FullReads

We grew in age – and love – together,
Roaming the forest, and the wild;
My breast her shield in wintry weather –
And, when the friendly sunshine smil’d,
And she would mark the opening skies,
I saw no Heaven – but in her eyes.

Young Love’s first lesson is — the heart:
For ‘mid that sunshine, and those smiles,
When, from our little cares apart,
And laughing at her girlish wiles,
I’d throw me on her throbbing breast,
And pour my spirit out in tears –
There was no need to speak the rest –
No need to quiet any fears
Of her – who ask’d no reason why,
But turn’d on me her quiet eye!

Yet more than worthy of the love
My spirit struggled with, and strove,
When, on the mountain peak, alone,
Ambition lent it a new tone –
I had no being – but in thee:
The world, and all it did contain
In the earth – the air – the sea –
Its joy – its little lot of pain
That was new pleasure — the ideal,
Dim, vanities of dreams by night –
And dimmer nothings which were real –
(Shadows – and a more shadowy light!)
Parted upon their misty wings,
And, so, confusedly, became
Thine image, and – a name – a name!
Two separate – yet most intimate things.

I was ambitious – have you known
The passion, father? You have not:
A cottager, I mark’d a throne
Of half the world as all my own,
And murmur’d at such lowly lot –
But, just like any other dream,
Upon the vapour of the dew
My own had past, did not the beam
Of beauty which did while it thro’
The minute – the hour – the day – oppress
My mind with double loveliness.

We walk’d together on the crown
Of a high mountain which look’d down
Afar from its proud natural towers
Of rock and forest, on the hills –
The dwindled hills! begirt with bowers
And shouting with a thousand rills.

I spoke to her of power and pride,
But mystically – in such guise
That she might deem it nought beside
The moment’s converse; in her eyes
I read, perhaps too carelessly –
A mingled feeling with my own –
The flush on her bright cheek, to me
Seem’d to become a queenly throne
Too well that I should let it be
Light in the wilderness alone.

I wrapp’d myself in grandeur then,
And donn’d a visionary crown —
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me –
But that, among the rabble – men,
Lion ambition is chain’d down –
And crouches to a keeper’s hand –
Not so in deserts where the grand
The wild – the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look ’round thee now on Samarcand! –
Is not she queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling – her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne –
And who her sovereign? Timour – he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diadem’d outlaw –

O! human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc wither’d plain,
And failing in thy power to bless
But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth –
Farewell! for I have won the Earth!