LOVE

I

ALMIGHTY Love! whose nameless power
This glowing heart defines too well,
Whose presence cheers each fleeting hour,
Whose silken bonds our souls compel,
Diffusing such a sainted spell,

As gilds our being with the light
Of transport and of rapturous bliss,
And almost seeming to unite

The joys of other worlds to this,
The heavenly smile, the rosy kiss; -

Before whose blaze my spirits shrink,
My senses all are wrapt in thee,
Thy force I own too much, to think
(So full, so great thine ecstacy)
That thou art less than deity!

Thy golden chains embrace the land,
The starry sky, the dark blue main;
And at the voice of thy command,

(So vast, so boundless is thy reign)
All nature springs to life again

II

The glittering fly, the wondrous things
That microscopic art descries;
The lion of the waste, which springs,

Bounding upon his enemies;
The mighty sea-snake of the storm,
The vorticella's viewless form,1

The vast leviathan, which takes

His pastime in the sounding floods;
The crafty elephant, which makes

His haunts in Ceylon's spicy woods-
Alike confess thy magic sway,
Thy soul-enchanting voice obey!

O! whether thou, as bards have said,
Of bliss or pain the partial giver,
Wingest thy shaft of pleasing dread

From out thy well-stor'd golden quiver,
O'er earth thy cherub wings extending,
Thy sea-born mother's side attending; -

Or else, as Indian fables say,

Upon thine emerald lory riding. Through gardens, mid the restless play

Of fountains, in the moon-beam gliding, Mid sylph-like shapes of maidens dancing, Thy scarlet standard high advancing;

Thy fragrant bow of cane thou bendest,2
Twanging the string of honey'd bees,
And thence the flower-tipp'd arrow sendest,
Which gives or robs the heart of ease;
Camdeo, or Cupid, O be near,

To listen, and to grant my prayer!

Awake in thy bosom the light of thy fame! Why hast thou shone in the temple of glory?

Why hast thou blaz'd in those annals of fame? For know, that the former bright page of thy story

Proclaims but thy bondage and tells but thy shame:

Proclaims from how high thou art fallen - how low

Thou art plung'd in the dark gulf of thraldom and woe!

Arouse thee, O Greece! from the weight of thy slumbers!

The chains are upon thee!- arise from thy sleep!

Remember the time, when nor nations nor numbers

Could break thy thick phalanx embodied and deep.

Old Athens and Sparta remember the morning, When the swords of the Grecians were red to

the hilt:

And, the bright gem of conquest her chaplet adorning,

Platea rejoic'd at the blood that ye spilt! Remember the night, when, in shrieks of affright,

The fleets of the East in your ocean were sunk:

Remember each day, when, in battle array, From the fountain of glory how largely ye drunk!

For there is not ought that a freeman can fear,
As the fetters of insult, the name of a slave;
And there is not a voice to a nation so dear,
As the war-song of freedom that calls on the
brave.

'He bends the luscious cane, and twists the string,
With bees how sweet, but ah! how keen the sting!
He with five flowrets tips thy ruthless darts,
Which thro' five senses pierce enraptur'd hearts."

And locks like the raven's wing,

And in regal state at that board there sate
The likeness of a king.

With crimson ting'd, and with ermine fring'd,
And with jewels spangled o'er,

And rich as the beam of the sun on the stream, A sparkling robe he wore.

Yet though fair shone the gem on his proud diadem,

Though his robe was jewell'd o'er, Though brilliant the vest on his mailed breast, Yet they all were stain'd with gore!

And his eye darted ire, and his glance shot fire, And his look was high command;

substitute the following stanza, which is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth':

With buttons of brass that glitter'd like glass,
And brows that were crown'd with bays.
With large blue coat, and with black jack-boot,
The theme of his constant praise.

Nothing indeed could exceed Charles's affection for his boots: he eat, drank, and slept in them; nay, he never went on a bootless errand. When the dethroned monarch Augustus waited upon him with proposals of peace, Charles entertained him with a long dissertation on his unparalleled aforesaid jack-boots: he even went so far as to threaten (according to Voltaire), in an authoritative epistle to the senate at Stockholm, that unless they proved less refractory, he would send them one of his boots as regent! Now this, we must allow, was a step beyond Caligula's consul.

And each, when he spoke, struck his mighty book,

And rais'd his shadowy hand.

And a headman stood by, with his axe on high,
And quick was his ceaseless stroke;
And loud was the shock on the echoing block,
As the steel shook the solid oak.

While short and thick came the mingled shriek
Of the wretches who died by his blow;
And fast fell each head on the pavement red,
And warm did the life-blood flow.

Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
'What fearful sights are those?
Said the ghostly king to the earthly king,
They are signs of future woes!'

Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
By Saint Peter, who art thou?
Said the ghostly king to the earthly king,
I shall be, but I am not now.'

Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
'But when will thy time draw nigh?"
'Oh! the sixth after thee will a warrior be,
And that warrior am I.

'And the lords of the earth shall be pale at my birth,

And conquest shall hover o'er me;

And the kingdoms shall shake, and the nations shall quake,

And the thrones fall down before me.

And the glitter of gold, and the statesmen old, Fled into the gloom of night!

II. TIMBUCTOO

Church, in 'The Laureate's Country' (London, 1891), says:—

"The poet tells a curious story of the way in which this English verse prize came to be won. His father imagined, not, it may be, wholly without reason, that his son was doing very little at the university, and, knowing that he had a certain gift for writing verse, told him that he ought to compete for the Chancellor's medal. Alfred Tennyson had composed, two years before, a poem on "The Battle of Armageddon." This he took, furnished it with a new beginning and a new end, and sent it in for the theme of "Timbuctoo."'

This is confirmed by the Memoir' (vol. i. p. 46), where other interesting information concerning the poem may be found.

The poem was printed in the 'Prolusiones Academica' at Cambridge in 1829, and was reprinted several times afterwards in the collection of Cambridge Prize Poems.' It was never reprinted by the author, but his son appends it to the 1893 edition of Poems by Two Brothers.'

Arthur Hallam was one of the unsuccessful competitors for this prize. His poem, written in the terza rima of Dante, was privately printed in pamphlet form, and is included in the Remains' of 1834, edited by his father.

TIMBUCTOO

'Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies A mystic city, goal of high emprise.'

CHAPMAN.

I STOOD upon the Mountain which o'erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall'n below th' Atlantic, and above
The silent heavens were blench'd with faery
light,

Uncertain whether faery light or cloud, Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue

Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
I gazed upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infix'd
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time erased from earth: even as the Sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.
And much I mused on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws

air;

But had their being in the heart of man

As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then
A center'd glory-circled memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name,
Imperial Eldorado, roof'd with gold:

Shadows to which, despite all shocks of change,
All on-set of capricious accident,

Men clung with yearning hope which would not die.

As when in some great city where the walls Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd,

Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retired
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis,
Before the awful Genius of the place

Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while

Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hands with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that where-
with

Her phantasy informs them.

Where are ye,

Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?

Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,

The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering capes, and your gold-sanded

bays

Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?
Where are the infinite ways, which, seraph-trod,
Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes,
Whose lowest deeps were, as with visible love,
Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfused,
Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems,
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird

The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?

For nothing visible, they say, had birth
In that blest ground, but it was play'd about
With its peculiar glory. Then I raised

My voice and cried, Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair

As those which starr'd the night o' the elder world?

Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo

A dream as frail as those of ancient time?'

A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! the bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs. So that with hasty motion I did veil My vision with both hands, and saw before me Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun. Girt with a zone of flashing gold beneath His breast, and compass'd round about his brow With triple arch of ever-changing bows, And circled with the glory of living light And alternation of all hues, he stood.

O child of man, why muse you here alone

Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill'd the earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling
winds,

And odours rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality;
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:
Open thine eyes and see.'

I look'd, but not
Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great Angel Mind which look'd from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem'd to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense,
As with a momentary flash of light,
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth
And harmony of planet-girded suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan sapphire. Nay -the hum of

men,

Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.
A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling
thoughts,

Involving and embracing each with each,
Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,

Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riven rapt brain; as when in some large

lake

As even then the torrent of quick thought
Absorbed me from the nature of itself
With its own fleetness. Where is he that,
borne

Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding element?

My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime

Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house

Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of Spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of star-lit wings, which burn
Fan-like and fibred with intensest bloom;
Ev'n so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength

To bear them upward through the trackless fields

Of undefin'd existence far and free.

Then first within the South methought I saw
A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement

On battlement, and the imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.

Behind

Each aloft

In diamond light upsprung the dazzling peaks
Of Pyramids, as far surpassing earth's
As heaven than earth is fairer.
Upon his narrow'd eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were

Or metal more etherial, and beneath

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan, Through length of porch and valve and bound

less hall,

Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
That minister'd around it - if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

With ministering hand he raised me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill'd
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,
Like a swoln river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:

There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway The heart of man: and teach him to attain By shadowing forth the Unattainable: And step by step to scale that mighty stair Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds

Of glory of heaven. With earliest light of
Spring,

And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter
roofs

The headland with inviolate white snow,

I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood, —
Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: They with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel
My fulness; I have fill'd thy lips with power.
I have raised thee nigher to the spheres of hea

The reflex of my city in their depths.
Oh city! oh latest throne! where I was raised
To be a mystery of loveliness

Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-wall'd, barbarian settlements.
How chang'd from this fair city!'

Thus far the Spirit: Then parted heaven-ward on the wing: and I Was left alone on Calpe, and the moon Had fallen from the night, and all was dark! 1Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven a perfect.'