Works

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating

What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?
'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry
Stormily sweet, his Titan agony;
It was the sight of that Lord Arundel
...

That son of Italy who tried to blow,
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sate with his bride to see a public show.
...

PERSONS:
EMPEDOCLES.
PAUSANIAS, a Physician.
CALLICLES, a young Harp-player.

The Scene of the Poem is on Mount Etna; at first in the forest region,
afterwards on the summit of the mountain.
...

If, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagin'd lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day,...

'Oh could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!'
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall.
Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call.
But at God's altar, oh! remember me.
...

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow
Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;
And Hector was in Ilium, far below,
And fought, and saw it not but there it stood!
...

Ye storm-winds of Autumn
Who rush by, who shake
The window, and ruffle
The gleam-lighted lake;
Who cross to the hill-side
Thin-sprinkled with farms,
Where the high woods strip sadly...

Hark! ah, the nightingale
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,...

'Man is blind because of sin;
'Revelation makes him sure.
'Without that, who looks within,
'Looks in vain, for all's obscure.'

Nay, look closer into man!
Tell me, can you find indeed...

In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.
...

And they remember
With piercing untold anguish
The proud boasting of their youth.
And they feel how Nature was fair.
And the mists of delusion,
And the scales of habit,
Fall away from their eyes

The Master stood upon the mount, and taught.
He saw a fire in his disciples' eyes;
'The old law', they said, 'is wholly come to naught!
Behold the new world rise!'
...

Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;...

I

THE LAST GLEN

Hist! once more!
Listen, Pausanias! Aye, 'tis Callicles!
I know those notes among a thousand. Hark!

CALLICLES

(Sings unseen, from below.)...

In the cedar shadow sleeping,
Where cool grass and fragrant glooms
Oft at noon have lur'd me, creeping
From your darken'd palace rooms:
I, who in your train at morning...

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian way.

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers...

A long pause, during which EMPEDOCLES remains motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens. He moves forward and gazes round him, and proceeds:


And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,...

Youth rambles on life's arid mount,
And strikes the rock, and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount,
The fount which shall not flow again.

The man mature with labour chops...

'In harmony with Nature'? Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility;
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool:...