Classic Poem

Upon a sweet September day
O'er the wild hills I took my way,
When Twilight pale began to loop
Her kilted train of vapors up,
And fled before the startling horn
That shrill Alectryon blows at morn
When swift along the Orient tides,
On purpling wheel Apollo rides.

One momentary look—one gaze
Back on the cradle of my days,
Where life, and all my joys had birth—
All I have ever known on earth!
Where soon—Ah! soon I shall return—
As thou, Stream! to thy mountain urn!

“Farewell, dear Home! farewell!—And now
Part we on this green upland brow,
Sweet Stream! like thine my nameless source,
Like thine my reckless, fearless course!
But ah! unlike in aught beside,
Each downward to our fate we glide!
Thou on thy golden road of sands,
Thro' bowery glens and blooming lands,
Shall tread thy easy path; delaying
In every tranquil nook, and playing
With many a flower that thinks no sin
To let thee touch her fairy chin;
While, careless, thou dost pace along
And hear'st the wild birds' woodland song
From bank to bank above thee chime,
Till soft as falls the foot of Time
Thou slide into some peaceful lake,
Where nought thy liquid trance shall break
Save the light caskets of perfume
In gay flotillas all of bloom,
That ride like little barges there
With painted sides and streamers rare;
Or shreds that from the birchen fall,
To clothe thee in thy Autumn pall!”

“But I”—Upon that upland brow
My fate was known as well as now:
Thro' the dim tear that veiled mine eye,
Loomed my prospective Destiny;
I saw, like Adam, 'neath my feet
A world of wo—and entered it!

For many a mile o'er hill and down,
Purple-green heath and moorland brown,
Thro' rocky pass, and river-sweep,
Up many a speckled mountain steep,
Where yellow bees from gorse alone
Were by their hum and hurry known,
As light, tho' not as gay, I flew
Till home was lost in hills of blue.
No will had I, in sooth, to roam,
My heart still clung—still clings—to home:
A slender thread, now shorn in twain,
Had drawn me gladly back again;
And to this hour, by night and morn,
My prayers to that dear Mecca turn;
Tho' at a far, far distant shrine
I bend this living corse of mine.

'Twas not the fear of death withheld,
That rather tempted to the field;
'Twas not that hatred of mankind
To gloom and solitude inclined;
Nor dread of what we all endure
Who, being proud as well as poor,
Must bear the wrongs that rich and great
Heap meanly on our mean estate;
'Twas not that Idlesse, under name
Of learned ease or scorn of fame,
Couch-fettered me: my pride was still
To range the down and climb the hill;
To plunge amid the roaring linn
And ride its fierce white horses in;
To face the storm, or lightning-glance,
As the great war-steed breasts the lance:
The melancholy eagle fled
As I approached his loftiest bed;
The fox within his lowliest den
Glared when he met my passing ken.

No! 'twas that passion of the soul
The heart-stung bird can not control,
When robber hands her nest profane;
She will not touch that nest again!
Some dread remembrance haunts the tree,
Each leaf suggests a misery;
'Twas there her bliss was all enjoyed,
'Twas there her bliss was all destroyed!
Wo every place, but madness there,
The exile she may hope to bear
The agony of mute despair.

“Array! array the bridal feast!
Be ready paranymphs and priest!
Hurry to church the swooning Maid!—
The rite is done, the blessing said:
She is the old Lord Walter's wife,
Her destiny is sealed for life!
No heir from these unfruitful bands
Shall step between us and her lands
Which should have come to us by right;
Our uncle was a drivelling wight
To leave the Girl his treasures, when
He had as near relations men!”

“Tis well!” the red-hair'd Simon cried;
“Now let him bear away his bride,
To some far country near the skies,
Before our smooth-cheek'd brother rise
From the sick pillow where he lies.
Let it be never told to one
Where she and her old Lord are gone.”

When full six raging months had past
I left my fever'd couch at last;
“O Eveline! dear cousin! now
For thy soft hand to soothe my brow!
Thy breath, as sweet as morning air,
To pour it's perfume on my hair!
Come with thy harp my soul to calm,
Come with thy voice, my spirit's balm!
Sweet-murmuring like the forest dove,
Sing me the ditty that I love!”

A voice in hideous laughter broke
Close at my elbow as I spoke;
I turned to see the fiendish one,
And saw, O Heavens! my father's son;
Red Simon, with as sly a grin
As drunken Death might cast on Sin;
Another face as blear, but older,
Looked with a death-scowl o'er his shoulder.
My brother Roland's; black as night
When Hell has suffocated light.

“Six months ago our Cousin wed,
While you lay groaning on your bed;
And now is—where the Heavens can say!—
But sure some thousand miles away.
Glad was the Nymph to save from you
Her broad lands and her beauty too;
Your state and person she abhor'd:
You—you aspire to be her lord!
Upstart! would nothing less content ye
Than be what Nature never meant ye,—
Our better? We, who took old wives,
With some few hundreds, and nine lives!
You, who were satisfied to be
A beggar on our charity,
E'er since our good step-father died”—

“Get up! thou sloth!” black Roland cried;
“Think'st thou we've nothing else to do
Than keep a lazar-house for you?
If, as I much suspect of it,
Thine illness be not counterfeit,
To scape attendance where you should
Do something for your daily food!”

Had Heaven upon my head let fall
The fiercest thunderbolt of all,
It had not withered thus my youth!—
Age came at once: in very sooth,
By agony, in one short day,
My raven locks were turned to gray!
My heart, a gentle fire possest,
Crumbled to ashes in my breast;
My cheek grew wan; my sunken eye
Blazed with a fitful ecstasy;
It seem'd, tho' scarce past manhood now,
A weight of winters on my brow
Bent me to earth; where I have prayed
Long, long that I were lowly laid!

But to my Story: Inward pain,
Sorrow I strove to quell in vain,
The curse of reason, Memory,
That still brought back sweet thoughts to me,
By fortune now so bitter made:
The scenes where we together strayed,
The hills we ranged like two gazelles,
The banks we sought for cowslip-bells,
Or lily pale, her favorite flower,
The darkling grove, the secret bower,
The simple lays our hearts approved,
The tales of beauty that we loved,
The silent, dim, secluded vale,
Where love had breathed his ardent tale,—
All, all like bosom'd scorpions were,
That stung with native vigor there;
In foreign lands, perchance, thought I,
These adders of the mind may die,
Or languish in their work at least;
But mountains heaped upon my breast
Should not detain me here: If thus
Swelled thy great heart, Enceladus!
Tho' cumbrous Etna lay on thee,
Thou'dst heaved it, headlong, in the sea!

With empty scrip, but heart o'erflowing
I chose an Autumn morn for going.
Vain hope, indeed, the hope to find
In change of place a change of mind!

I pass the fortunes that befel
When first I left my parent-dell,
Whilst O, incredible to tell!
Heart-crushed, soul-sick, in poverty,
I strove to live, yet wished to die!—
A descant on those ills I waive
Which sow the rough path to the grave
That wretches such as I must tread;
Where not a rose its blossoms shed
Over the path with thorns beset;
To keep them from the pilgrim's feet.
O how I envied those who lay
Weltering beneath the charnel clay!
And thought—how hard it was on those
Whom Earth oppressed with all its woes,
The sad necessity—to live!—
But Heaven would send me no reprieve,
And so I struggled on, till grief
Should bring its last and best relief.

Yet strange is man!—When Death betimes
Crossed my wild path in various climes,
I still, so wayward was my heart!
Fled his blind rage and shunned his dart.
Wherefore was this?—For all I said,
Was dying such a thing of dread?
Was the old fable proved in me
No fable, but a verity?
I moot it not: perchance 'twas so,
We tremble at a gulf below,
Some few dark feet; why not at one
Beyond the sounding of the sun
Plunged to his midnight length of line,—
Eternity? We all decline
The fearful gaze, and so might I;
But still, a visionary tie
Bound me to earth perchance as well,
Tho' scarce preferrable to Hell.

“My Eveline!—that potent name
Should still my death-ward steps reclaim.
I would not quit this mortal sphere
And think I left thee lonely here;
I would not quit this terrene shore
Till I beheld thy face once more;
Death were no blessing in my view
Till what and where thou art I knew;
My grave would be no place of rest
Had'st thou one wrong to be redrest!
Gone tho' thou be, as Neptune far
Wheels his Antipodean car,
With massy Earth our feet between,
I'll see thee still, sweet Eveline!
Wed tho' thou be,—the chilling words
Pierce thro' my heart like frozen swords,—
Wed tho' thou be, despite all harms
I'll have thee yet within these arms,
And thou shalt die in them alone!—”

The words I spoke were scarce my own;
For in an under-breathing tone
Methought I heard some Spirit say
“And she shall die in them alone!”
In its own melancholy way,
As faint as a far distant knell;
Perchance 'twas only that small chime
The wild bee rings in some sweet bell,
And that was all which made the rhyme;
It might be so, I cannot tell!
But yet, methought, that while my heart
Was conning o'er this bleeding part,
A shadowy form, like that I loved,
Before my dim perception moved;
And uttered with a plaintive cry—
“We'll meet again before we die!”
Then, as I stretched my arms, unkind
Drowned itself in the flowing wind.
An angel face, with curls of gold
Such as my mortal beauty wore
Would peep behind me and unfold
Some grief in sounds I heard before;
Or 'gin a tale it left half-told
And only whisper in my ear—
“We'll meet again before we die!”
In words almost too sweet to hear;
Then vanish with a hopeless sigh.
Howe'er it was, that strong belief
Upheld me 'gainst the waves of grief
Which stormy Fate against me blew;
I hoped, I thought, I felt, I knew
These arms which circled her before
Should press her to my heart once more!
And still whene'er my spirits fell
Came the sweet voice I knew so well—
“We'll meet again before we die!”—
Then hope relumed my faded eye;
Tho' drear the prospect now, and waste,
Life has a green for me at last!
Yet still a dark forbodement came,
A fear without a shape or name;
Some dread sepulchral horror swept
O'er me at times; and voices wept
A dead-wail in the haunted sky;
Herses went slowly, sadly by;
Tho' sweet the voice that charm'd mine ears
It seemed half choaked in blood and tears;
Tho' lovely was the vision, still
It seemed to smile against its will,
As if a marble beauty strove
To raise the lip she could not move,
And glistening in the moonlit aisle
Wooed with a monumental smile
The wanderer of that sacred gloom
To pity her on her silent tomb!
This hope, this fear within my breast,
Yet more by that than this imprest;
For wo and sickness well might draw
A dismal veil o'er what I saw,
Which health and pleasure would remove
When Heaven had blest me in my love.
Thus thought I; while with steps sublime
Fancy walked o'er the hills of Time
And saw her toilsome journey close
Like the bright sun's in proud repose,
Tho' night hangs lowering o'er his bed:
I journeyed onward as I said,
While chance and strong Illusion drew
My steps from clime to clime anew,
From court to court, from scene to scene,
To find my long-lost Eveline.
And oft my credulous eye perceived,
And oft my credulous heart believed
That in each angel form which past
I found my Eveline at last:
Where grace or beauty shone, methought
Some glance of Eveline I caught;
Among the bright, the sweet, the fair,
By turns, she seemed the loveliest there:
Beam'd from the crowd a heavenly eye?
'Twas Eveline that past me by!—
Droop'd a wan cheek beneath a veil?
'Twas Eveline! but ah! how pale!—
With bended lips yon Maiden see:
'Tis Eveline who smiles on me!—
That sylph-like form! that gracious mien!
'Tis Eveline! 'tis Eveline!

I passed one time the lordly towers
Which Shirewoods giant grove embowers,
Beneath whose antiquated reign
Spreads far and wide a green domain:
O'er the soft mead and velvet lawn
Range the staid deer and trotting fawn,
Or primly walk the long arcades
Like owners of those secret shades.
But on this day I ween they stept
Less stately, and the in-wood kept;
For since the upspring of the morn
Their ears had echoed to the horn,
And the keen stag-hound's fatal yell
Toll'd in them like a passing bell.
I chanced to pass the greenwood nigh
When the loud pack came sweeping by,
With gallant hunters in their train
Who all, but one alone, were men.
She on a milk white palfrey rode
That seem'd too happy for his load;
He pranced, he foam'd, and mad with joy,
Bred the fair huntress some annoy.
In suit of sylvan green the Maid
Was like a kirtled wood-nymph clad:
A velvet helm, jet black, she wore
With snow-bright plumage nodding o'er,
And from its gold-bound rim, a veil,
Hung like a fine barred aventayle.

Along they flashed: I could not trace
The clouded features of her face,
Altho' I guessed it lovely fair;
But as she past, two rings of hair,
Like twisted threads of matted gold
Behind each snowy ear were rolled.
My pulse throbb'd high! There was but one
With tresses wound from off the sun,
Like these!—'Tis she! so bliss be mine!
I knew her by her locks divine!
'Tis Eveline!—And at a bound
I broke the sanctuary ground;
One moment brought me to her side
Fleeting along the woodland wide,
For, as it seem'd, her steed had spurned
Her soft manege and hither turned
To cool the pride wherewith he burned:
The greenwood rang with shrill alarms,—
She screamed, and fell into my arms!
I clasped her fainting to my breast,
Her lips all rudely, madly, prest,
And in my greed of pleasure swore
Those lips and mine should part no more!
“My Eveline! my heart-sworn bride!
Look up! behold thy love!” I cried,
And tore her jealous veil aside—
When oh! what horror sealed mine eyes!
What shrieks of anguish and surprise
Burst from my lips!—A purple mole
On her left cheek o'er-ran the whole,
Staining it to the throat below,
Like red blood dropt on virgin snow—
My gorge I scarce could quell for shame
When up the breathless hunters came,
And took the lady from my knee,
And thanked me cold yet courteously
For my good help; they had not seen
What chanced with the false Eveline;
As courteous but as cold I bowed,
And straight withdrew me from the crowd;
Left, doubly sad, that green domain,
To 'gin my weary search again.

Thus did my sanguine fancy draw
The form my meditation saw,
And Hope on every canvas find
The image only in my mind.
For ever foaming at my lip,
And full of her good Sister's wine,
False Fortune held her bowl to sip;
When lo! before the draught was mine,
Stern Disappointment with a frown
Rose like a fiend and dashed it down!
Thro' fair Hesperia's balmy clime
I journeyed in that reckless time
Which Superstition grants to Sin
For acting her loose pleasures in,
Ere her own gloomy rites begin,—
The Carnival. Fair Florence shone,
Th' imperial Druggist's classic town!
Like the great orb at going down,
Gorgeous and glorious, while the breath
Of fuming Luxury beneath
Who led the wine-flushed, panting crowd,
Sat o'er the City like a cloud;
Dizzying the sight, tho' amber clear,
Of all in its Circean sphere.
Wandering by night to view her streets
Like marble palaces in suites,
I entered, as it were my home:
A princely Medicean dome.
Men, matrons, maids, in hoods and masks,
Plied with safe ease their amorous tasks;
Or loitered thro' the rich saloons
To gaze at beauties or buffoons;
Or stood in groups to laugh, and speak
What, for the din, as well were Greek.
Unless on some remoter ground
The electric spark of wit went round.

Mid all this joy, and hum, and whirl,
Who is that melancholy girl?
Fixed on that marble block alone
She seems