Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up

Unto Thy love, ( as none of ours are ) droop

As ours, o'er many a tear;

Thou knowest, though Thy universe is broad,

Two little tears suffice to cover all:

Thou knowest, Thou who art so prodigal

Of beauty, we are oft but stricken deer

Expiring in the woods, that care for none

Of those delightsome flowers they die upon.

O blissful Mouth which breathed the mournful breath

We name our souls, self-spoilt!— by that strong passion

Which paled Thee once with sighs, by that strong death

Which made Thee once unbreathing — from the wrack

Themselves have called around them, call them back,

Back to Thee in continuous aspiration!

For here, O Lord,

For here they travel vainly, vainly pass

From city-pavement to untrodden sward

Where the lark finds her deep nest in the grass

Cold with the earth's last dew. Yea, very vain

The greatest speed of all these souls of men

Unless they travel upward to the throne

Where sittest THOU the satisfying ONE,

With help for sins and holy perfectings

For all requirements: while the archangel, raising

Unto Thy face his full ecstatic gazing,

Forgets the rush and rapture of his wings.