Dear Reynolds ! As last night I lay in bed,
There came before my eyes that wonted thread
Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances.
That every other minute vex and please:
Things all disjointed come from north and south, —
Two Witch’s eyes above a Cherub’s mouth,
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,
And Alexander with his nightcap on;
Old Socrates a-tying his cravat.
And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth’s cat;
i And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so,
Making the best of ‘s way towards Soho.
Few are there who escape these visitings, —
Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings,
And thro’ whose curtains peeps no hellish nose,
No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid’s toes;
But flowers bursting out with lusty pride,
And young ^olian harps personify’d;
Some Titian colours touch’d into real life, —
The sacrifice goes on ; the pontiff knife
Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows,
The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows:
A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,
Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff
The mariners join hymn with those on
You know the Enchanted Castle, — it doth stand
Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake,
Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake
From some old magic-like Urganda’s sword.
O Phoebus ! that I had thy sacred word
To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise,:
Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!
You know it well enough, where it doth seem
A mossy place, a Merlin’s Hall, a dream;
You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles,
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills,
All which elsewhere are but half animate;
There do they look alive to love and hate,
To smiles and frowns ; they seem a lifted mound
Above some giant, pulsing underground.
Part of the building was a chosen See,
Built by a banish’d Santon of Chaldee;
The other part, two thousand years from him,
“Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;
Then there ‘s a little wing, far from the Sun,
Built by a Lapland Witch turn’d maudlin Nun;
And many other juts of aged stone
Founded with many a mason-devil’s groan.
The doors all look as if they op’d themselves:
The windows as if latch’d by Fays and Elves,
And from them comes a silver flash of light,
As from the westward of a Summer’s night;
Or like a beauteous woman’s large blue eyes
Gone mad through olden songs and poesies.
See ! what is coming from the distance dim!
A golden Galley all in silken trim!
Three rows of oars are lightning, moment whiles
Into the verd’rous bosoms of those isles;
Towards the shade, under the Castle wall,
It comes in silence, —now ‘t is hidden all.
The Clarion sounds, and from a Postern-gate
An echo of sweet music doth create
A fear in the poor Herdsman who doth bring
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring, —
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,
To all his friends, and they believe him not.
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime.
Rather than shadow our own soul’s day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle, — but my flag is not unfurl’d
On the Admiral-staff, — and so philosophise
I dare not yet ! O, never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award ! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin’d,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,
Cannot refer to any standard law
Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn. —
It forces us in summer skies to mourn.
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.
Dear Reynolds ! I have a mysterious tale,
And cannot speak it : the first page I read
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers ; ‘t was a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat brown sand ; I was at home
And should have been most happy, — but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore. —
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
Still am I sick of it, and tho’ to-day,
I ‘ve gather’d young spring-leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,
The Shark at savage prey, — the Hawk at pounce, —
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,
Ravening a worm, — Away, ye horrid moods!
Moods of one’s mind ! You know I hate them well.
You know I ‘d sooner be a clapping Bell
To some Kamschatkan Missionary Church,
Than with these horrid moods be left i’ the lurch.