| |
[First published 1852. Reprinted 1855.]
IN the deserted moon-blanch’d street | |
| How lonely rings the echo of my feet! | |
| Those windows, which I gaze at, frown, | |
| Silent and white, unopening down, | |
| Repellent as the world:—but see! | 5 |
| A break between the housetops shows | |
| The moon, and, lost behind her, fading dim | |
| Into the dewy dark obscurity | |
| Down at the far horizon’s rim, | |
| Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose. | 10 |
| |
| And to my mind the thought | |
| Is on a sudden brought | |
| Of a past night, and a far different scene. | |
| Headlands stood out into the moon-lit deep | |
| As clearly as at noon; | 15 |
| The spring-tide’s brimming flow | |
| Heav’d dazzlingly between; | |
| Houses with long white sweep | |
| Girdled the glistening bay: | |
| Behind, through the soft air, | 20 |
| The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away. | |
| That night was far more fair; | |
| But the same restless pacings to and fro, | |
| And the same vainly-throbbing 1 heart was there, | |
| And the same bright calm moon. | 25 |
| And the calm moonlight seems to say— | |
| Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast | |
| That neither deadens into rest | |
| Nor ever feels the fiery glow | |
| That whirls the spirit from itself away, | 30 |
| But fluctuates to and fro | |
| Never by passion quite possess’d | |
| And never quite benumb’d by the world’s sway?— | |
| And I, I know not if to pray | |
| Still to be what I am, or yield, and be | 35 |
| Like all the other men I see. | |
| |
| For most men in a brazen prison live, | |
| Where in the sun’s hot eye, | |
| With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly | |
| Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, | 40 |
| Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall. | |
| And as, year after year, | |
| Fresh products of their barren labour fall | |
| From their tired hands, and rest | |
| Never yet comes more near, | 45 |
| Gloom settles slowly down over their breast. | |
| And while they try to stem | |
| The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, | |
| Death in their prison reaches them | |
| Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. | 50 |
| |
| And the rest, a few, | |
| Escape their prison, and depart | |
| On the wide Ocean of Life anew. | |
| There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart | |
| Listeth, will sail; | 55 |
| Nor does he know how there prevail, | |
| Despotic on life’s sea, | |
| Trade-winds that cross it from eternity. | |
| A while he holds some false way, undebarr’d | |
| By thwarting signs, and braves | 60 |
| The freshening wind and blackening waves. | |
| And then the tempest strikes him, and between | |
| The lightning bursts is seen | |
| Only a driving wreck, | |
| And the pale Master on his spar-strewn deck | 65 |
| With anguish’d face and flying hair | |
| Grasping the rudder hard, | |
| Still bent to make some port he knows not where, | |
| Still standing for some false impossible shore. | |
| And sterner comes the roar | 70 |
| Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom | |
| Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom, | |
| And he too disappears, and comes no more. | |
| |
| Is there no life, but these alone? | |
| Madman or slave, must man be one? | 75 |
| |
| Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain! | |
| Clearness divine! | |
| Ye Heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign | |
| Of languor, though so calm, and though so great | |
| Are yet untroubled and unpassionate: | 80 |
| Who though so noble share in the world’s toil, | |
| And though so task’d keep free from dust and soil: | |
| I will not say that your mild deeps retain | |
| A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain | |
| Who have long’d deeply once, and long’d in vain; | 85 |
| But I will rather say that you remain | |
| A world above man’s head, to let him see | |
| How boundless might his soul’s horizons be, | |
| How vast, yet of what clear transparency. | |
| How it were good to sink there, and breathe free. | 90 |
| How fair 2 a lot to fill | |
| Is left to each man still. | |
