Poems. Edward Dowden

streams draw down the dust of gold, his will,

      His thought and passion to enrich herself

      The insatiable devourer.

      Welcome earth,

      My natural heritage! and this soft turf,

      These rocks which no insidious ocean saps,

      But the wide air flows over, and the sun

      Illumines. Take me, Mother, to thy breast,

      Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms,

      Lay bare thy bosom’s sweetness and its strength

      That I may drink vigour and joy and love.

      Oh, infinite composure of the hills!

      Thou large simplicity of this fair world,

      Candour and calmness, with no mockery,

      No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile

      Which masks a tyrannous purpose; and ye Powers

      Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences

      Awful and strict, I find you favourable,

      Who seek not to exclude me or to slay,

      Rather accept my being, take me up

      Into your silence and your peace. Therefore

      By him whom ye reject not, gracious Ones,

      Pure vows are made that haply he will be

      Not all unworthy of the world; he casts

      Forth from him, never to resume again,

      Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart,

      Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses,

      The lurid, and the curious, and the occult,

      Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave,

      And long unnatural uses of dim life.

      Hence with you! Robes of angels touch these heights

      Blown by pure winds and I lay hold upon them.

      Here is a perfect bell of purple heath,

      Made for the sky to gaze at reverently,

      As faultless as itself, and holding light,

      Glad air and silence in its slender dome;

      Small, but a needful moment in the sum

      Of God’s full joy—the abyss of ecstasy

      O’er which we hang as the bright bow of foam

      Above the never-filled receptacle

      Hangs seven-hued where the endless cataract leaps.

      O now I guess why you have summoned me,

      Headlands and heights, to your companionship;

      Confess that I this day am needful to you!

      The heavens were loaded with great light, the winds

      Brought you calm summer from a hundred fields,

      All night the stars had pricked you to desire,

      The imminent joy at its full season flowered,

      There was a consummation, the broad wave

      Toppled and fell. And had ye voice for this?

      Sufficient song to unburden the urged breast?

      A pastoral pipe to play? a lyre to touch?

      The brightening glory of the heath and gorse

      Could not appease your passion, nor the cry

      Of this wild bird that flits from bush to bush.

      Me therefore you required, a voice for song,

      A pastoral pipe to play, a lyre to touch,

      I recognize your bliss to find me here;

      The sky at morning when the sun upleaps

      Demands her atom of intense melody,

      Her point of quivering passion and delight,

      And will not let the lark’s heart be at ease.

      Take me, the brain with various, subtile fold,

      The breast that knows swift joy, the vocal lips;

      I yield you here the cunning instrument

      Between your knees; now let the plectrum fall!

      “LA RÉVÉLATION PAR LE DÉSERT”

      “Toujours le désert se montre à l’horizon, quand vous prononcez le nom de Jéhovah.”

Edgar Quinet.

      Beyond the places haunted by the feet

      Of thoughts and swift desires, and where the eyes

      Of wing’d imaginings are wild, and dreams

      Glide by on noiseless plumes, beyond the dim

      Veiled sisterhood of ever-circling mists,

      Who dip their urns in those enchanted meres

      Where all thought fails, and every ardour dies,

      And through the vapour dead looms a low moon,

      Beyond the fountains of the dawn, beyond

      The white home of the morning star, lies spread

      A desert lifeless, bright, illimitable,

      The world’s confine, o’er which no sighing goes

      From weary winds of Time.

      I sat me down

      Upon a red stone flung on the red sand,

      In length as great as some sarcophagus

      Which holds a king, but scribbled with no runes,

      Bald, and unstained by lichen or grey moss.

      Save me no living thing in that red land

      Showed under heaven; no furtive lizard slipped,

      No desert weed pushed upward the tough spine

      Or hairy lump, no slow bird was a spot

      Of moving black on the deserted air,

      Or stationary shrilled his tuneless cry;

      No shadow stirr’d, nor luminous haze uprose,

      Quivering against the blanched blue of the marge.

      I sat unbonneted, and my throat baked,

      And my tongue loll’d dogwise. Red sand below,

      And one unlidded eye above—mere God

      Blazing from marge to marge. I did not pray,

      My heart was as a cinder in my breast,

      And with both hands I held my head which throbbed.

      I, who had sought for God, had followed God

      Through the fair world which stings with sharp desire

      For him of whom its hints and whisperings are,

      Its gleams and tingling moments of the night,

      I, who in flower, and wave, and mountain-wind,

      And song of bird, and man’s diviner heart

      Had owned the present Deity, yet strove

      For naked access to his inmost shrine,—

      Now found God doubtless, for he filled the heaven

      Like brass, he breathed upon the air like fire.

      But I, a speck ’twixt the strown sand and sky,

      Being yet an atom of pure and living will,

      And perdurable as any God of brass,

      With all my soul, with all my mind and strength

      Hated this God.