Keats to Morris

THE COURSE OF TIME.

And joys of common men; working his way
With mighty energy, not uninspired,
Through all the mines of thought; reckless of
pain,

And weariness, and wasted health; the scoff
Of pride, or growl of Envy's hellish brood;
While Fancy, voyaged far beyond the bounds
Of years revealed, heard many a future age,
With commendation loud, repeat his name-
False prophetess! the day of change was come-
Behind the shadow of eternity,

He saw his visions set of earthly fame;

139

The doors of death were opened; and in the dark
And loathsome vault, and silent charnel house,
Moving, were heard the mouldered bones that
sought

Their proper place. Instinctive every soul
Flew to its clayey part: from grass-grown mould
The nameless spirit took its ashes up,
Reanimate: and, merging from beneath
The flattered marble, undistinguished rose
The great-nor heeded once the lavish rhyme,
And costly pomp of sculptured garnish vain.
The Memphian mummy, that from age to age

For ever set: nor sighed, while through his veins Descending, bought and sold a thousand times,

In lighter current ran immortal life;
His form renewed to undecaying health;
To undecaying health his soul, erewhile

Not tuned amiss to God's eternal praise.

All men in field and city; by the way;
On land or sea; lolling in gorgeous hall,
Or plying at the oar; crawling in rags
Obscure, or dazzling in embroidered gold;
Alone, in companies, at home, abroad;
In wanton merriment surprised and taken;
Or kneeling reverently in act of prayer;
Or cursing recklessly, or uttering lies;
Or lapping greedily from slander's cup
The blood of reputation; or between
Friendships and brotherhoods devising strife;
Or plotting to defile a neighbour's bed;
In duel met with dagger of revenge;
Or casting on the widow's heritage
The eye of covetousness; or with full hand
On mercy's noiseless errands, unobserved,
Administering; or meditating fraud
And deeds of horrid barbarous intent;
In full pursuit of unexperienced hope,
Fluttering along the flowery path of youth;
Or steeped in disappointment's bitterness-
The fevered cup that guilt must ever drink,
When parched and fainting on the road of ill;
Beggar and king, the clown and haughty lord;
The venerable sage, and empty fop;
The ancient matron, and the rosy bride;
The virgin chaste, and shrivelled harlot vile;
The savage fierce, and man of science mild;
The good and evil, in a moment, all
Were changed, corruptible to incorrupt,
And mortal to immortal, ne'er to change.

In hall of curious antiquary stowed,

Wrapt in mysterious weeds, the wondrous theme
Of many an erring tale, shook off its rage
"And the brown son of Egypt stood beside
The European, his last purchaser.

In vale remote the hermit rose, surprised
At crowds that rose around him, where he thought
His slumbers had been single: and the bard,
Who fondly covenanted with his friend
To lay his bones beneath the sighing bough
Of some old lonely tree, rising, was pressed
By multitudes, that claimed their proper dust
From the same spot: and he that, richly hearsed
With gloomy garniture of purchased woe,
Embalmed, in princely sepulchre was laid,
Apart from vulgar men, built nicely round
And round by the proud heir, who blushed to
think

His father's lordly clay should ever mix
With peasant dust-saw by his side awake
The clown, that long had slumbered in his arins.

The family tomb, to whose devouring mouth
Descended sire and son, age after age,
In long unbroken hereditary line,
Poured forth at once the ancient father rude,
And all his offspring of a thousand years..
Refreshed from sweet repose, awoke the man
Of charitable life-awoke and sung:
And from his prison house, slowly and sad,
As if unsatisfied with holding near
Communion with the earth, the miser drew
His carcass forth, and gnashed his teeth, and
howled,

Unsolaced by his gold and silver then.
From simple stone in lonely wilderness,
That hoary lay, o'er-lettered by the hand

And now, descending from the bowers of Of oft-frequenting pilgrim, who had taught heaven,

The willow tree to weep at morn and even

Soft airs o'er all the earth, spreading, were heard, Over the sacred spot-the martyr saint

And Hallelujahs sweet, the harmony

Of righteous souls that came to repossess
Their long neglected bodies: and anon

Upon the ear fell horribly the sound

Of cursing, and the yells of damned despair,

Uttered by felon spirits that the trump

To song of seraph harp triumphant rose,
Well pleased that he had suffered to the death.
"The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,"
As sung the bard of Nature's hand anointed,
In whose capacious giant numbers rolled
The passions of old Time, fell lumbering down.

Had summoned from the burning glooms of hell, All cities fell, and every work of man,

To put their bodies on-reserved for woe.

Now starting up among the living, changed,
Appeared innumerous the risen dead.
Each particle of dust was claimed: the turf,
For ages trod beneath the careless foot
Of men, rose organized in human form;
The monumental stones were rolled away;

And gave their portion forth of human dust,
Touched by the mortal finger of decay.
Tree, herb, and flower, and every fowl of heaven,
And fish, and animal, the wild and tame,
Forthwith dissolving, crumbled into dust.

Alas, ye sons of strength! ye ancient oaks! Ye holy pines! ye elms! and cedars tall!

Like towers of God, far seen on Carmel mount,
Or Lebanon, that waved your boughs on high,
And laughed at all the winds-your hour was
come!

Ye laurels, ever green! and bays, that wont
To wreathe the patriot and the poet's brow;
Ye myrtle bowers! and groves of sacred shade!
Where Music ever sung, and Zephyr fanned
His airy wing, wet with the dews of life,
And Spring for ever smiled, the fragrant haunt
Of Love, and Health, and ever dancing Mirth-
Alas! how suddenly your verdure died,
And ceased your minstrelsy, to sing no more.
Ye flowers of beauty! penciled by the hand
Of God, who annually renewed your birth,
To gem the virgin robes of Nature chaste,
Ye smiling featured daughters of the Sun!
Fairer than queenly bride, by Jordan's stream
Leading your gentle lives, retired, unseen;
Or on the sainted cliffs of Zion hill,

No morn of Resurrection ere should come,
Could sit the summons: to his ear did reach
The trumpet's voice; and ill prepared for what
He oft had proved should never be, he rose
Reluctantly, and on his face began

To burn eternal shame. The cities too,
Of old ensepulchred beneath the flood,
Or deeply slumbering under mountains huge,
That Earthquake-servant of the wrath of God-
Had on their wicked population thrown,
And marts of busy trade, long ploughed and sown
By history unrecorded, or the song

Of bard, yet not forgotten their wickedness
In heaven-poured forth their ancient multitudes,
That vainly wished their sleep had never broke.
From battle-fields, where men by millions met
To murder each his fellow, and make sport
To kings and heroes-things long since forgot-
Innumerous armies rose, unbannered all,
Unpanoplied, unpraised; nor found a prince,

Wandering, and holding with the heavenly dews, Or general then, to answer for their crimes.

In holy revelry, your nightly loves,
Watched by the stars, and offering every morn
Your incense grateful both to God and man,
Ye lovely gentle things! alas, no spring
Shall ever wake you now! ye withered all,
All in a moment drooped, and on your roots
The grasp of everlasting winter seized.
Children of song! ye birds that dwelt in air,
And stole your notes from angels' lyres, and first
In levee of the morn, with eulogy
Ascending, hailed the advent of the dawn;
Or, roosted on the pensive evening bough,
In melancholy numbers sung the day
To rest, your little wings, failing, dissolved
In middle air, and on your harmony
Perpetual silence fell. Nor did his wing,
That sailed in track of gods sublime, and fanned
The sun, avail the eagle then; quick smitten,
His plumage withered in meridian height,
And, in the valley, sunk the lordly bird,
A clod of clay. Before the ploughman fell
His steers, and mid-way the furrow left:
The shepherd saw his flocks around him turn
To dust; beneath his rider fell the steed
To ruins and the lion in his den

Grew cold and stiff, or in the furious chase,
With timid fawn, that scarcely missed his paws.
On earth no living thing was seen but men,
New changed, or rising from the opening tomb.

Athens, and Rome, and Babylon, and Tyre,
And she that sat on Thames, queen of the seas!
Cities once famed on earth, convulsed through all
Their mighty ruins, threw their millions forth.
Palmyra's dead, where Desolation sat,
From age to age, well pleased, in solitude
And silence, save when traveller's foot, or owl
Of night, or fragment mouldering down to dust,
Broke faintly on his desert ear, awoke.
And Salem, holy city, where the Prince
Of Life, by death, a second life secured
To man, and with him from the grave, redeemed,
A chosen number brought, to retinue
His great ascent on high, and give sure pledge
That death was foiled,-her generations now
Gave up, of kings, and priests, and Pharisees;
Nor even the Sadducee, who fondly said

The hero's slaves, and all the scarlet troops
Of antichrist, and all that fought for rule-
Many high-sounding names, familiar once
On earth, and praised exceedingly; but now
Familiar most in hell-their dungeon fit,
Where they may war eternally with God's
Almighty thunderbolts, and win them pangs
Of keener woe-saw, as they sprung to life,
The widow, and the orphan ready stand,
And helpless virgin, ravished in their sport,
To plead against them at the coming Doom.
The Roman legions, boasting once, how loud!
Of liberty; and fighting bravely o'er
The torrid and the frigid zone, the sands
Of burning Egypt, and the frozen hills
Of snowy Albion, to make mankind
Their thralls, untaught that he who made or kept
A slave, could ne'er himself be truly free-
That morning gathered up their dust, which lay
Wide scattered over half the globe: nor saw
Their eagled banners then. Sennacherib's hosts,
Embattled once against the sons of God,
With insult bold, quick as the noise of mirth
And revelry, sunk in their drunken camp,
When death's dark angel, at the dead of night,
Their vitals touched, and made each pulse stand
still-

Awoke in sorrow: and the multitudes
Of Gog, and all the fated crew that warred
Against the chosen saints, in the last days,
At Armageddon, when the Lord came down,
Mustering his hosts on Israel's holy hills,
And from the treasures of his snow and hail
Rained terror, and confusion rained, and death,
And gave to all the beasts, and fowls of heaven
Of captains' flesh, and blood of men of war,
A feast of many days-revived, and, doomed
To second death, stood in Hamonah's vale.

Nor yet did all that fell in battle, rise
That day to wailing: here and there were scen
The patriot bands, that from his guilty throne
The despot tore, unshackled nations, made
The prince respect the people's laws, drove back
The wave of proud invasion, and rebuked
The frantic fury of the multitude,
Rebelled, and fought and fell for liberty

THE COURSE OF TIME.

Right understood-true heroes in the speech Of heaven, where words express the thoughts of him

141

immortal men,

Far into bliss-saw men,
Wide wandering from the way; eclipsed in night,
Dark, moonless, moral night; living like beasts;

Who speaks-not undistinguished these, though Like beasts descending to the grave, untaught

few,

That morn arose, with joy and melody.

All woke the north and south gave up their dead:
The caravan, that in mid-journey sunk,
With all its merchandise, expected long,
And long forgot, ingulphed beneath the tide
Of death, that the wild spirit of the winds
Swept, in his wrath, along the wilderness,
In the wide desert woke, and saw all calm
Around, and populous with risen men:
Nor of his relics thought the pilgrim then,
Nor merchant of his silks and spiceries.

To purchase human flesh; or wreathe the yoke
Of vassalage on savage liberty;

Or suck large fortune from the sweat of slaves;
Or with refined knavery to cheat,
Politely villanous, untutored men

Out of their property; or gather shells,
Intaglios rude, old pottery, and store
Of mutilated gods of stone, and scraps
Of barbarous epitaphs defaced, to be
Among the learned the theme of warm debate,
And infinite conjecture, sagely wrong!
But those, denied to self, to earthly fame
Denied, and earthly wealth, who kindred left,
And home, and ease, and all the cultured joys,
Conveniences, and delicate delights
Of ripe society; in the great cause
Of man's salvation greatly valorous,
The warriors of Messiah, messengers

Of peace, and light, and life, whose eye, unscaled,
Saw up the path of immortality,

Of life to come, unsanctified, unsaved:
Who strong, though seeming weak; who warlike,
though

Unarmed with bow and sword; appearing mad,
Though sounder than the schools alone ere inade
The doctor's head; devote to God and truth,
And sworn to man's eternal weal-beyond
Repentance sworn, or thought of turning back;
And casting far behind all earthly care,
All countryships, all national regards
And enmities; all narrow bournes of state
And selfish policy; beneath their feet
Treading all fear of opposition down;
All fear of danger; of reproach all fear,
And evil tongues ;-went forth, from Britain want
A noiseless band of heavenly soldiery,
From out the armoury of God equipped,
Invincible, to conquer sin; to blow
The trump of freedom in the despot's ear;
To tell the bruted slave his manhood high,
His birthright liberty, and in his hand
To put the writ of manumission, signed
By God's own signature: to drive away
From earth the dark infernal legionry
Of superstition, ignorance, and hell:
High on the pagan hills, where Satan sat
Encamped, and o'er the subject kingdoms threw
Perpetual night, to plant Immanuel's cross,
The ensign of the Gospel, blazing round
Immortal truth; and in the wilderness
Of human waste to sow eternal life;
And from the rock, where sin, with horrid yell,
Devoured its victims unredeemed, to raise
The melody of grateful hearts to Heaven;
To fasehood, truth; to pride, humility;
To insult, meekness; pardon, to revenge;
To stubborn prejudice, unwearied zeal:
To censure, unaccusing minds; to stripes,
Long suffering: to want of all things, hope;
To death, assured faith of life to come,
Opposing-these, great worthies, rising, shone
Through all the tribes and nations of mankind,
Like Hesper, glorious once among the stars
Of twilight; and around them, flocking, stood,
Arrayed in white, the people they had saved.

Great Ocean too, that morning, thou, the call
Of restitution heardst, and reverently
To the last trumpet's voice in silence listened!
Great Ocean! strongest of creation's sons!
Unconquerable, unreposed, untired;
That rolled the wild, profound, eternal bass,
In Nature's anthem, and made music, such
As pleased the ear of God. Original,
Unmarred, unfaded work of Deity;
And unburlesqued by mortal's puny skill.
From age to age enduring and unchanged:
Majestical, inimitable, vast,

Loud uttering satire day and night on each
Succeeding race, and little pompous work
Of man. Unfallen, religious, holy sea!
Thou bowedst thy glorious head to none, fearedst

none,

Heardst none, to none didst honour, but to God

Thy maker-only worthy to receive
Thy great obeisance. Undiscovered sea!
Into thy dark, unknown, mysterious caves,
And secret haunts, unfathomably deep
Beneath all visible retired, none went,
And came again, to tell the wonders there.
Tremendous sea! what time thou lifted up
Thy waves on high, and with thy winds and storms
Strange pastime took, and shook thy mighty sides
Indignantly the pride of navies fell;
Beyond the arm of help, unheard, unseen,

Sunk friend and foe, with all their wealth and war;
And on thy shores, men of a thousand tribes,
Polite and barbarous, trembling stood, amazed,
Confounded, terrified, and thought vast thoughts
Of ruin, boundlessness, omnipotence,
Infinitude, eternity; and thought

Serenely rise, and thought of meetings glad,
And many days of ease and honour spent
Among his friends-unwarned man! even then
The knell of Time broke on his reverie,
And in the twinkling of an eye his hopes,
All earthly, perished all. As sudden rose,
From out their watery beds, the Ocean's dead,
Renewed, and on the unstirring billows stood,
From pole to pole, thick covering all the sea;
Of every nation blent, and every age.

Wherever slept one grain of human dust, Essential organ of a human soul, Wherever tossed-obedient to the call Of God's omnipotence, it hurried on To meet its fellow particles, revived, Rebuilt, in union indestructible.

And wondered still, and grasped, and grasped, and No atom of his spoils remained to Death.

grasped

Again-beyond her reach exerting all
The soul to take thy great idea in,
To comprehend imcomprehensible;

And wondered more, and felt their littleness.
Self-purifying, unpolluted sea!

Lover unchangeable! thy faithful breast
For ever heaving to the lovely moon,
That like a shy and holy virgin, robed
In saintly white, walked nightly in the heavens.
And to thy everlasting serenade

Gave gracious audience; nor was wooed in vain.
That morning, thou, that slumbered not before,
Nor slept, great Ocean! laid thy waves to rest,
And hushed thy mighty minstrelsy. No breath
Thy deep composure stirred, no fin, no oar;
Like beauty newly dead, so calm, so still,
So lovely, thou, beneath the light that fell
From angel-chariots sentinelled on high,
Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change,
Thy dead arise. Charybdis listened, and Scylla,
And savage Euxine, on the Thracian beach,
Lay motionless: and every battle ship
Stood still; and every ship of merchandise,
And all that sailed, of every name, stood still.
Even as the ship of war, full fledged and swift,
Like some fierce bird of prey, bore on her foe,
Opposing with as fell intent, the wind
Fell withered from her wings, that idly hung;
The stormy bullet, by the cannon thrown
Uncivilly against the heavenly face

Of men, half sped, sunk harmlessly, and all
Her loud, uncircumcised, tempestuous crew,
How ill prepared to meet their God! were
changed,

Unchangeable-the pilot at the helm

From his strong arm by stronger arm released,
Immortal now in soul and body both,
Beyond his reach, stood all the sons of men,
And saw behind his valley lie unfeared.

O Death! with what an eye of desperate lust. From out thy emptied vaults, thou then didst look After the risen multitudes of all

Mankind! Ah, thou hadst been the terror long,
And murderer of all of woman born.

None could escape thee! In thy dungeon house,
Where darkness dwelt, and putrid loathsomeness,
And fearful silence, villanously still,
And all of horrible and deadly name,-
Thou satt'st from age to age, insatiate,
And drank the blood of men, and gorged their
flesh,

And with thy iron teeth didst grind their bones
To powder-treading out beneath thy feet
Their very names and memories: the blood
Of nations could not slake thy parched throat.
No bribe could buy thy favour for an hour,
Or mitigate thy ever cruel rage

For human prey. Gold, beauty, virtue, youth;
Even helpless swaddled innocency failed

To soften thy heart of stone: the infant's blood Pleased well thy taste-and while the mother

wept,

Bereaved by thee, lonely and waste in woe, Thy ever grinding jaws devoured her too.

Each son of Adam's family beheld, Where'er he turned, whatever path of life He trode, thy goblin form behind him stand, Like trusty old assassin, in his aim Steady and sure as eye of destiny,

Was changed, and the rough captain, while he With scythe, and dart, and strength invincible

mouthed

The huge enormous oath. The fisherman,
That in his boat expectant watched his lines,
Or mended on the shore his net, and sung,
Happy in thoughtlessness, some careless air,
Heard Time depart, and felt the sudden change.
In solitary deep, far out from land,

Or steering from the port with many a cheer,
Or while returning from long voyage, fraught
With lusty wealth, rejoicing to have escaped
The dangerous main and plagues of foreign climes,
The merchant quaffed his native air, refreshed,
And saw his native hills in the sun's light

Equipped, and ever menacing his life.

He turned aside, he drowned himself in sleep
In wine, in pleasure; travelled, voyaged, sough
Receipts for health from all he met; betook
To business speculate; retired; returned
Again to active life; again retired;
Returned; retired again; prepared to die,
Talked of thy nothingness; conversed of lite
To come; laughed at his fears; filled up the cup
Drank deep; refrained, filled up; refrained
again;

Planned; built him round with splendour, won applause:

THE COURSE OF TIME.

143

Made large alliances with men and things;
Read deep in science and philosophy,
To fortify his soul; heard lectures prove
The present ill, and future good; observed
His pulse beat regular; extended hope;
Thought, dissipated thought, and thought again;
Indulged, abstained, and tried a thousand schemes,
To ward thy blow, or hide thee from his eye;
But still thy gloomy terrors, dipped in sin,
Before him frowned, and withered all his joy.
Still, feared and hated thing, thy ghostly shape
Stood in his avenues of fairest hope;
Unmannerly, and uninvited, crept
Into his haunts of most select delight:
Still on his halls of mirth, and banqueting,
And revelry, thy shadowy hand was seen
Writing thy name of Death. Vile worm,
gnawed

that

The root of all his happiness terrene; the gall
Of all his sweet; the thorn of every rose
Of earthly bloom; cloud of his noon-day sky;.
Frost of his spring; sigh of his loudest laugh;
Dark spot on every form of loveliness;
Rank smell amidst his rarest spiceries;
Harsh dissonance of all his harmony;
Reserve of every promise, and the if
Of all to-morrows-now beyond thy vale
Stood all the ransomed multitude of men,
Immortal all; and in their visions saw
Thy visage grim no more. Great payment day!
Of all thou ever conquered, none was left
In thy unpeopled realms, so populous once.
He, at whose girdle hangs the keys of death
And life-not bought but with the blood of Him
Who wears, the eternal Son of God, that morn
Dispelled the cloud that sat so long, so thick,
So heavy o'er thy vale; opened all thy doors,
Unopened before, and set thy prisoners free.
Vain was resistance, and to follow vain.
In thy unveiled caves, and solitudes
Of dark and dismal emptiness, thou satt'st,
Rolling thy hollow eyes: disabled thing!
Helpless, despised, unpitied, and unfeared,
Like some fallen tyrant, chained in sight of all
The people: from thee dropped thy pointless
dart;

Thy terrors withered all; thy ministers,
Annihilated, fell before thy face;
And on thy maw eternal hunger seized.

Nor yet, sad monster! wast thou left alone. In thy dark dens some phantoms still remainedAmbition, Vanity, and earthly Fame; Swollen Ostentation, meagre Avarice, Mad Superstition, smooth Hypocrisy, And Bigotry intolerant, and Fraud, And wilful Ignorance, and sullen Pride; Hot Controversy, and the subtile ghost Of Vain Philosophy, and worldly Hope, And sweet-lipped hollow-hearted FlatteryAll these, great personages once on earth, And not unfollowed, nor unpraised, were left Thy ever-unredeemed, and with thee driven To Erebus, through whose uncheered wastes, Thou mayest chase them, with thy broken scythe Fetching vain strokes, to all eternity, Unsatisfied, as men who, in the days

Of Time, their unsubstantial forms pursued.

BOOK VIII.

ANALYSIS.

DESCRIPTION of the world assembled for final judgment: all former distinctions equalized; all waiting in expectation; vice and virtue, good and bad, redeemed and unredeemed, were now the only distinctions among men.

An holy radiance shone on all countenances and revealed the inward state and feeling, the "index of the soul." On the wicked was depicted unutterable despair; and on the righteous, "in measure equal to the soul's advance in virtue," it became the "lustre of the face." Various classes of the assembly are particularized; the man of earthly fame, the mighty reasoner, the theorist, the recluse, the bigoted theologian, the indolent, the sceptic, the follower of fashion, the duteous wife, the lunatic, the dishonest judge, the seducer, the duellist and suicide, the hypocrite, the slanderer, the false priest, the envious

man.

The word of God was not properly believed by any of the wicked; the necessary fruit of faith being "truth, temperance, meekness, holiness and love."

REANIMATED now, and dressed in robes
Of everlasting wear, in the last pause
Of expectation, stood the human race;
Buoyant in air, or covering shore and sea,
From east to west, thick as the eared grain
In golden autumn waved, from field to field,
Profuse, by Nilus' fertile wave, while yet
Earth was, and men were in her valleys seen.

Still all was calm in heaven; nor yet appeared The Judge: nor aught appeared, save here and there,

On wing of golden plumage borne at will,
A curious angel, that from out the skies,
Now glanced a look on man, and then retired
As calm was all on earth: the ministers
Of God's unsparing vengeance waited, still
Unbid no sun, no moon, no star gave light:
A blest and holy radiance, travelled far
From day original, fell on the face
Of men, and every countenance revealed;
Unpleasant to the bad, whose visages
Had lost all guise of seeming happiness,

With which on earth such pains they took to

hide

Their misery in. On their grim features, now

The plain unvisored index of the soul,

The true untampered witness of the heart,
No smile of hope, no look of vanity
Beseeching for applause, was seen; no scowl
Of self-important, all-despising pride,
That once upon the poor and needy fell,
Like winter on the unprotected flower,
Withering their very being to decav.
No jesting mirth, no wanton leer was seen:

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