The Poetical Works of Hemans, Heber and Pollok

I come with mightier things! Who calls me silent?—I have many tonesThe dark skies thrill with low, mysterious moans, Borne on my sweeping wings.

I waft them not alone

From the deep organ of the forest shades,

Or buried streams, unheard amidst their glades, Till the bright day is done;

But in the human breast

A thousand still small voices I awake,
Strong, in their sweetness, from the soul to shake
The mantle of its rest.

I bring them from the past:

From true hearts broken, gentle spirits torn, From crushed affections, which, though long o'erborne,

Make their tones heard at last.

I bring them from the tomb;

O'er the sad couch of late repentant love

The fixed and solemn stars
Gleam through my dungeon bars-

Wake, rushing winds! this breezeless calm is death!

Ye watch-fires of the skies!

The stillness of your eyes

Looks too intensely through my troubled soul:
I feel this weight of rest

An earth-load on my breast-
Wake, rushing winds,awake! and, dark clouds, roll!

I am your own, your child,
O ye, the fierce and wild

And kingly tempests!-will ye not arise?
Hear the bold spirit's voice,

That knows not to rejoice

But in the peal of your strong harmonies.

By sounding ocean-waves,
And dim Calabrian caves,

And flashing torrents, I have been your mate;
And with the rocking pines

Of the olden Apennines,

They pass-though low as murmurs of a dove-In your dark path stood fearless and elate:

Like trumpets through the gloom.

I come with all my train:

Who calls me lonely?-Hosts around me tread, The intensely bright, the beautiful,-the dead,Phantoms of heart and brain!

Looks from departed eyes—

These are my lightnings!-filled with anguish vain, Or tenderness too piercing to sustain,

They smite with agonies.

I, that with soft control,

Shut the dim violet, hush the woodland song,
I am the avenging one! the armed—the strong,
The searcher of the soul!

I, that shower dewy light Through slumbering leaves, bring storms!-the tempest-birth

Of memory, thought, remorse:-Be holy, earth! I am the solemn night!*

THE STORM PAINTER+ IN HIS DUNGEON.

Where of ye, O tempests, is the goal?

Are ye like those that shake the human breast?

Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?

Childe Harold.

MIDNIGHT, and silence deep!

The air is filled with sleep,

Your lightnings were as rods,

That smote the deep abodes

Of thought and vision-and the stream gushed free; Come, that my soul again

May swell to burst its chainBring me the music of the sweeping sea!

Within me dwells a flame,
An eagle caged and tame,
Till called forth by the harping of the blast;
Then is its triumph's hour,

It springs to sudden power,
As mounts the billow o'er the quivering mast.

Then, then, the canvass o'er,
With hurried hand I pour

The lava-waves and gusts of my own soul!
Kindling to fiery life

Dreams, worlds, of pictured strife;Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!

Wake, rise! the reed may bend,
The shivering leaf descend,

The forest branch give way before your might
But I, your strong compeer,

Call, summon, wait you here,Answer, my spirit!-answer, storm and night!

tures of storms. "His compositions," says Lanzi, "inspire a real horror, presenting to our eyes death-devoted ships overtaken by tempests and darkness; fired by lightning; now rising on the mountain wave, and again submerged in the

With the stream's whisper, and the citron's breath; abyss of ocean." During an imprisonment of five years in

'Originally published in the Winter's Wreath, for 1830.

Genoa, the pictures which he painted in his dungeon were marked by additional power and gloom.-See Lanzi's His

• Pietro Mulier, called II Tempesta, from his surprising pic-tory of Painting, translated by Roscoe.

“Thy bark may rush through the foaming deep, «Thou art gone home, gone home!" then, high

Thy steed o'er the breezy hill;

But they bear thee on to a place of sleep,
Narrow, and cold, and chill!"

"Was the voice I heard, thy voice, O Death? And is thy day so near?

Then on the field shall my life's last breath
Mingle with victory's cheer!

"Banners shall float, with the trumpet's note, Above me as I die!

And the palm tree wave o'er my noble grave,
Under the Syrian sky.

"High hearts shall burn in the royal hall,

When the minstrel names that spot; And the eyes I love shall weep my fall,

Death, Death! I fear thee not!" "Warrior! thou bearest a haughty heart;

But I can bend its pride!

How shouldst thou know that thy soul will part In the hour of victory's tide?

"It may be far from thy steel-clad bands,
That I shall make thee mine;

It may be lone on the desert sands,
Where men for fountains pine!

"It may be deep amidst heavy chains,
In some strong Paynim hold;—

I have slow dull steps and lingering pains,
Wherewith to tame the bold!"

"Death, Death! I go to a doom unblest,
If this indeed must be;

But the cross is bound upon my breast,
And I may not shrink for thee!

and clear, Warbled that other Voice: "Thou hast no tear Again to shed.

Never to fold the robe o'er secret pain,
Never, weighed down by Memory's clouds, again
To bow thy head.

"Thou art gone home! from that divine repose Never to roam!

Never to say farewell, to weep in vain,

"Sound, clarion, sound!-for my vows are given To read of change, in eyes beloved, again—

To the cause of the holy shrine;

I bow my soul to the will of Heaven,

O Death!-and not to thine !"

THE TWO VOICES.

Two solemn Voices, in a funeral strain,
Met as rich sunbeams and dark bursts of rain
Meet in the sky:

Thou art gone home!

"By the bright waters now thy lot is cast,Joy for thee, happy friend! thy bark hath past The rough sea's foam!

Now the long yearnings of thy soul are stilled,Home! home!-thy peace is won, thy heart is filled.

-Thou art gone home!"

Blue seas that roll on gorgeous coasts renowned, By night shall sparkle where thy prow makes way;

Strange creatures of the abyss that none may sound,
In thy broad wake shall play.

From hills unknown, in mingled joy and fear,
Free dusky tribes shall pour, thy flag to mark;
Blessings go with thee on thy lone career!
Hail, and farewell, thou bark!

A long farewell!-Thou wilt not bring us back,
All whom thou bearest far from home and hearth.
Many are thine, whose steps no more shall track
Their own sweet native earth!

Some wilt thou leave beneath the plantain's shade, Where through the foliage Indian suns look bright;

Some, in the snows of wintry regions laid,
By the cold northern light.

"And the merry-men of wild and glen,

In the green array they wore,
Have feasted here with the red wine's cheer,
And the hunter's song of yore.

“And the minstrel, resting in my shade,
Hath made the forest ring
With the lordly tales of the high Crusade,
Once loved by chief and king.

"But now the noble forms are gone, That walked the earth of old; The soft wind hath a mournful tone, The sunny light looks cold.

"There is no glory left us now,
Like the glory with the dead:-

I would that where they slumber low
My latest leaves were shed!"

Oh! thou dark Tree, thou lonely Tree,

That mournest for the past!

A peasant's home in thy shades I see,
Embowered from every blast.
A lovely and a mirthful sound

Of laughter meets mine ear;

For the poor man's children sport around
On the turf, with nought to fear.
And roses lend that cabin's wall

A happy summer-glow;
And the open door stands free to all
For it recks not of a foe.

And the village bells are on the breeze,
That stirs thy leaf, dark Tree!
How can I mourn, 'midst things like these,
For the stormy past, with thee?

YE have been holy, O founts and floods!
Ye of the ancient and solemn woods,
Ye that are born of the valleys deep,
With the water flowers on your breast asleep,
And ye that gush from the sounding caves-
Hallowed have been your waves.

Hallowed by man, and his dreams of old,
Unto beings not of this mortal mould
Viewless, and deathless, and wondrous powers,
Whose voice he heard in his lonely hours,
And sought with its fancied sound to still
The heart earth could not fill.

Therefore the flowers of bright summers gone,
O'er your sweet waters, ye streams! were thrown
Thousand of gifts, to the sunny sea

Have ye swept along in your wanderings free,
And thrilled to the murmur of many a vow-
Where all is silent now!

Nor seems it strange that the heart hath been
So linked in love to your margins green;
That still, though ruined, your early shrines
In beauty gleam through the southern vines

| And the ivyed chapels of colder skies. On your wild banks arise.

For the loveliest scenes of the glowing earth, Are those, bright streams! where your springs have birth;

Whether their caverned murmur fills,

With a tone of plaint the hollow hills,
Or the glad sweet laugh of their healthful flow
Is heard 'midst the hamlets low.

Or whether ye gladden the desert-sands,
With a joyous music to Pilgrim bands,
And a flash from under some ancient rock,
Where a shepherd-king might have watched his
flock,

Where a few lone palm-trees lift their heads,
And a green Acacia spreads.

Or whether, in bright old lands renowned,
The laurels thrill to your first-born sound,
And the shadow, flung from the Grecian pine,
Sweeps with the breeze o'er your gleaming line,
And the tall reeds whisper to your waves
Beside heroic graves.

Voices and lights of the lonely place!
By the freshest fern your path we trace;
By the brightest cups on the emerald moss,
Whose fairy goblets the turf emboss,
By the rainbow-glancing of insect-wings,
In a thousand mazy rings.

There sucks the bee, for the richest flowers
Are all your own through the summer-hours:
There the proud stag his fair image knows,
Traced on your glass beneath alder-boughs,
And the Halcyon's breast, like the skies arrayed,
Gleams through the willow-shade.

But the wild sweet tales, that with elves and fays
Peopled your banks in olden days,
And the memory left by departed love,
To your antique founts in glen and grove,
And the glory born of the poet's dreams-

These are your charms, bright streams!

Now is the time of your flowery rites,
Gone by with its dances and young delights:
From your marble urns ye have burst away,
From your chapel-cells to the laughing day;
Low lie your altars with moss o'ergrown,

-And the woods again are lone.

Yet holy still be your living springs
Haunts of all gentle and gladsome things!
Holy, to converse with nature's lore,
That gives the worn spirit its youth once more,
And to silent thoughts of the love divine,

Making the heart a shrine!

THE VOICE OF THE WIND.

There is nothing in the wide world so like the voice of a spirit-Gray's Letters.

Thou art come from long-forsaken homes, wherein our young days flew,

Thou hast found sweet voices lingering there, the loved, the kind, the true;

Thou callest back those melodies, though now all changed and fled,

OH! many a voice is thine, thou Wind! full many Be still, be still, and haunt us not with music

from the dead!

Are all these notes in thee, wild Wind? these many notes in thee?

Far in our own unfathomed souls their fount must surely be;

Yes! buried, but unsleeping, there Thought watches, Memory lies,

From whose deep urn the tones are poured, through all Earth's harmonies.

THE VIGIL OF ARMS.*

A SOUNDING step was heard by night
In a church where the mighty slept,

Thou hast been o'er solitary seas, and from their As a mail-clad youth, till morning's light,

wastes brought back

Midst the tombs his vigil kept.

Each noise of waters that awoke in the mystery of He walked in dreams of power and fame, thy track; He lifted a proud, bright eye, The chime of low soft southern waves on some For the hours were few that withheld his name green palmy shore,

The hollow roll of distant surge, the gathered bil

lows roar.

Thou art come from forests dark and deep, thou mighty rushing Wind!

And thou bearest all their unisons in one full swell combined;

The restless pines, the moaning stream, all hidden things and free,

Of the dim old sounding wilderness, have lent their soul to thee.

Thou art come from cities lighted up for the conqueror passing by,

Thou art wafting from their streets a sound of haughty revelry;

The rolling of triumphant wheels, the harpings in the hall,

The far-off shout of multitudes, are in thy rise and fall.

Thou art come from kingly tombs and shrines, from ancient minsters vast,

Through the dark aisles of a thousand years thy lonely wing hath passed;

Thou hast caught the anthem's billowy swell, the stately dirge's tone,

From the roll of chivalry,

Down the moon-lit aisles he paced alone,
With a free and stately tread;
And the floor gave back a muffled tone
From the couches of the dead:
The silent many that round him lay,

The crowned and helmed that were,
The haughty chiefs of the war-array—
Each in his sepulchre!

But no dim warning of time or fate

That youth's flushed hopes could chill,
He moved through the trophies of buried state
With each proud pulse throbbing still.
He heard, as the wind through the chancel sung,
A swell of the trumpet's breath;

He looked to the banners on high that hung,
And not to the dust beneath.

And a royal masque of splendour seemed
Before him to unfold;
Through the solemn arches on it streamed,
With many a gleam of gold:

The candidate for knighthood was under the necessity of keeping watch, the night before his inauguration, in a

For a chief, with sword, and shield, and helm, to church, and completely armed. This was called "the Vigil

his place of slumber gone.

of Arms."

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The Poetical Works of Hemans, Heber and Pollok: Complete in One Volume