Ariel

Wert thou on earth to-day, immortal one,How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld,The likeness of that morntide look uponWhich men beheld?How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,As when the tomb has keptUnchanged the face of one who sleptToo soon, yet moulders not, though seasons come and pass?

Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less?And art thou still what Shelley was erewhile,—A feeling born of music's restlessness—A child's swift smileBetween its sobs—a wandering mist that roseAt dawn—a cloud that hungThe Euganéan hills among;Thy voice, a wind-harp's strain in some enchanted close?

Thyself the wild west wind, O boy divine,Thou fain wouldst be,—the spirit which in its breathWooes yet the seaward ilex and the pineThat wept thy death?Or art thou still the incarnate child of songWho gazed, as if astrayFrom some uncharted stellar way,With eyes of wonder at our world of grief and wrong?

Yet thou wast Nature's prodigal; the lastUnto whose lips her beauteous mouth she bentAn instant, ere thy kinsmen, fading fast,Their lorn way went.What though the faun and oread had fled?A tenantry thine own,Peopling their leafy coverts lone,With thee still dwelt as when sweet Fancy was not dead;

Not dead as now, when we the visionless,In nature's alchemy more woeful wise,Say that no thought of us her depths possess,—No love, her skies.Not ours to parley with the whispering June,The genii of the wood,The shapes that lurk in solitude,The cloud, the mounting lark, the wan and waning moon.

For thee the last time Hellas tipped her hillsWith beauty; India breathed her midnight moan,Her sigh, her ecstasy of passion's thrills,To thee alone.Such rapture thine, and the supremer giftWhich can the minstrel raise,Above the myrtle and the bays,To watch the sea of pain whereon our galleys drift.

Therefrom arose with thee that lyric cry,Sad cadence of the disillusioned soulThat asks of heaven and earth its destiny,—Or joy or dole.Wild requiem of the heart whose vibratings,With laughter fraught, and tears,Beat through the century's dying yearsWhile for one more dark round the old Earth plumes her wings.

No answer came to thee; from ether fellNo voice, no radiant beam; and in thy youthHow were it else, when still the oracleWithholds its truth?We sit in judgment,—we, above thy pageJudge thee and such as thee,Pale heralds, sped too soon to seeThe marvels of our late yet unanointed age!

The slaves of air and light obeyed afarThy summons, Ariel; their elf-horns woundStrange notes which all uncapturable areOf broken sound.That music thou alone couldst rightly hear(O rare impressionist!)And mimic. Therefore still we listTo its ethereal fall in this thy cyclic year.

Be then the poet's poet still! for noneOf them whose minstrelsy the stars have blessedHas from expression's wonderland so wonThe unexpressed,—So wrought the charm of its elusive noteOn us, who yearn in vainTo mock the pæan and the plainOf tides that rise and fall with sweet mysterious rote.

Was it not well that the prophetic few,So long inheritors of that high verse,Dwelt in the mount alone, and haply knewWhat stars rehearse?But now with foolish cry the multitudeAwards at last the throne,And claims thy cloudland for its ownWith voices all untuned to thy melodious mood.

What joy it was to haunt some antique shadeLone as thine echo, and to wreak my youthUpon thy song,—to feel the throbs which madeThy bliss, thy ruth,—And thrill I knew not why, and dare to feelMyself an heir unknownTo lands the poet treads aloneEre to his soul the gods their presence quite reveal!

Even then, like thee, I vowed to dedicateMy powers to beauty; ay, but thou didst keepThe vow, whilst I knew not the afterweightThat poets weep,The burthen under which one needs must bow,The rude years envyingMy voice the notes it fain would singFor men belike to hear, as still they hear thee now.

Oh, the swift wind, the unrelenting sea!They loved thee, yet they lured thee unawareTo be their spoil, lest alien skies to theeShould seem more fair;They had their will of thee, yet aye forlornMourned the lithe soul's escape,And gave the strand thy mortal shapeTo be resolved in flame whereof its life was born.

Afloat on tropic waves, I yield once moreIn age that heart of youth unto thy spell.The century wanes: thy voice thrills as of yoreWhen first it fell.Would that I too, so had I sung a layThe least upborne of thine,Had shared thy pain! Not so divineOur light, as faith to chant the far auroral day.

On the Caribbean Sea(Revisited 1892)