Classic Poem

Many an afternoon hath come
Since then to my monastic home,
When mem'ry hath brought back to me
 In lifelike form and order
The mighty things which I did see
 On that wild river border:
Days when the autumn garden grieves
Amid the gentle wreck of leaves,
Strewn by the summer's parting spirit
For winter's stern winds to inherit;
When silvery sun and fleecy sky
Once more bring feeble summer nigh,
As though she came to some sweet nook
 'Mid faded lawns and bowers,
Awhile to take a farewell look
 At rash November flowers:
And in this Christian city living
 My heart hath flown away,
While mem'ry's deepest wells kept giving
  Visions of Asia.

We left behind the sea's dull roar,
We left the sand-hills on the shore:
We passed through plains wherein the stream
 Ran broad by many a barrow,
Through forest proof 'gainst bright sunbeam,
 Where the bed was deep and narrow:
Where winds the mighty trees had rocked
 For many a hundred year;
And troops of gentle creatures flocked
 To gaze on me with fear,
As though their faces bright and round
Had seen and heard of sight and sound
 Nought but the forest motion,
Save when a sea-bird rude had come
And scared the quiet of their home,
 As it wandered from the ocean.
The twisting branches framed above
 Cloisters of gloomy green,
And the bare boughs of yew-trees wove
 On either side a screen;
But here and there the eye might follow
The view through many a woodland hollow,
To where some fountain glittered far
 With red leaves all around,
When a stray sunbeam, like a star
 Its way through thick shades found;
And it bred fear in me to see
At times a dry leaf from a tree,
Loosened by some soft hand unseen
From its brother-crowd of healthy green,
Awhile upon the light air quiver,
And faintly fall upon the river.

 The wood was past: and then again
Came grassy slope and open plain;
And to a lake the river spread,
With groves and green rocks islanded,
When evening shed her mantle there,
Slow-dropping through the twilight air,
Upon the river-bank there stood
 Temple, and tower, and streets decayed,
 Shrine, palace, arch, and colonnade,—
A vast and kingly solitude.
Dark creepers like a woven vest
Were round each standing pillar pressed;
Between the broken columns sprung
Horse-tail and rankest adder's tongue.
No voice of man or beast was heard,
No vesper-song of plaining bird,
No insect hum, no breath did seem
To rise from those that sleep and dream
Among yon cypress rows that stand
For half a league or more inland.
The city lay in mute distress
On the edge of a stretching wilderness.
Where have ye gone, ye townsmen great!
That have left your homes so desolate?
Where have ye vanished, king and peer!
And left what ye lived for lying here?
Sin can follow where gold may not,
Pictures and books the damps may rot,
And creepers may hang frail lines of flowers
Down the crevices of ancient towers,
But what hath passed from the soul of mortal,
 Be it word or thought of pride,
Hath gone with him through the dim low portal
 And waiteth by his side.

 Between the desert and the town,
Upon a grassy treeless down,
High hanging o'er the rapid flood
A house of Christian monks there stood.
One soft low bell kept ever ringing
While they within were calmly singing
Of her whose garments drop alway
Myrrh, aloes, and sweet cassia.
The chapel-lights with full rich gleam
Threw lines of radiance o'er the stream;
And tear-drops came, and o'er my mind
Dim thoughts and sadnesses did wind,
And with strong spells my spirit bind.
It was no grave or holy feeling
That with the Christian psalm came stealing,
Which sounded all my being so,
And stirred the tears, and bade them flow.
No, it was earth with her fair things,
All her green trees and mountain springs,
Earth fading from me, which did pass
Upon my spirit through the glass
Of those church-windows, to the river
Whereon the lamplights rest and quiver.
It brought back hours when I did stand
A guest in our first father-land,
Where summer midnights sweetest shine
With moonbeams cradled on the Rhine,
Or drawn in tremulous webs of gold,
Where the stream through long boat-bridges rolled.
And earth and all earth was to me
In those short hours of boyish glee
Came like a cloud of troubled fears,
And the cloud broke and fell in tears.

 Yet it was well those monks should be
By the ruin hoar and the pasture lea;
And never was spot more sadly meet
For lonely prayer and hermit feet.
And fitly, methinks, their chantry stands,
Where the grass encroaches on the sands,
At the limits of life's two marvellous lands,—
The land of shadows, forms, and faces,
And the land of spirits' resting-places.
For the psalm they sing is earth's last sound,
Circling and sinking faintly round,
And whispering o'er the desert's bound.
The bodies that lie where the turf springs highest,
 And little white flowers are growing,
Of all the dead are the very nighest
 To the place where they are going,
For over the sand in the stilly morn,
 When the winds awhile cease blowing,
If you lean and listen a sound is borne,
Like the last far fall of a hunting-horn,
From the Eden streams, that in channels worn
 By two and two are flowing.
Yes—it was well these monks should tread
Between the living and the dead
On the line by which they are severèd,—
That they in their fasts and festal mirth
 A blessing and grace should merit
For the far-off races of the earth
 From the close-lying world of spirit.
Yes—it was well that they should be
Types of the meek and passion-free,
The humble of earth, that in cloistered room
Fight the world's battles in secret gloom;
And lands are saved and conquests won,
And the race of high and hard truths run,
And chains snapped off and sins undone:
And all by meek, dejected men,
Earth finds not, learns not, how or when.
For they are too divinely great
For fame to sully them with state
 And pageant little worth:
From out the unpolluted dead
Their names may not be gatherèd;
They dwell too deep for man to find
 Them out in their calm mirth,
Too high to leave a name behind,
 To be played with on the earth.
No idle straying sage may learn
 How that ruined city fell;
All travellers unknowing turn
 From the spot where those monks dwell.
Out in the earth fair babes at play
By unseen hands are led away.
Here and there in different climes
Some have been missed at distant times;
In sport by day they have been taken,
 No mortal creature knowing,
In sleep by night, and did not waken
 Their mothers at their going.
Whene'er the monks of that house die,
These lost of earth their room supply,
By angel-leadings ever drawn
From their first homes in childhood's dawn;
And strangely many times must earth
Work in their heart with her old mirth.

 On the edge of the world to them it is given
To be within sight and hearing of heaven,
To see the wild clouds, like castles or ships,
Kissed with the evening's rosy lips,
Sway in the wind on the hills that spread,
Treeless and turfless a barrier dread,
Round the garden our father forfeited,
They dwell alone, those monkish few,
By the down's slant side and the river blue.
No bird o'er the narrow down may fly,
No eagle abroad in yon desert cry,
No beast may come as near as they
To the sealéd centre of Asia.
There is a spot—I know not why—
A spot I often loiter by,
Which ever brings that ruined town,
The monkish house and strip of down,
Back to my fancy, faintly clear,
 Until the whole doth strangely-seem
 A suddenly recovered dream,
Which I had somewhile dreamed of here.
It is the least of English brooks
 Through a midland county winding,
In willow flats and meadow nooks
 Fresh sorts of wild-flowers finding:
The very least of brooks—with bays
 Of standing water furnished,
Where yellow irises upraise
 Their phalanx smoothly burnished;
The least of brooks, that nightly show
 The white stars' moving faces
Mid dark and brittle plants that grow
 In its wet and shady places.
Much hooded willow-herb is there,
The nun of water-sides, whose care
Doth for herself green convents rear
Of stalk and leaf and glossy spear,
And when I wander there alone,
 My spirit doth unravel
The lines of thought she made her own
 In her visionary travel.

But up the stream with steady will
 My boat went undelaying,
While earth stirred calmly in me still,
 And set my fancy straying.
And now around is a sandy scene
Without one square or isle of green,
A region, where with no sweet shrouds
 The sun, as he doth pass,
Unclothes the white sky of its clouds,
 And the green earth of her grass.
But the moon is floating soft above,
 And the sands below are glistening;
There might be sounds in the lights that move
O'er the earth, like the wings of a weary dove,
 If there were time for listening.
But the winds from their hid coverts press,
 And lift their waving voices high
 O'er the broad waste, to magnify
The Master of the wilderness.
So wild was the gleam the moon was lending,
So broken it looked in its descending,
 The desert's self seemed heaving;
One might think that mighty winds came out
To scatter molten moonlight about,
To mar the plain words and meaning things
That, for man, aloft on her glitterings
 The quiet orb was weaving.

 Then came a royal wood of palms
With strange and oriental charms.
The forest stood down to the river,
Yet seemed to stretch away forever.
League upon league like pillars tall
With one rich shapely capital
In aisles they stood, and like each other,
One palm might be its neighbor's brother
And all were fair and fresh of hue,
As though in some good plain they grew,

 And not in sand-drifts light.
The moisture drunk by thirsty noon
Cool darkness doth replenish soon
 With dewdrops sparkling bright,
Dews fed from mists that bear the moon
 Sweet company all night.
And down the rings of each smooth bole,
 Like sunbeams under the sea,
Quiverings of emerald moonlight stole,
 Swathing the golden tree.
Turn where one might a roaming eye
 On, on, for ever on,
The multitudinous palm-trees lie,
Countless as stars that stud the sky,
 When the rival moon has gone.

Hast thou ever felt in thy lonely room,
Some vigil night, when the hush and gloom,
And the nearness of churches round the place,
Bring joy in the soul and smiles on the face—
When the walls of the world seem about to melt,
 And to lay the weird realms of spirit bare,—
Hast thou ever at such high seasons felt
 What seemed like the waving of wings in air,
 While an angel meek hath descended there,
And is kneeling where thou hast lately knelt?
 Has thou known how his presence keeps thee still,
And winds through thy thoughts like a freshening rill,
How visions and musings of lightness or pride
 Fall off from thy heart as withered leaves,
And fancy dares not with him at her side
 Think well of the silky webs she weaves?
So was it with me in that little boat
That stiller and swifter seemed to float.
The flowers and ivy-stalks drooping low
Sweeter and fresher appeared to grow.
A faint scarce visible glory stood
O'er the Crucifix of scented wood;
And though the seat at the helm looked bare,
I knew that a spirit was sitting there.

The bark had now begun to quiver
Upon the fast, unsteady river,
 And foam-bells wavered by;
And with the lisping palm-tops blending
A stunning water-fall's descending
 Grew distinct and nigh.
There was a pause—a brief, dread pause
In a narrow valley's rocky jaws.
A huge, high cliff did steeply bound
A sunless pool with white mists round.
Then came a quiet, whirling motion,
 And my boat was lifted slow;
Like the strong twistings of the ocean,
 Where a ship hath gone below.
Oh! gently are the currents flowing
 Above that giant-fall,
And gentle sounds, like breezes blowing,
 From off the mountains' call,
The herbless mountains nigh at hand
That darkly fence man's earliest land,
 Still wept with burning brow,
Which every bright or gloomy faith
Hath faintly looked for after death,
 Or made an idol now.
We came unto the river fountains,
Where three of those huge-rooted mountains
 Jutted beyond the range,
And clasped within their stony round
A basin and a ring of ground
 Of beauty soft and strange.
There in that most lonely dwelling
The rivers of the south are welling
 From a silent-rising spring:
And to the surface from below
The silver, salient waters flow
 With scarce a murmuring.
Below the sterile cliffs a rim
Of yellow moorland turf the brim
 Of that calm basin closes;
And right among the tarnished sedge
There hangs and floats a flowering hedge
 Of whitest gleaming roses.
No greenly-gadding rose-branch dips
Into the pool its fragrant lips.
But drooping ever motionless
In one white coronal they press
 The velvet margin shading;
Like some pale lustrous wreath adorning
A bride upon her marriage morning,—
 Eternal and unfading;
Breathing faint richness on the lake,
Whose gleamy face winds never shake,
Nor ripples crest, nor rain-drops break:—
Where rose with rose in webs is threading,
Thick spells of luscious strength outshedding,
That make the mountain hollow seem
One noonday cup of odorous steam.
Wondrous it is to see on high
The barren mountains to the sky
 Their splintered sceptres holding;
While Heaven's ethereal blue between
The outlines rough doth intervene,
And spends all hours, that fearful scene
 To shapes of softness moulding:
Just as the monthly moon's full orb
In her own fairness doth absorb
 The boughs of leafy dells,
And purple midnight by sweet laws
Upward and inward ever draws
 Church-spires and pinnacles.
Strange is it to the eye that rests
On the long line of mountain crests,
Whose slow descending gaze but falls
On craggy steeps and dark bare walls,—
Strange is it when the earth discloses
That little hollow cup of roses.

Across the pool my boat did steal
 In swift and silent order,
And not a ripple from the keel
 Ruffled the flowery border.
Above the place where I was left
There was a deep, clear mountain cleft,
As though some keen seraphic sword,
Some angel of the mighty Lord,
 Had carved that portal fair.
To skies beyond of stainless blue
White waving clouds went sailing through,
 As if to harbor there.
But poor and little was my hope
To climb that cliff and broken slope,
Till I beheld a straggling line
Of few white roses dimly shine,
 As if put there in play,
Or some angelic hand in air
Had scattered rose-wreaths kindly there,
 To trace and mark the way.
Where each frail flowret had been thrown,
There was a little step of stone,
 Whereto a man might cling,
Or, if they failed, be lifted on
 By angel hand or wing:
And with such faith myself would dare
Upon that long and perilous stair.

 How may I tell ye, friends on earth!
With what a mystery of mirth
I stood within that mountain cleft,
With two worlds, on the right and left?
Boundless, boundless, all unending,
Shadows, souls, and spirits blending—
Midnight and sunrise, noon and even,
Earth, ocean, vivid-glowing Heaven—
All were at once:—all bathed and blent
In a new white-seeming element,
 Wherein they did abide:
Most like unto a hoary sea,
Where through all ages by decree
Time might have no more ebbs, but be
 For ever at high-tide.
It travelled on in mighty rings,
 And with a clamorous motion;
Like a sea-bird sleeping on her wings
 And sinking to the ocean.
I stood within the mountain-cleft
With two worlds, on the right and left—
The land of shadows, forms, and faces,
And the land of spirits' resting-places.
Apart, and separate they were,
With other sky and sea and air:
And yet they seemed but one to me—
 Each in the other comprehended,
 In lovely separation blended,
Like two sides of a mystery.
Oft have I seen in out-door dreams
 Lovely and dreadful things
Brought close upon my soul by gleams,—
 Majestic glimmerings,
But, when I deemed the vision bright
Unfolding from the soul of night
 Unto my touch would press,
The troublous pleasure that did creep
Through every vein, broke up my sleep,
And the appearance swiftly drew
Back into midnight's caverned blue
 And starry silentness;
As rainbows to my childish eye
Withdrew into the cloudy sky,
When gazed at over-earnestly.
Thus hath this dream been broken up,
And gentle sleep's well-mingled cup
 Been spilt upon the earth;
But dreams that promise fairest blessing,
Yet cease to be in the possessing—
Why blame them more than other things,
Since Heaven in love so checks the springs
 Of every mortal mirth?