In Araby, romances; legends penned For solace by dim light of monkish lamps; Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised
By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun By the dismantled warrior in old age, Out of the bowels of those very schemes In which his youth did first extravagate; These spread like day, and something in the shape Of these will live till man shall be no more. Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours, And they must have their food. Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements.
Or less I might have seen, when first my mind With conscious pleasure opened to the charm Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet For their own sakes, a passion, and a power; And phrases pleased me chosen for delight, For pomp, or love. Oft, in the public roads Yet unfrequented, while the morning light Was yellowing the hill tops, I went abroad With a dear friend, and for the better part Of two delightful hours we strolled along By the still borders of the misty lake, Repeating favourite verses with one voice, Or conning more, as happy as the birds
That round us chaunted. Well might we be glad, Lifted above the ground by airy fancies,
More bright than madness or the dreams of wine; And, though full oft the objects of our love Were false, and in their splendour overwrought, Yet was there surely then no vulgar power Working within us; nothing less, in truth, Than that most noble attribute of man, Though yet untutored and inordinate, That wish for something loftier, more adorned, Than is the common aspect, daily garb,
Of human life. What wonder, then, if sounds Of exultation echoed through the groves! For, images, and sentiments, and words, And everything encountered or pursued In that delicious world of poesy, Kept holiday, a never ending show, With music, incense, festival, and flowers!
Here must we pause: this only let me add, From heart-experience, and in humblest sense Of modesty, that he, who in his youth A daily wanderer among woods and fields With living Nature hath been intimate, Not only in that raw unpractised time Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are, By glittering verse; but further, doth receive, In measure only dealt out to himself, Knowledge and increase of enduring joy From the great Nature that exists in works Of mighty poets. Visionary power Attends the motions of the viewless winds, Embodied in the mystery of words:
There, darkness makes abode, and all the host Of shadowy things work endless changes, there, As in a mansion like their proper home, Even forms and substances are circumfused By that transparent veil with light divine, And, through the turnings intricate of verse, Present themselves as objects recognised, In flashes, and with glory not their own.
Four years and thirty, told this very week, Have I been now a sojourner on earth, By sorrow not unsmitten: yet for me
Life's morning radiance hath not left the hills, Her dew is on the flowers. Those were the days Which also first emboldened me to trust
With firmness, hitherto but slightly touched By such a daring thought, that I might leave Some monument behind me which pure hearts Should reverence.
A single tree With sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed, Grew there; an ash which winter for himself Decked as in pride, and with outlandish grace : Up from the ground, and almost to the top, The trunk and every master branch were green With clustering ivy, and the lightsome twigs And outer spray profusely tipped with seeds That hung in yellow tassels, while the air Stirred them, not voiceless. Often have I stood Foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree Beneath a frosty moon. The hemisphere Of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance May never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self Could have more tranquil visions in his youth, Or could more bright appearances create Of human forms with superhuman powers, Than I beheld loitering on calm clear nights Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.
I was a better judge of thoughts than words, Misled in estimating words, not only By common inexperience of youth, But by the trade in classic niceties,
The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase From languages that want the living voice To carry meaning to the natural heart; To tell us what is passion, what is truth, What reason, what simplicity and sense.
More frequently from the same source I drew
A pleasure quiet and profound, a sense Of permanent and universal sway, And paramount belief; there, recognised A type, for finite natures, of the one Supreme Existence, the surpassing life Which to the boundaries of space and time, Of melancholy space and doleful time, Superior, and incapable of change, Nor touched by welterings of passion-is, And hath the name of, God.
And silence did await upon these thoughts That were a frequent comfort to my youth.
Of those abstractions to a mind beset With images, and haunted by herself, And specially delightful unto me Was that clear synthesis built up aloft So gracefully; even then when it appeared Not more than a mere plaything, or a toy To sense embodied: not the thing it is In verity, an independent world, Created out of pure intelligence.
O friend! we had not seen thee at that time, And yet a power is on me, and a strong Confusion, and I seem to plant thee there. Far art thou wandered now in search of health And milder breezes, melancholy lot!
But thou art with us, with us in the past, The present, with us in the times to come. There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, No languor, no dejection, no dismay, No absence scarcely can there be, for those Who love as we do. Speed thee well! divide With us thy pleasure; thy returning strength, Receive it daily as a joy of ours;
Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether gift Of gales Etesian or of tender thoughts.
I, too, have been a wanderer; but, alas! How different the fate of different men.
Though mutually unknown, yea, nursed and reared As if in several elements, we were framed To bend at last to the same discipline, Predestined, if two beings ever were,
To seek the same delights, and have one health, One happiness. Throughout this narrative, Else sooner ended, I have borne in mind
For whom it registers the birth, and marks the growth, Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth,
And joyous loves, that hallow innocent days Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields, And groves I speak to thee, my friend! to thee, Who, yet a liveried schoolboy, in the depths Of the huge city, on the leaded roof
Of that wide edifice, thy school and home, Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired, To shut thine eyes, and by internal light See trees, and meadows, and thy native stream, Far distant, thus beheld from year to year Of a long exile.
Through this retrospect
Of my collegiate life I still have had
Thy after-sojourn in the self-same place
Present before my eyes, have played with times And accidents as children do with cards,
Or as a man, who, when his house is built, A frame locked up in wood and stone, doth still, As impotent fancy prompts, by his fireside, Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence, And all the strength and plumage of thy youth, Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out
From things well-matched or ill, and words for things,
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