Arthur Hugh Clough
Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
Enriched edition. Exploring the Depths of Victorian Existentialism
In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.
Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Desmond Everly
Edited and published by Good Press, 2022
EAN 4066338110022
Table of Contents
Introduction
Historical Context
Synopsis (Selection)
Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
Analysis
Reflection
Introduction
Table of Contents
This collection assembles a wide-ranging body of verse by Arthur Hugh Clough, presenting his work in substantial breadth and variety. It spans intimate lyrics, extended narratives, meditative sequences, and pieces that engage directly with scripture, society, and travel. Alongside completed poems, it preserves fragments and continuations, allowing readers to glimpse process as well as achievement. The arrangement groups related works—religious and biblical poems, poems on life and duty, idylls, longer narratives, experiments in classical metres, and translations—so that recurrent concerns can be followed across forms. An index of first lines further supports exploration, underscoring the volume’s purpose as a comprehensive reading resource.
In terms of kinds of writing, the volume includes short lyrics, sonnets, reflective monologues, dramatic dialogues, pastorals, idylls, narrative tales, and occasional poems. Longer works such as Dipsychus, The Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich, Amours de Voyage, and Mari Magno or Tales on Board stand beside sequences like Seven Sonnets on the Thought of Death and Songs in Absence. A dedicated section of Essays in Classical Metres features elegiacs, alcaics, and related experiments, while translations extend Clough’s reach to Homer and to German sources. The miscellanies gather epigrams, meditations, and commemorative pieces, rounding out a corpus that is formally diverse yet recognizably unified.
Across these varied modes, certain questions and tones bind the whole. Clough’s poems return to the interplay of love and duty, conscience and expediency, belief and uncertainty, public obligation and private desire. He pairs moral candour with irony, urbane intelligence with direct speech, and classical poise with modern restlessness. The city and the sea, journeying and home, transience and continuity, all figure in different guises; even the multilingual titles signal a cosmopolitan imagination attentive to crossings of language and culture. The result is a voice that thinks as it sings, testing convictions without relinquishing lyric grace or humane sympathy.
The section devoted to religious and biblical subjects shows how scriptural narrative and proverb can become occasions for contemporary reflection. Reworkings of episodes from Genesis sit beside meditations shaped by familiar phrases from devotion, while poems such as The New Sinai and Qui Laborat, Orat transform inherited language into ethical counsel for everyday life. Doubt and reverence are allowed to coexist; admonition is tempered by compassion. Rather than doctrinal exposition, the emphasis falls on experience and conscience, on the difficulty of seeing clearly and acting justly. These pieces illuminate how ancient texts continue to prompt modern self-scrutiny.
Clough’s longer works anchor the collection by joining story with self-examination. The long-vacation pastoral, The Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich, unfolds in spacious, discursive verse; Amours de Voyage follows travel and attachment through reflective episodes; Dipsychus stages inquiry as a dialogue; and Mari Magno frames narrative as tales told aboard ship. Around them cluster compact works of arresting focus: aphoristic addresses like The Latest Decalogue, urban vignettes such as In the Great Metropolis and In a London Square, and sequences on absence and mortality. Together they show how extended and brief forms can serve a single habit of probing thought.
Equally distinctive is the attention to metre and translation. The Essays in Classical Metres attempt ancient quantitative patterns in English, notably elegiacs and alcaics, testing how inherited forms can carry modern content. Translations from the Iliad and from Goethe exemplify Clough’s engagement with other voices, exercising fidelity and transformation in turn. The mythological piece Actaeon, and poems titled with Greek or Latin phrases, display a classical orientation that never excludes the present. These technical ventures are not mere demonstrations; they sharpen diction, rhythm, and argument across the book, and they situate the English poems within a broader literary conversation.
Read in sequence, the collection offers a coherent portrait of a poet attentive to the claims of conscience, the pressures of circumstance, and the unpredictable currents of feeling. Its architecture moves from sacred to civic, from idyll to metropolis, from private address to public occasion, always returning to the question of how one should live. The presence of dated and located pieces, such as those bearing place-names and years, reminds us that thought arises in time; the index of first lines invites return and comparison. As a whole, the volume invites sustained reading, rewarding both immersion and selective revisiting.
Historical Context
Table of Contents
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861), born in Liverpool and raised partly in Charleston, South Carolina, came of age between English classicism and Victorian modernity. Returning to Britain in 1828, he absorbed Dr. Thomas Arnold’s ethical rigor at Rugby School before proceeding to Balliol College, Oxford. A fellow of Oriel (1842–1848), Clough combined severe classical training with a restless contemporary sensibility, a duality felt across his lyrics, narratives, and experiments in classical metres. His friendship with Matthew Arnold and proximity to London’s intellectual life later anchored a poetic career that balanced scholarly exactitude with probing moral inquiry, shaping works from the early idylls to the late meditative lyrics and translations gathered in this volume.
The Oxford Movement and its counter-currents formed the crucible of Clough’s thought. While John Henry Newman’s Tractarianism sought a revived sacramental authority, Clough gravitated toward a liberal, Broad Church ethos, and in 1848 he resigned his Oriel fellowship rather than subscribe to doctrinal tests. This personal crisis aligned with a broader Victorian “loss of faith,” catalyzed by historical criticism and science. German theology, notably David Friedrich Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (1835), and the ethical rationalism of Feuerbach and others, challenged inherited certainties. Clough’s religious poems, dialogues, and satires—written in the 1840s and 1850s—stage that conflict between conscience and creed, often translating theological debate into intimate, searching speech.
Revolution and war in 1848–1849 furnished the political horizon of his middle years. Clough traveled in Italy in 1849, witnessing the turbulence around the short-lived Roman Republic under Mazzini and the French intervention under General Oudinot. The atmosphere of siege, sudden reversals, and moral irresolution informs his epistolary and reflective verse from this period, which entwines private hesitation with public crisis. “Easter Day. Naples, 1849” records a world where ritual collides with violence; poems on Italian fortresses and campaigns register sympathy with national self-determination. The wider European upheavals—from Paris to Lombardy—gave him a modern stage on which ethical choices, religious doubt, and political action are tested together.
Clough’s Scottish pastoral and travel poems grew from the mid-century’s reimagining of landscape and nation. The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (1848), cast in English hexameters, places Oxford students in the Highlands amid Free Church aftershocks and the memory of Clearances, fusing scholarly excursion with social observation. Its migrant resolution—toward emigration and new-world settlement—mirrors the era’s imperial pathways, from Otago and Canterbury in New Zealand to Canada and Australia. In such work, romantic scenery becomes a theatre for class mobility, women’s agency, and utilitarian reform. The Highland light, learned talk, and practical decisions forecast later narratives and lyrics where movement—geographical, intellectual, moral—frames the pursuit of a livable ethic.
German literature and classical scholarship shaped Clough’s forms and idiom. Goethe’s irony and psychological realism, visible in translations and adaptations, mingle with Heine’s wit and a distinctly English moral gravity. Dipsychus, a dialogue begun around 1850 (with Venetian impressions in its texture), borrows a Faustian doubleness to dramatize conscience negotiating modern temptations. His “Essays in Classical Metres,” alcaics, elegiacs, and experiments in English hexameter reflect Oxford training and a Victorian debate about prosody, contemporaneous with Longfellow’s Evangeline (1847). Greek tags and titles—πάντα ῥεῖ, ὕμνος ἄυμνος—signal an effort to think with antiquity while speaking to the present; selections from Homer confirm how epic cadence can carry modern perplexity.
After a North Atlantic interlude, Clough settled into London’s expanding bureaucratic world. By 1856 he had joined the Education Office of the Privy Council, and in the later 1850s he assisted Florence Nightingale with the organization and presentation of post–Crimean War data and reports. The metropolis—crowded, commercial, morally insistent—presses upon poems about duty, compromise, and satire: the ledger and the Decalogue face one another across the counter. Industrial time, office routine, and the language of statistics recast older religious ideals, so that “Qui laborat, orat” becomes both challenge and solace. In this urban register, Clough makes the marketplace a proving ground for sincerity, charity, and self-suspicion.
Clough’s poems also belong to an age of steamships and cosmopolitan drift. He spent 1852–1853 in the United States, based around Boston and Cambridge, forming ties with Charles Eliot Norton and encountering New England’s literary milieu. Sea voyages and Mediterranean itineraries supplied settings for tale-cycles and reflective lyrics, where the deck, the quay, and the inn become spaces of moral colloquy. Napoleonic afterglows and Wellingtonian memory provide historical counterpoint to modern scruples, while the Mediterranean, from Rome to Peschiera and Naples, frames debates about freedom and faith. Absence, correspondence, and delay—postal as much as spiritual—animate his verse’s ethical patience and its ironic self-knowledge.
Clough died in Florence on 13 November 1861; the collected Poems appeared in 1862, gathered by family and friends, and soon fixed his reputation for grave candour and tensile form. Matthew Arnold’s Thyrsis (1866) commemorated him, setting his figure within a broader Victorian argument about culture and belief. Read together, the lyrics, narratives, translations, and dialogues trace a consistent project: to test classical measure against modern uncertainty; to sift inherited faiths with honesty; to register politics without bombast; to keep hope from cant. Hence the durable appeal of those taut, unconsoling encouragements—composed in the late 1840s and 1850s—that Victorian and later readers have taken to heart.
Synopsis (Selection)
Table of Contents
Early Lyrics and Occasional Poems (A SONG OF AUTUMN; τὸ καλόν; Χρυσέα κλῄς ἐπὶ γλώσσᾳ; THE SILVER WEDDING; THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD AND OF THE SOUL; LOVE, NOT DUTY; LOVE AND REASON; Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!; WIRKUNG IN DER FERNE; ἐπὶ Λάτμῳ; A PROTEST; SIC ITUR; PARTING; ‘WEN GOTT BETRÜGT, IST WOHL BETROGEN.’)
Brief reflective and occasional pieces balancing love and obligation, beauty and conscience, separation and protest, often couched in classical or cosmopolitan tags.
QUA CURSUM VENTUS
A meditation on how lives, like ships on different winds, drift irretrievably apart despite shared origins or intents.
Poems on Religious and Biblical Subjects — Biblical Narratives (FRAGMENTS OF THE MYSTERY OF THE FALL; THE SONG OF LAMECH; GENESIS XXIV; JACOB; JACOB’S WIVES)
Recastings of Genesis episodes that humanize patriarchs and probe sin, choice, family dynamics, and providence.
Poems on Religious and Biblical Subjects — Meditations and Controversies (THE NEW SINAI; QUI LABORAT, ORAT; ὕμνος ἄυμνος; THE HIDDEN LOVE; SHADOW AND LIGHT; ‘WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING.’; IN STRATIS VIARUM; ‘PERCHÈ PENSA? PENSANDO S’INVECCHIA.’; ‘O THOU OF LITTLE FAITH.’; ‘THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY.’; AH! YET CONSIDER IT AGAIN!; NOLI ÆMULARI; ‘WHAT WENT YE OUT FOR TO SEE?’; EPI-STRAUSS-IUM; THE SHADOW)
Short reflective poems wrestling with doubt and devotion, the sanctity of labor, constancy and change, and modern criticism, voiced through scriptural refrains and images of light and shadow.
EASTER DAY. NAPLES, 1849.
Set amid the 1849 Neapolitan upheavals, this poem tests Easter’s promise of renewal against civic turmoil and personal faith.
EASTER DAY. II
A companion meditation weighing private piety against public duty as the shock of revolt subsides.
DIPSYCHUS (Prologue; Part I; Part II; Epilogue; Continued Fragment)
A dramatic dialogue between a divided self and a tempter-like Spirit charts moral hesitation, worldly allure, and the search for an honest, livable creed in modern life.
Poems on Life and Duty (DUTY; LIFE IS STRUGGLE; IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS; THE LATEST DECALOGUE; THE QUESTIONING SPIRIT; BETHESDA. A SEQUEL; HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE!; BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN!; COLD COMFORT; SEHNSUCHT; HIGH AND LOW; ALL IS WELL; πάντα ῥεῖ· οὐδὲν μένει; THE STREAM OF LIFE; IN A LONDON SQUARE)
Moral and social verse urging steadfastness and hope, interrogating belief and habit, satirizing fashionable pieties, and observing the flux of urban and personal life.
THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH: A LONG-VACATION PASTORAL
A hexameter narrative of an Oxford reading party in the Scottish Highlands where debates on class and politics intersect with Philip’s love for Elspie and his choice of a practical new life abroad.
IDYLLIC SKETCHES (ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT HESPERUS; A LONDON IDYLL; NATURA NATURANS)
Vignettes that set pastoral calm against city bustle, musing on evening rest, everyday love, and nature’s creative energy.
AMOURS DE VOYAGE
An epistolary poem set in 1849 Rome where Claude’s analytical temperament wavers between political observation and a hesitant romance, revealing the paralysis of over-scrupled modern intellect.
SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH
A sonnet sequence contemplating mortality, legacy, and the tempering of fear by reasoned acceptance and spiritual intimation.
MARI MAGNO or TALES ON BOARD (frame and tales: THE LAWYER’S FIRST TALE; THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE; MY TALE; THE MATE’S STORY; THE CLERGYMAN’S SECOND TALE; THE LAWYER’S SECOND TALE)
A sea-voyage frame in which travelers swap stories that explore love, vocation, chance, class, and conscience, each colored by the teller’s profession and outlook.
SONGS IN ABSENCE
Linked lyrics of separation that trace longing, memory, and steadfast attachment across distance and time.
ESSAYS IN CLASSICAL METRES (TRANSLATIONS OF ILIAD; ELEGIACS; ALCAICS; ACTÆON)
Experiments in adapting Greek and Latin metres and subjects into English, from Homeric scenes to a retelling of the Actaeon myth.
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS (COME, POET, COME!; THE DREAM LAND; IN THE DEPTHS; DARKNESS; TWO MOODS; YOUTH AND AGE; SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS; THESIS AND ANTITHESIS; ἀνεμώλια; COLUMBUS; EVEN THE WINDS AND THE SEA OBEY; REPOSE IN EGYPT; TO A SLEEPING CHILD)
A varied miscellany on poetic vocation, imagination and desolation, time’s passages, paradox, exploration, and biblical scenes.
TRANSLATIONS FROM GOETHE (URANUS; SELENE; AT ROME)
Compact versions of Goethe’s lyrics rendered in Clough’s voice, meditating on celestial imagery, love, and place.
LAST WORDS. NAPOLEON AND WELLINGTON
A brief counterpoise of two emblematic careers that weighs public glory against mortality’s leveling end.
PESCHIERA
A martial lyric centered on the Lombard fortress during Italy’s struggle for independence, voicing hope for national liberation.
ALTERAM PARTEM
An appeal to hear the other side and withhold rash judgment amid competing claims and perspectives.
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH
A fortifying lyric assuring that hidden tides and dawns are gathering, urging perseverance and courage despite apparent failure.
INDEX OF THE FIRST LINES
An alphabetical index by incipit for navigating the collection’s poems.
Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
Main Table of Contents
A SONG OF AUTUMN.
τὸ καλόν.
Χρυσέα κλῄς ἐπὶ γλώσσᾳ.
THE SILVER WEDDING.
THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD AND OF THE SOUL.
LOVE, NOT DUTY.
LOVE AND REASON.
Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!
WIRKUNG IN DER FERNE.
ἐπὶ Λάτμῳ.
A PROTEST.
SIC ITUR.
PARTING.
QUA CURSUM VENTUS.
‘ WEN GOTT BETRÜGT, IST WOHL BETROGEN. ’
POEMS ON RELIGIOUS AND BIBLICAL SUBJECTS.
FRAGMENTS OF THE MYSTERY OF THE FALL.
THE SONG OF LAMECH.
GENESIS XXIV.
JACOB.
JACOB’S WIVES.
THE NEW SINAI.
QUI LABORAT, ORAT.
ὕμνος ἄυμνος.
THE HIDDEN LOVE.
SHADOW AND LIGHT.
‘WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING.’
IN STRATIS VIARUM.
‘ PERCHÈ PENSA? PENSANDO S’INVECCHIA. ’
‘ O THOU OF LITTLE FAITH. ’
‘ THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. ’
AH! YET CONSIDER IT AGAIN!
NOLI ÆMULARI.
‘ WHAT WENT YE OUT FOR TO SEE? ’
EPI-STRAUSS-IUM.
THE SHADOW.
EASTER DAY. NAPLES, 1849.
EASTER DAY. II
DIPSYCHUS.
PROLOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.
DIPSYCHUS.
Part I.
Part II.
EPILOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.
DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED. A FRAGMENT.
POEMS ON LIFE AND DUTY.
DUTY.
LIFE IS STRUGGLE.
IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS.
THE LATEST DECALOGUE.
THE QUESTIONING SPIRIT.
BETHESDA. A SEQUEL.
HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE!
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN!
COLD COMFORT.
SEHNSUCHT.
HIGH AND LOW.
ALL IS WELL.
πάντα ῥεῖ· οὐδὲν μένει.
THE STREAM OF LIFE.
IN A LONDON SQUARE.
THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH: A LONG-VACATION PASTORAL.
THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH.
IDYLLIC SKETCHES.
ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT HESPERUS.
A LONDON IDYLL.
NATURA NATURANS.
AMOURS DE VOYAGE.
AMOURS DE VOYAGE.
SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.
SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.
MARI MAGNO OR TALES ON BOARD.
MARI MAGNO or TALES ON BOARD.
THE LAWYER’S FIRST TALE. Primitiæ, or Third Cousins.
THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE. Love is fellow-service.
MY TALE. A la Banquette, or a Modern Pilgrimage.
THE MATE’S STORY.
THE CLERGYMAN’S SECOND TALE.
THE LAWYER’S SECOND TALE. Christian.
SONGS IN ABSENCE.
SONGS IN ABSENCE.
ESSAYS IN CLASSICAL METRES.
TRANSLATIONS OF ILIAD.
ELEGIACS.
ALCAICS.
ACTÆON. [18]
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
COME, POET, COME!
THE DREAM LAND.
IN THE DEPTHS.
DARKNESS.
TWO MOODS.
YOUTH AND AGE.
SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS.
THESIS AND ANTITHESIS.
ἀνεμώλια.
COLUMBUS.
EVEN THE WINDS AND THE SEA OBEY.
REPOSE IN EGYPT.
TO A SLEEPING CHILD.
TRANSLATIONS FROM GOETHE.
URANUS. [20]
SELENE.
AT ROME.
LAST WORDS. NAPOLEON AND WELLINGTON.
PESCHIERA.
ALTERAM PARTEM.
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH.
INDEX OF THE FIRST LINES.
I
Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent,
One-third departed of the mortal span,
Carrying on the child into the man,
Nothing into reality. Sails rent,
And rudder broken,—reason impotent,—
Affections all unfixed; so forth I fare
On the mid seas unheedingly, so dare
To do and to be done by, well content.
So was it from the first, so is it yet;
Yea, the first kiss that by these lips was set
On any human lips, methinks was sin—
Sin, cowardice, and falsehood; for the will
Into a deed e’en then advanced, wherein
God, unidentified, was thought-of still.
II
Though to the vilest things beneath the moon
For poor Ease’ sake I give away my heart,
And for the moment’s sympathy let part
My sight and sense of truth, Thy precious boon,
My painful earnings, lost, all lost, as soon,
Almost, as gained; and though aside I start,
Belie Thee daily, hourly,—still Thou art,
Art surely as in heaven the sun at noon;
How much so e’er I sin, whate’er I do
Of evil, still the sky above is blue,
The stars look down in beauty as before:
It is enough to walk as best we may,
To walk, and, sighing, dream of that blest day
When ill we cannot quell shall be no more.
III
Well, well,—Heaven bless you all from day to day!
Forgiveness too, or e’er we part, from each,
As I do give it, so must I beseech:
I owe all much, much more than I can pay;
Therefore it is I go; how could I stay
Where every look commits me to fresh debt,
And to pay little I must borrow yet?
Enough of this already, now away!
With silent woods and hills untenanted
Let me go commune; under thy sweet gloom,
O kind maternal Darkness, hide my head:
The day may come I yet may re-assume
My place, and, these tired limbs recruited, seek
The task for which I now am all too weak.
IV
Yes, I have lied, and so must walk my way,
Bearing the liar’s curse upon my head;
Letting my weak and sickly heart be fed
On food which does the present craving stay,
But may be clean-denied me e’en to-day,
And tho’ ’twere certain, yet were ought but bread;
Letting—for so they say, it seems, I said,
And I am all too weak to disobey!
Therefore for me sweet Nature’s scenes reveal not
Their charm; sweet Music greets me and I feel not
Sweet eyes pass off me uninspired; yea, more,
The golden tide of opportunity
Flows wafting-in friendships and better,—I
Unseeing, listless, pace along the shore.
V
How often sit I, poring o’er
My strange distorted youth,
Seeking in vain, in all my store,
One feeling based on truth;
Amid the maze of petty life
A clue whereby to move,
A spot whereon in toil and strife
To dare to rest and love.
So constant as my heart would be,
So fickle as it must,
’Twere well for others as for me
’Twere dry as summer dust.
Excitements come, and act and speech
Flow freely forth;—but no,
Nor they, nor ought beside can reach
The buried world below.
1841
VI
——Like a child
In some strange garden left awhile alone,
I pace about the pathways of the world,
Plucking light hopes and joys from every stem
With qualms of vague misgiving in my heart
That payment at the last will be required,
Payment I cannot make, or guilt incurred,
And shame to be endured.
1841
VII
——Roused by importunate knocks
I rose, I turned the key, and let them in,
First one, anon another, and at length
In troops they came; for how could I, who once
Had let in one, nor looked him in the face,
Show scruples e’er again? So in they came,
A noisy band of revellers,—vain hopes,
Wild fancies, fitful joys; and there they sit
In my heart’s holy place, and through the night
Carouse, to leave it when the cold grey dawn
Gleams from the East, to tell me that the time
For watching and for thought bestowed is gone.
1841
VIII
O kind protecting Darkness! as a child
Flies back to bury in its mother’s lap
His shame and his confusion, so to thee,
O Mother Night, come I! within the folds
Of thy dark robe hide thou me close; for I
So long, so heedless, with external things
Have played the liar, that whate’er I see,
E’en these white glimmering curtains, yon bright stars,
Which to the rest rain comfort down, for me
Smiling those smiles, which I may not return,
Or frowning frowns of fierce triumphant malice,
As angry claimants or expectants sure
Of that I promised and may not perform,
Look me in the face! O hide me, Mother Night!
1841
IX
Once more the wonted road I tread,
Once more dark heavens above me spread,
Upon the windy down I stand,
My station whence the circling land
Lies mapped and pictured wide below;—
Such as it was, such e’en again,
Long dreary bank, and breadth of plain
By hedge or tree unbroken;—lo!
A few grey woods can only show
How vain their aid, and in the sense
Of one unaltering impotence,
Relieving not, meseems enhance
The sovereign dulness of the expanse.
Yet marks where human hand hath been,
Bare house, unsheltered village, space
Of ploughed and fenceless tilth between
(Such aspect as methinks may be
In some half-settled colony),
From Nature vindicate the scene;
A wide, and yet disheartening view,
A melancholy world.
’Tis true,
Most true; and yet, like those strange smiles
By fervent hope or tender thought
From distant happy regions brought,
Which upon some sick bed are seen
To glorify a pale worn face
With sudden beauty,—so at whiles
Lights have descended, hues have been,
To clothe with half-celestial grace
The bareness of the desert place.
Since so it is, so be it still!
Could only thou, my heart, be taught
To treasure, and in act fulfil
The lesson which the sight has brought:
In thine own dull and dreary state
To work and patiently to wait:
Little thou think’st in thy despair
How soon the o’ershaded sun may shine,
And e’en the dulling clouds combine
To bless with lights and hues divine
That region desolate and bare,
Those sad and sinful thoughts of thine!
Still doth the coward heart complain;
The hour may come, and come in vain;
The branch that withered lies and dead
No suns can force to lift its head.
True!—yet how little thou canst tell
How much in thee is ill or well;
Nor for thy neighbour nor for thee,
Be sure, was life designed to be
A draught of dull complacency.
One Power too is it, who doth give
The food without us, and within
The strength that makes it nutritive;
He bids the dry bones rise and live,
And e’en in hearts depraved to sin
Some sudden, gracious influence,
May give the long-lost good again,
And wake within the dormant sense
And love of good;—for mortal men,
So but thou strive, thou soon shalt see
Defeat itself is victory.
So be it: yet, O Good and Great,
In whom in this bedarkened state
I fain am struggling to believe,
Let me not ever cease to grieve,
Nor lose the consciousness of ill
Within me;—and refusing still
To recognise in things around
What cannot truly there be found,
Let me not feel, nor be it true,
That, while each daily task I do,
I still am giving day by day
My precious things within away
(Those thou didst give to keep as thine)
And casting, do whate’er I may,
My heavenly pearls to earthly swine.
1841
A SONG OF AUTUMN.
Table of Contents
My wind is turned to bitter north,
That was so soft a south before;
My sky, that shone so sunny bright,
With foggy gloom is clouded o’er:
My gay green leaves are yellow-black,
Upon the dank autumnal floor;
For love, departed once, comes back
No more again, no more.
A roofless ruin lies my home,
For winds to blow and rains to pour;
One frosty night befell, and lo!
I find my summer days are o’er:
The heart bereaved, of why and how
Unknowing, knows that yet before
It had what e’en to Memory now
Returns no more, no more.
τὸ καλόν.
Table of Contents
I have seen higher, holier things than these,
And therefore must to these refuse my heart,
Yet am I panting for a little ease;
I’ll take, and so depart.
Ah, hold! the heart is prone to fall away,
Her high and cherished visions to forget,
And if thou takest, how wilt thou repay
So vast, so dread a debt?
How will the heart, which now thou trustest, then
Corrupt, yet in corruption mindful yet,
Turn with sharp stings upon itself! Again,
Bethink thee of the debt!
—Hast thou seen higher, holier things than these,
And therefore must to these thy heart refuse?
With the true best, alack, how ill agrees
That best that thou would’st choose!
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above;
Do thou, as best thou may’st, thy duty do:
Amid the things allowed thee live and love;
Some day thou shalt it view.
1841
Χρυσέα κλῄς ἐπὶ γλώσσᾳ.
Table of Contents
If, when in cheerless wanderings, dull and cold,
A sense of human kindliness hath found us,
We seem to have around us
An atmosphere all gold,
’Midst darkest shades a halo rich of shine,
An element, that while the bleak wind bloweth,
On the rich heart bestoweth
Imbreathèd draughts of wine;
Heaven guide, the cup be not, as chance may be,
To some vain mate given up as soon as tasted!
No, nor on thee be wasted,
Thou trifler, Poesy!
Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely, ere
Youth fly, with life’s real tempest would be coping;
The fruit of dreamy hoping
Is, waking, blank despair.
1841
THE SILVER WEDDING.[2]
Table of Contents
The Silver Wedding! on some pensive ear
From towers remote as sound the silvery bells,
To-day from one far unforgotten year
A silvery faint memorial music swells.
And silver-pale the dim memorial light
Of musing age on youthful joys is shed,
The golden joys of fancy’s dawning bright,
The golden bliss of, Woo’d, and won, and wed.
Ah, golden then, but silver now! In sooth,
The years that pale the cheek, that dim the eyes,
And silver o’er the golden hairs of youth,
Less prized can make its only priceless prize.
Not so; the voice this silver name that gave
To this, the ripe and unenfeebled date,
For steps together tottering to the grave,
Hath bid the perfect golden title wait.
Rather, if silver this, if that be gold,
From good to better changed on age’s track,
Must it as baser metal be enrolled,
That day of days, a quarter-century back.
Yet ah, its hopes, its joys were golden too,
But golden of the fairy gold of dreams:
To feel is but to dream; until we do,
There’s nought that is, and all we see but seems.
What was or seemed it needed cares and tears,
And deeds together done, and trials past,
And all the subtlest alchemy of years,
To change to genuine substance here at last.
Your fairy gold is silver sure to-day;
Your ore by crosses many, many a loss,
As in refiners’ fires, hath purged away
What erst it had of earthy human dross.
Come years as many yet, and as they go,
In human life’s great crucible shall they
Transmute, so potent are the spells they know,
Into pure gold the silver of to-day.
Strange metallurge is human life! ’Tis true;
And Use and Wont in many a gorgeous case
Full specious fair for casual outward view
Electrotype the sordid and the base.
Nor lack who praise, avowed, the spurious ware,
Who bid young hearts the one true love forego,
Conceit to feed, or fancy light as air,
Or greed of pelf and precedence and show.
True, false, as one to casual eyes appear,
To read men truly men may hardly learn;
Yet doubt it not that wariest glance would here
Faith, Hope and Love, the true Tower-stamp discern.
Come years again! as many yet! and purge
Less precious earthier elements away,
And gently changed at life’s extremest verge,
Bring bright in gold your perfect fiftieth day!
That sight may children see and parents show!
If not—yet earthly chains of metal true,
By love and duty wrought and fixed below,
Elsewhere will shine, transformed, celestial-new;
Will shine of gold, whose essence, heavenly bright,
No doubt-damps tarnish, worldly passions fray;
Gold into gold there mirrored, light in light,
Shall gleam in glories of a deathless day.
1845
THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD AND OF THE SOUL.
Table of Contents
I
Why should I say I see the things I see not?
Why be and be not?
Show love for that I love not, and fear for what I fear not?
And dance about to music that I hear not?
Who standeth still i’ the street
Shall be hustled and justled about;
And he that stops i’ the dance shall be spurned by the dancers’ feet,—
Shall be shoved and be twisted by all he shall meet,
And shall raise up an outcry and rout;
And the partner, too,—
What’s the partner to do?
While all the while ’tis but, perchance, an humming in mine ear,
That yet anon shall hear,
And I anon, the music in my soul,
In a moment read the whole;
The music in my heart,
Joyously take my part,
And hand in hand, and heart with heart, with these retreat, advance;
And borne on wings of wavy sound,
Whirl with these around, around,
Who here are living in the living dance!
Why forfeit that fair chance?
Till that arrive, till thou awake,
Of these, my soul, thy music make,
And keep amid the throng,
And turn as they shall turn, and bound as they are bounding,—
Alas! alas! alas! and what if all along
The music is not sounding?
II
Are there not, then, two musics unto men?—
One loud and bold and coarse,
And overpowering still perforce
All tone and tune beside;
Yet in despite its pride
Only of fumes of foolish fancy bred,
And sounding solely in the sounding head:
The other, soft and low,
Stealing whence we not know,
Painfully heard, and easily forgot,
With pauses oft and many a silence strange
(And silent oft it seems, when silent it is not),
Revivals too of unexpected change:
Haply thou think’st ’twill never be begun,
Or that ’t has come, and been, and passed away:
Yet turn to other none,—
Turn not, oh, turn not thou!
But listen, listen, listen,—if haply be heard it may;
Listen, listen, listen,—is it not sounding now?
III
Yea, and as thought of some departed friend
By death or distance parted will descend,
Severing, in crowded rooms ablaze with light,
As by a magic screen, the seër from the sight
(Palsying the nerves that intervene
The eye and central sense between);
So may the ear,
Hearing not hear,
Though drums do roll, and pipes and cymbals ring;
So the bare conscience of the better thing
Unfelt, unseen, unimaged, all unknown,
May fix the entrancèd soul ’mid multitudes alone.
LOVE, NOT DUTY.
Table of Contents
Thought may well be ever ranging,
And opinion ever changing,
Task-work be, though ill begun,
Dealt with by experience better;
By the law and by the letter
Duty done is duty done:
Do it, Time is on the wing!
Hearts, ’tis quite another thing,
Must or once for all be given,
Or must not at all be given;
Hearts, ’tis quite another thing!
To bestow the soul away
Is an idle duty-play!—
Why, to trust a life-long bliss
To caprices of a day,
Scarce were more depraved than this!
Men and maidens, see you mind it;
Show of love, where’er you find it,
Look if duty lurk behind it!
Duty-fancies, urging on
Whither love had never gone!
Loving—if the answering breast
Seem not to be thus possessed,
Still in hoping have a care;
If it do, beware, beware!
But if in yourself you find it,
Above all things—mind it, mind it!
1841
LOVE AND REASON.
Table of Contents
When panting sighs the bosom fill,
And hands by chance united thrill
At once with one delicious pain
The pulses and the nerves of twain;
When eyes that erst could meet with ease,
Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun
Extatic conscious unison,—
The sure beginnings, say, be these
Prelusive to the strain of love
Which angels sing in heaven above?
Or is it but the vulgar tune,
Which all that breathe beneath the moon
So accurately learn—so soon?
With variations duly blent;
Yet that same song to all intent,
Set for the finer instrument;
It is; and it would sound the same
In beasts, were not the bestial frame,
Less subtly organised, to blame;
And but that soul and spirit add
To pleasures, even base and bad,
A zest the soulless never had.
It may be—well indeed I deem;
But what if sympathy, it seem,
And admiration and esteem,
Commingling therewithal, do make
The passion prized for Reason’s sake?
Yet, when my heart would fain rejoice,
A small expostulating voice
Falls in; Of this thou wilt not take
Thy one irrevocable choice?
In accent tremulous and thin
I hear high Prudence deep within,
Pleading the bitter, bitter sting,
Should slow-maturing seasons bring,
Too late, the veritable thing.
For if (the Poet’s tale of bliss)
A love, wherewith commeasured this
Is weak and beggarly, and none,
Exist a treasure to be won,
And if the vision, though it stay,
Be yet for an appointed day,—
This choice, if made, this deed, if done,
The memory of this present past,
With vague foreboding might o’ercast
The heart, or madden it at last.
Let Reason first her office ply;
Esteem, and admiration high,
And mental, moral sympathy,
Exist they first, nor be they brought
By self-deceiving afterthought,—
What if an halo interfuse
With these again its opal hues,
That all o’erspreading and o’erlying,
Transmuting, mingling, glorifying,
About the beauteous various whole.
With beaming smile do dance and quiver;
Yet, is that halo of the soul?—
Or is it, as may sure be said,
Phosphoric exhalation bred
Of vapour, steaming from the bed
Of Fancy’s brook, or Passion’s river?
So when, as will be by-and-by,
The stream is waterless and dry,
This halo and its hues will die;
And though the soul contented rest
With those substantial blessings blest,
Will not a longing, half confest,
Betray that this is not the love,
The gift for which all gifts above
Him praise we, Who is Love, the Giver?
I cannot say—the things are good:
Bread is it, if not angels’ food;
But Love? Alas! I cannot say;
A glory on the vision lay;
A light of more than mortal day
About it played, upon it rested;
It did not, faltering and weak,
Beg Reason on its side to speak:
Itself was Reason, or, if not,
Such substitute as is, I wot,
Of seraph-kind the loftier lot;—
Itself was of itself attested;—
To processes that, hard and dry,
Elaborate truth from fallacy,
With modes intuitive succeeding,
Including those and superseding;
Reason sublimed and Love most high
It was, a life that cannot die,
A dream of glory most exceeding.
1844
Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ![3]
Table of Contents
Farewell, my Highland lassie! when the year returns around,
Be it Greece, or be it Norway, where my vagrant feet are found,
I shall call to mind the place, I shall call to mind the day,
The day that’s gone for ever, and the glen that’s far away;
I shall mind me, be it Rhine or Rhone, Italian land or France,
Of the laughings and the whispers, of the pipings and the dance;
I shall see thy soft brown eyes dilate to wakening woman thought,
And whiter still the white cheek grow to which the blush was brought;
And oh, with mine commixing I thy breath of life shall feel,
And clasp thy shyly passive hands in joyous Highland reel;
I shall hear, and see, and feel, and in sequence sadly true,
Shall repeat the bitter-sweet of the lingering last adieu;
I shall seem as now to leave thee, with the kiss upon the brow,
And the fervent benediction of—Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!
Ah me, my Highland lassie! though in winter drear and long
Deep arose the heavy snows, and the stormy winds were strong,
Though the rain, in summer’s brightest, it were raining every day,
With worldly comforts few and far, how glad were I to stay!
I fall to sleep with dreams of life in some black bothie spent,
Coarse poortith’s ware thou changing there to gold of pure content,
With barefoot lads and lassies round, and thee the cheery wife,
In the braes of old Lochaber a laborious homely life;
But I wake—to leave thee, smiling, with the kiss upon the brow,
And the peaceful benediction of—Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!
WIRKUNG IN DER FERNE.
Table of Contents
When the dews are earliest falling,
When the evening glen is grey,
Ere thou lookest, ere thou speakest,
My beloved,
I depart, and I return to thee,—
Return, return, return.
Dost thou watch me while I traverse
Haunts of men, beneath the sun—
Dost thou list while I bespeak them
With a voice whose cheer is thine?
O my brothers! men, my brothers,
You are mine, and I am yours;
I am yours to cheer and succour,
I am yours for hope and aid:
Lo, my hand to raise and stay you,
Lo, my arm to guard and keep,
My voice to rouse and warn you,
And my heart to warm and calm;
My heart to lend the life it owes
To her that is not here,
In the power of her that dwelleth
Where you know not—no, nor guess not—
Whom you see not; unto whom,—
Ere the evening star hath sunken,
Ere the glow-worm lights its lamp,
Ere the wearied workman slumbers,—
I return, return, return.
ἐπὶ Λάτμῳ.
Table of Contents
On the mountain, in the woodland,
In the shaded secret dell,
I have seen thee, I have met thee!
In the soft ambrosial hours of night,
In darkness silent sweet
I beheld thee, I was with thee,
I was thine, and thou wert mine!
When I gazed in palace-chambers,
When I trod the rustic dance,
Earthly maids were fair to look on,
Earthly maidens’ hearts were kind:
Fair to look on, fair to love:
But the life, the life to me,
’Twas the death, the death to them,
In the spying, prying, prating
Of a curious cruel world.
At a touch, a breath they fade,
They languish, droop, and die;
Yea, the juices change to sourness,
And the tints to clammy brown;
And the softness unto foulness,
And the odour unto stench.
Let alone and leave to bloom;
Pass aside, nor make to die,
—In the woodland, on the mountain,
Thou art mine, and I am thine.
So I passed.—Amid the uplands,
In the forests, on whose skirts
Pace unstartled, feed unfearing
Do the roe-deer and the red,
While I hungered, while I thirsted,
While the night was deepest dark,
Who was I, that thou shouldst meet me?
Who was I, thou didst not pass?
Who was I, that I should say to thee
Thou art mine, and I am thine?
To the air from whence thou camest
Thou returnest, thou art gone;
Self-created, discreated,
Re-created, ever fresh,
Ever young!——
As a lake its mirrored mountains
At a moment, unregretting,
Unresisting, unreclaiming,
Without preface, without question,
On the silent shifting levels
Lets depart,
Shows, effaces and replaces!
For what is, anon is not;
What has been, again ’s to be;
Ever new and ever young
Thou art mine, and I am thine.
Art thou she that walks the skies,
That rides the starry night?
I know not——
For my meanness dares not claim the truth
Thy loveliness declares.
But the face thou show’st the world is not
The face thou show’st to me;
And the look that I have looked in
Is of none but me beheld.
I know not; but I know
I am thine, and thou art mine.
And I watch: the orb behind
As it fleeteth, faint and fair
In the depth of azure night,
In the violet blank, I trace
By an outline faint and fair
Her whom none but I beheld.
By her orb she moveth slow,
Graceful-slow, serenely firm,
Maiden-Goddess! while her robe
The adoring planets kiss.
And I too cower and ask,
Wert thou mine, and was I thine?
Hath a cloud o’ercast the sky?
Is it cloud upon the mountain-sides
Or haze of dewy river-banks
Below?—
Or around me,
To enfold me, to conceal,
Doth a mystic magic veil,
A celestial separation,
As of curtains hymeneal,
Undiscerned yet all excluding,
Interpose?
For the pine-tree boles are dimmer,
And the stars bedimmed above;
In perspective brief, uncertain,
Are the forest-alleys closed,
And to whispers indistinctest
The resounding torrents lulled.
Can it be, and can it be?
Upon Earth and here below,
In the woodland at my side
Thou art with me, thou art here.
’Twas the vapour of the perfume
Of the presence that should be,
That enwrapt me?
That enwraps us,
O my Goddess, O my Queen!
And I turn
At thy feet to fall before thee;
And thou wilt not:
At thy feet to kneel and reach and kiss thy finger-tips;
And thou wilt not:
And I feel thine arms that stay me,
And I feel——
O mine own, mine own, mine own,
I am thine, and thou art mine!
A PROTEST.
Table of Contents
Light words they were, and lightly, falsely said:
She heard them, and she started,—and she rose,
As in the act to speak; the sudden thought
And unconsidered impulse led her on.
In act to speak she rose, but with the sense
Of all the eyes of that mixed company
Now suddenly turned upon her, some with age
Hardened and dulled, some cold and critical;
Some in whom vapours of their own conceit,
As moist malarious mists the heavenly stars,
Still blotted out their good, the best at best
By frivolous laugh and prate conventional
All too untuned for all she thought to say—
With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek
Flushed-up, and o’er-flushed itself, blank night her soul
Made dark, and in her all her purpose swooned.
She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon
With recollections clear, august, sublime,
Of God’s great truth, and right immutable,
Which, as obedient vassals, to her mind
Came summoned of her will, in self-negation
Quelling her troublous earthy consciousness,
She queened it o’er her weakness. At the spell
Back rolled the ruddy tide, and leaves her cheek
Paler than erst, and yet not ebbs so far
But that one pulse of one indignant thought
Might hurry it hither in flood. So as she stood
She spoke. God in her spoke and made her heard.
1845
SIC ITUR.
Table of Contents
As, at a railway junction, men
Who came together, taking then
One the train up, one down, again
Meet never! Ah, much more as they
Who take one street’s two sides, and say
Hard parting words, but walk one way:
Though moving other mates between,
While carts and coaches intervene,
Each to the other goes unseen;
Yet seldom, surely, shall there lack
Knowledge they walk not back to back,
But with an unity of track,
Where common dangers each attend,
And common hopes their guidance lend
To light them to the self-same end.
Whether he then shall cross to thee,
Or thou go thither, or it be
Some midway point, ye yet shall see
Each other, yet again shall meet
Ah, joy! when with the closing street,
Forgivingly at last ye greet!
1845
PARTING.
Table of Contents
O tell me, friends, while yet we part,
And heart can yet be heard of heart,
O tell me then, for what is it
Our early plan of life we quit;
From all our old intentions range,
And why does all so wholly change?
O tell me, friends, while yet we part!
O tell me, friends, while yet we part,—
The rays that from the centre start
Within the orb of one warm sun,
Unless I err, have once begun,—
Why is it thus they still diverge?
And whither tends the course they urge?
O tell me, friends, while yet we part!
O tell me, friends, while yet ye hear,—
May it not be, some coming year,
These ancient paths that here divide
Shall yet again run side by side,
And you from there, and I from here,
All on a sudden reappear?
O tell me, friends, while yet ye hear!
O tell me, friends, ye hardly hear,—
And if indeed ye did, I fear
Ye would not say, ye would not speak,—
Are you so strong, am I so weak,
And yet, how much so e’er I yearn,
Can I not follow, nor you turn?
O tell me, friends, ye hardly hear!
O tell me, friends, ere words are o’er!
There’s something in me sad and sore
Repines, and underneath my eyes
I feel a somewhat that would rise,—
O tell me, O my friends, and you,
Do you feel nothing like it too?
O tell me, friends, ere words are o’er!
O tell me, friends that are no more,
Do you, too, think ere it is o’er
Old times shall yet come round as erst,
And we be friends, as we were first?
Or do you judge that all is vain,
Except that rule that none complain?
O tell me, friends that are no more!
QUA CURSUM VENTUS.
Table of Contents
As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried;
When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was cleaving, side by side:
E’en so—but why the tale reveal
Of those, whom year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?
At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered—
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides—
To that, and your own selves, be true.
But O blithe breeze; and O great seas,
Though ne’er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where’er they fare,—
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!
‘WEN GOTT BETRÜGT, IST WOHL BETROGEN.’
Table of Contents
Is it true, ye gods, who treat us
As the gambling fool is treated;
O ye, who ever cheat us,
And let us feel we’re cheated!
Is it true that poetical power,
The gift of heaven, the dower
Of Apollo and the Nine,
The inborn sense, ‘the vision and the faculty divine,’
All we glorify and bless
In our rapturous exaltation,
All invention, and creation,
Exuberance of fancy, and sublime imagination,
All a poet’s fame is built on,
The fame of Shakespeare, Milton,
Of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,
Is in reason’s grave precision,
Nothing more, nothing less,
Than a peculiar conformation,
Constitution, and condition
Of the brain and of the belly?
Is it true, ye gods who cheat us?
And that’s the way ye treat us?
Oh say it, all who think it,
Look straight, and never blink it!
If it is so, let it be so,
And we will all agree so;
But the plot has counterplot,
It may be, and yet be not.
POEMS ON RELIGIOUS AND BIBLICAL SUBJECTS.
Table of Contents
FRAGMENTS OF THE MYSTERY OF THE FALL.[4]
Table of Contents
