A SUMMER EVENING'S TALE

 

COME, let thy careless sail float on the wind;

Come, lean by me, and let thy little boat

Follow like thee its will; come, lean by me.

Freighted with roses which the west has flung,

Over its waters on the vessel glides,

Save where the shadowy boughs shut out the sky,

And make a lovely darkness, while the wind

Stirs the sad music of their plaining leaves.

The sky grows paler, as it burnt away

Its crimson passion; and the falling dew

Seems like the tears that follow such an hour.

I'll tell thee, love, a tale,—just such a tale

As you once said my lips could breathe so well;

Speaking as poetry should speak of love,

And asking from the depths of mine own heart

The truth that touches, and by what I feel

For thee, believe what others' feelings are.

There, leave the sail, and look with earnest eyes;

Seem not as if the worldly element

In which thou movest were of thy nature part,

But yield thee to the influence of those thoughts

That haunt thy solitude;—ah, but for those

I never could have loved thee; I, who now

Live only in my other life with thee;

Out on our beings' falsehood!—studied, cold,

Are we not like that actor of old time,

Who wore his mask so long, his features took

Its likeness?—thus we feign we do not feel,

Until our feelings are forgotten things,

Their nature warp'd in one base selfishness;

And generous impulses, and lofty thoughts,

Are counted folly, or are not believed:

And he who doubts or mocks at excellence

(Good that refines our nature, and subdues),

Is riveted to earth by sevenfold chains.

Oh, never had the poet's lute a hope,

An aim so glorious as it now may have,

In this our social state, where petty cares

And mercenary interests only look

Upon the present's littleness, and shrink

From the bold future, and the stately past,—

Where the smooth surface of society

Is polish'd by deceit, and the warm heart

With all its kind affections' early flow,

Flung back upon itself; forgets to beat,

At least for others;—tis the poet's gift

To melt these frozen waters into tears,

By sympathy with sorrows not our own,

By wakening memory with those mournful notes,

Whose music is the thoughts of early years,

When truth was on the lip, and feelings wore

The sweetness and the freshness of their morn.

Young poet, if thy dreams have not such hope

To purify, refine, exalt, subdue,

To touch the selfish, and to shame the vain

Out of themselves, by gentle mournfulness,

Or chords that rouse some aim of enterprise,

Lofty and pure, and meant for general good;

If thou hast not some power that may direct

The mind from the mean round of daily life,

Waking affections that might else have slept,

Or high resolves, the petrified before,

Or rousing in that mind a finer sense

Of inward and external loveliness,

Making imagination serve as guide

To all of heaven that yet remains on earth,—

Thine is a useless lute: break it, and die.

    Love mine, I know my weakness, and I know

How far I fall short of the glorious goal

I purpose to myself; yet if one line

Has stolen from the eye unconscious tears,

Recall'd one lover to fidelity

Which is the holiness of love, or bade

One maiden sicken at cold vanity,

When dreaming o'er affection's tenderness,

The deep, the true, the honour'd of my song,—

If but one worldly soil has been effaced,

That song has not been utterly in vain.

All true deep feeling purifies the heart.

Am I not better by my love for you?

At least, I am less selfish; I would give

My life to buy you happiness:—Hush, hush!

I must not let you know how much I love,—

So to my tale.—'Twas on an eve like this,

When purple shadows floated round, and light,

Crimson and passionate, o'er the statues fell,

Like life, for that fair gallery was fill'd

With statues, each one an eternity

Of thought and beauty: there were lovely shapes,

And noble ones; some which the poet's song

Had touch'd with its own immortality;

Others whose glory flung o'er history's page

Imperishable lustre. There she stood,

Forsaken ARIADNE; round her brow

Wreathed the glad vine-leaves; but it wore a shade

Of early wretchedness, that which once flung

May never be effaced: and near her leant

ENDYMION, and his spiritual beauty wore

The likeness of divinity; for love

Doth elevate to itself, and she who watch'd

Over his sleeping face, upon it left

The brightness of herself. Around the walls

Hung pictures, some which gave the summer all

Summer can wish, a more eternal bloom;

And others in some young and lovely face

Embodied dreams into reality.

There hung a portrait of St. ROSALIE,

She who renounced the world in youth, and made

Her heart an altar but for heavenly hopes—

Thrice blessed in such sacrifice. Alas!

The weakness, yet the strength of earthly ties!

Who hath not in the weariness of life

Wish'd for the wings of morning or the dove,

To bear them heavenward, and have wish'd in vain?

For wishes are effectual but by will,

And that too much is impotent and void

In frail humanity; and time steals by

Sinful and wavering, and unredeem'd.

    Bent by a casement, whence her eye could dwell

Or on the countenance of that sweet saint,

Or the fair valley, where the river wound

Like to a fairy thing, now light, now shade,

Which the eye watches in its wandering,

A maiden pass'd each summer eve away.

Life's closing colour was upon her cheek,

Crimson as that which marks the closing day:

And her large eyes, the radiant and the clear,

Wore all the ethereal beauty of that heaven

Where she was hastening. Still her rosebud mouth

Wore the voluptuous sweetness of a spring

Haunted by fragrance and by melody.

Her hair was gather'd in a silken net,

As if its luxury of auburn curls

Oppress'd the feverish temples all too much;

For you might see the azure pulses beat

In the clear forehead painfully; and oft

Would her small hands be press'd upon her brow,

As if to still its throbbing. Days pass'd by,

And thus beside that casement would she spend

The summer evenings. Well she knew her doom,

And sought to linger with such loveliness:

Surely it soothed her passage to the grave.

    One gazed upon her, till his very life

Was dedicate to that idolatry

With which young Love makes offering of itself.

In the vast world he only saw her face.

The morning blush was lighted up by hope,—

The hope of meeting her; the noontide hours

Were counted for her sake; in the soft wind,

When it had pass'd o'er early flowers, he caught

The odour of her sigh; upon the rose

He only saw the colour of her cheek.

He watch'd the midnight stars until they wore

Her beauty's likeness—love's astrology.

    His was the gifted eye, which grace still touch'd

As if with second nature; and his dreams,

His childish dreams, were lit by hues from heaven—

Those which make genius. Now his visions wore

A grace more actual, and one worshipp'd face

Inspired the youthful sculptor, till like life

His spirit warm'd the marble. Who shall say

The love of genius is a common thing,

Such as the many feel—half selfishness,

Half vanity?—for genius is divine,

And, like a god, doth turn its dwelling-place

Into a temple; and the heart redeem'd

By its fine influence is immortal shrine

For love's divinity. In common homes

He dies, as he was born, in nothingness;

But love, inspiring genius, makes the world

Its glorious witness; hence the poet's page

Wakens its haunting sympathy of pain;

And hence the painter with a touch creates

Feelings imperishable. 'Twas from that hour

CANOVA took his inspiration: love

Made him the sculptor of all loveliness;

The overflowing of a soul imbued

By most ideal grace, the memory

Which lingers round first passion's sepulchre.

—Why do I say first love?—there is no second.

Who asks in the same year a second growth

Of spring leaves from the tree, corn from the field?—

They are exhausted. Thus 'tis with the heart:—

'Tis not so rich in feeling or in hope

To bear that one be crush'd, the other faded,

Yet find them ready to put forth again.

It does not always last; man's temper is

Often forgetful, fickle, and throws down

The temple he can never build again;

But when it does last, and that asks for much,—

A fix'd yet passionate spirit, and a mind

Master of its resolves,—when that love lasts,

It is in noblest natures. After years

Tell how CANOVA felt the influence.

They never spoke: she look'd too spiritual,

Too pure for human passion; and her face

Seem'd hallow'd by the heaven it was so near.

And days pass'd on:—it was an eve in June—

How ever could it be so fair a one?—

And she came not: hue after hue forsook

The clouds, like Hope, which died with them, and night

Came all too soon and shadowy. He rose,

And wander'd through the city, o'er which hung

The darkness of his thoughts. At length a strain

Of ominous music wail'd along the streets:

It was the mournful chanting for the dead,

And the long tapers flung upon the air

A wild red light, and show'd the funeral train:

Wreaths—O what mockeries!—hung from the bier;

And there, pale, beautiful, as if in sleep,

Her dark hair braided graceful with white flowers,

She lay,—his own beloved one!

    No more, no more!—love, turn thy boat to land,—

I am so sorrowful at my own words.

Affection is an awful thing!—Alas!

We give our destiny from our own hands,

And trust to those most frail of all frail things,

The chances of humanity.

—The wind hath a deep sound, more stern than sweet;

And the dark sky is clouded; tremulous,

A few far stars—how pale they look to-night!—

Touch the still waters with a fitful light.

There is strange sympathy between all things,

Though in the hurrying weariness of life

We do not pause to note it: the glad day,

Like a young king surrounded by the pomp

Of gold and purple, sinks but to the shade

Of the black night:—the chronicle I told

Began with hope, fair skies, and lovely shapes,

And ended in despair. Even thus our life

In these has likeness; with its many joys,

Its fears, its eagerness, its varying page,

Mark'd with its thousand colours, only tends

To darkness, and to silence, and the grave!

 

From The Venetian Bracelet