It is not with a hope my feeble praise
Can add one moment's honor to thy own,
That with thy mighty name I grace these lays;
I seek to glorify myself alone:
For that some precious favor thou hast shown
To my endeavor in a bygone time,
And by this token I would have it known
Thou art my friend, and friendly to my rhyme!
It is my dear ambition now to climb
Still higher in thy thought,- if my bold pen
May thrust on contemplations more sublime. -
But I am thirsty for thy praise, for when
We gain applauses from the great in name,
We seem to be partakers of their fame.
O BARDS of old! what sorrows have ye sung.
And tragic stories, chronicled in stone,-
Sad Philomel restored her ravished tongue,
And transformed Niobe in dumbness shown;
Sweet Sappho on her love forever calls,
And Hero on the drowned Leander falls!
Was it that spectacles of sadder plights
Should make our blisses relish the more high?
Then all fair dames, and maidens, and true knights,
Whose flourished fortunes prosper in Love's eye,
Weep here, unto a tale of ancient grief,
Traced from the course of an old bas-relief.
There stands Abydos! -here is Sestos' steep,
Hard by the gusty margin of the sea,
Where sprinkling waves continually do leap;
And that is where those famous lovers be,
A builded gloom shot up into the gray;
As if the first tall watch-tower of the day.
Lo! how the lark soars upward and is gone!
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky,
His voice is heard, though body there is none,
And rain-like music scatters from on high;
But Love would follow with a falcon spite,
To pluck the minstrel from his dewy height.
For Love hath framed a ditty of regrets,
Tuned to the hollow sobbings on the shore,
A vexing sense, that with like music frets,
And chimes this dismal burthen o'er and o'er
Saying, Leander's joys are past and spent,
Like stars extinguished in the firmament.
For ere the golden crevices of morn
Let in those regal luxuries of light,
Which all the variable east adorn,
And hang rich fringes on the skirts of night,
Leander, weaning from sweet Hero's side,
Must leave a widow where he found a bride.
Hark! how the billows beat upon the sand!
Like pawing steeds impatient of delay;
Meanwhile their rider, lingering on the land,
Dallies with Love, and holds farewell at bay
A too short span.- How tedious slow is grief!
But parting renders time both sad and brief.
"Alas! (he sighed) that this first glimpsing light,
Which makes the wide world tenderly appear,
Should be the burning signal for my flight,
From all the world's best image, which is here;
Whose very shadow, in my fond compare,
Shines far more bright than Beauty's self elsewhere."
Their cheeks are white as blossoms of the dark,
Whose leaves close up and show the outward pale,
And those fair mirrors where their joys did spark,
All dim and tarnished with a dreary veil,
No more to kindle till the night's return,
Like stars replenished at Joy's golden urn.
Even thus they creep into the spectral gray,
That cramps the landscape in its narrow brim,
As when two shadows by old Lethe stray,
He clasping her and she entwining him;
Like trees wind-parted that embrace anon,
True love so often goes before 't is gone.
For what rich merchant but will pause in fear,
To trust his wealth to the unsafe abyss?
So Hero dotes upon her treasure here,
And sums the loss with many an anxious kiss,
Whilst her fond eyes grow dizzy in her head,
Fear aggravating fear with shows of dread.
She thinks how many have been sunk and drowned,
And spies their snow-white bones below the deep,
Then calls huge congregated monsters round,
And plants a rock wherever he would leap;
Anon she dwells on a fantastic dream,
Which she interprets of that fatal stream.
Saying, "That honeyed fly I saw was thee,
Which lighted on a water-lily's cup,
When, lo! the flower, enamored of my bee,
Closed on him suddenly and locked him up,
And he was smothered in her drenching dew;
Therefore this day thy drowning I shall rue."
But next, remembering her virgin fame,
She clips him in her arms and bids him go,
But seeing him break loose repents her shame,
And plucks him back upon her bosom's snow;
And tears unfix her iced resolve again,
As steadfast frosts are thawed by showers of rain.
O for a type of parting!
Love to love
Is like the fond attraction of two spheres,
Which needs a godlike effort to remove,
And then sink down their sunny atmospheres
In rain and darkness on each ruined heart,
Nor yet their melodies will sound apart.
So brave Leander sunders from his bride;
The wrenching pang disparts his soul in twain,
Half stays with her, half goes towards the tide,—
And life must ache until they join again.
Now wouldst thou know the wideness of the wound
Mete every step he takes upon the ground.
And for the agony and bosom-throe,
Let it be measured by the wide vast air,
For that is infinite, and so is woe,
Since parted lovers breathe it everywhere.
Look how it heaves Leander's laboring chest,
Panting, at poise, upon a rocky crest!
From which he leaps into the scooping brine,
That shocks his bosom with a double chill;
Because, all hours, till the slow sun's decline,
That cold divorcer will betwixt them still;
Wherefore he likens it to Styx' foul tide,
Where life grows death upon the other side.
Then sadly he confronts his two-fold toil
Against rude waves and an unwilling mind,
Wishing, alas! with the stout rower's toil,
That like a rower he might gaze behind,
And watch that lonely statue he hath left
On her bleak summit, weeping and bereft!
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