The Poets and Poetry of America

Around thee as the darkness stole,
Before thy wild, creative soul
I bade each fairy vision roll

Thine infancy had loved.

"Then o'er the silent, sleeping land, Thy fancy, like a magic wand,

Forth call'd the elfin race:

And now around the fountain's brim
In circling dance they gayly skim;
And now upon its surface swim,

And water-spiders chase;

"Each circumstance of sight or sound
Peopling the vacant air around
With visionary life:

For if amid a thicket stirr'd,
Or flitting bat, or wakeful bird,
Then straight thy eager fancy heard
The din of fairy strife;

"Now, in the passing beetle's hum
The elfin army's goblin drum

To pigmy battle sound;

And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances flash, Wide-dealing death around:

"Or if the moon's effulgent form The passing clouds of sudden storm

In quick succession veil ; Vast serpents now, their shadows glide, And, coursing now the mountain's side, A band of giants huge, they stride

O'er hill, and wood, and dale.

"And still on many a service rare
Could I descant, if need there were,

My firmer claim to bind.
But rest I most my high pretence
On that, my genial influence,
Which made the body's indolence

The vigour of the mind."

And now, in accents deep and low,
Like voice of fondly-cherish'd wo,

The Sylph of Autumn sad:
Though I may not of raptures sing,
That graced the gentle song of Spring,
Like Summer, playful pleasures bring,
Thy youthful heart to glad;

"Yet still may I in hope aspire
Thy heart to touch with chaster fire,
And purifying love:

For I with vision high and holy,
And spell of quickening melancholy,
Thy soul from sublunary folly

First raised to worlds above.

"What though be mine the treasures fair Of purple grape and yellow pear,

And fruits of various hue,
And harvests rich of golden grain,
That dance in waves along the plain
To merry song of reaping swain,

Beneath the welkin blue;

"With these I may not urge my suit,
Of Summer's patient toil the fruit,
For mortal purpose given;
Nor may it fit my sober mood
To sing of sweetly murmuring flood,
Or dyes of many-colour'd wood,

That mock the bow of heaven.

"But, know, 't was mine the secret power
That wak'd thee at the midnight hour
In bleak November's reign:

"T was I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
That ne'er would come again:

"And led thee, when the storm was o'er, To hear the sullen ocean roar,

By dreadful calm oppress'd; Which still, though not a breeze was there, Its mountain-billows heav'd in air, As if a living thing it were,

That strove in vain for rest.

""T was I, when thou, subdued by wo,
Didst watch the leaves descending slow,
To each a moral gave;

And as they moved in mournful train,
With rustling sound, along the plain,
Taught them to sing a seraph's strain
Of peace within the grave.

"And then, upraised thy streaming eye, I met thee in the western sky

In pomp of evening cloud;
That, while with varying form it roll'd,
Some wizard's castle seem'd of gold,
And now a crimson'd knight of old,
Or king in purple proud.

"And last, as sunk the setting sun,
And Evening with her shadows dun
The gorgeous pageant past,
"T was then of life a mimic show,
Of human grandeur here below,
Which thus beneath the fatal blow

Of Death must fall at last.

"O, then with what aspiring gaze Didst thou thy tranced vision raise To yonder orbs on high, And think how wondrous, how sublime "T were upwards to their spheres to climb, And live, beyond the reach of Time,

Child of Eternity!"

And last the Sylph of Winter spake;
The while her piercing voice did shake
The castle-vaults below.

"O, youth, if thou, with soul refin'd,
Hast felt the triumph pure of mind,
And learn'd a secret joy to find
In deepest scenes of wo;

"If e'er with fearful ear at eve
Hast heard the wailing tempests grieve
Through chink of shatter'd wall;

The while it conjured o'er thy brain
Of wandering ghosts a mournful train,
That low in fitful sobs complain

Of Death's untimely call:
"Or feeling, as the storm increased,
The love of terror nerve thy breast,
Didst venture to the coast;
To see the mighty war-ship leap
From wave to wave upon the deep,
Like chamois goat from steep to steep,
Till low in valley lost; .

"Then, glancing to the angry sky,
Behold the clouds with fury fly

The lurid moon athwart;
Like armies huge in battle, throng,
And pour in volleying ranks along,
While piping winds in martial song
To rushing war exhort:

"O, then to me thy heart be given,
To me, ordain'd by Him in heaven

Thy nobler powers to wake. And O! if thou, with poet's soul, High brooding o'er the frozen pole, Hast felt beneath my stern control

The desert region quake;

"Or from old Hecla's cloudy height,
When o'er the dismal, half-year's night
He pours his sulphurous breath,
Hast known my petrifying wind
Wild ocean's curling billows bind,
Like bending sheaves by harvest hind,
Erect in icy death;

"Or heard adown the mountain's steep
The northern blast with furious sweep
Some cliff dissever'd dash;
And seen it spring with dreadful bound
From rock to rock, to gulf profound,
While echoes fierce from caves resound

The never-ending crash:

"If thus, with terror's mighty spell Thy soul inspired, was wont to swell, Thy heaving frame expand;

O, then to me thy heart incline;

For know, the wondrous charm was mine, That fear and joy did thus combine

In magic union bland.

Nor think confined my native sphere To horrors gaunt, or ghastly fear, Or desolation wild:

For I of pleasures fair could sing, That steal from life its sharpest sting, And man have made around it cling,

Like mother to her child.

"When thou, beneath the clear blue sky, So calm, no cloud was seen to fly,

Hast gazed on snowy plain, Where Nature slept so pure and sweet, She seem'd a corse in winding-sheet, Whose happy soul had gone to meet The blest, angelic train;

"Or mark'd the sun's declining ray
In thousand varying colours play
O'er ice-incrusted heath,

In gleams of orange now, and green,
And now in red and azure sheen,
Like hues on dying dolphin seen,

Most lovely when in death;

"Or seen, at dawn of eastern light
The frosty toil of fays by night

On pane of casement clear,
Where bright the mimic glaciers shine,
And Alps, with many a mountain pine,
And armed knights from Palestine
In winding march appear:

"'T was I on each enchanting scene
The charm bestow'd that banished spleen
Thy bosom pure and light.
But still a nobler power I claim;
That power allied to poets' fame,
Which language vain has dared to name-
The soul's creative might.

"Though Autumn grave, and Summer fair, And joyous Spring demand a share

Of Fancy's hallow'd power,
Yet these I hold of humbler kind,
To grosser means of earth confined,
Through mortal sense to reach the mind,
By mountain, stream, or flower.

"But mine, of purer nature still,
Is that which to thy secret will
Did minister unseen,
Unfelt, unheard; when every sense
Did sleep in drowsy indolence,
And silence deep and night intense
Enshrouded every scene;

"That o'er thy teeming brain did raise
The spirits of departed days

Through all the varying year;
And images of things remote,

And sounds that long had ceased to float,
With every hue, and every note,

As living now they were:

"And taught thee from the motley mass Each harmonizing part to class,

(Like Nature's self employ'd;) And then, as work'd thy wayward will, From these, with rare combining skill, With new-created worlds to fill

Of space the mighty void.

"O then to me thy heart incline;
To me, whose plastic powers combine
The harvest of the mind;
To me, whose magic coffers bear
The spoils of all the toiling year,
That still in mental vision wear
A lustre more refined."

She ceased-And now, in doubtful mood,
All motionless and mute I stood,

Like one by charm oppress'd:

By turns from each to each I roved, And each by turns again I loved; For ages ne'er could one have proved More lovely than the rest.

"O blessed band, of birth divine, What mortal task is like to mine!"

And further had I spoke, When, lo! there pour'd a flood of light So fiercely on my aching sight, I fell beneath the vision bright, And with the pain awoke.

AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.*

ALL hail! thou noble land,

Our fathers' native soil!
O stretch thy mighty hand,

Gigantic grown by toil,

O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore;
For thou, with magic might,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright

The world o'er!

The genius of our clime,

From his pine-embattled steep,

Shall hail the great sublime;

While the Tritons of the deep

With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim.

Then let the world combine

O'er the main our naval line,
Like the milky-way, shall shine
Bright in fame!

Though ages long have pass'd

Since our fathers left their home,

Their pilot in the blast,

O'er untravell'd seas to roam,

Yet lives the blood of England in our veins!

And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

While the language free and bold

Which the bard of Avon sung, In which our MILTON told

How the vault of heaven rung,

When Satan, blasted, fell with his host;
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat

Round our coast;

While the manners, while the arts,
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,

Between let ocean roll,

Our joint communion breaking with the sun: Yet, still, from either beach,

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech,

"We are one!"

*This poem was first published in COLERIDGE'S "Sybilline Leaves," in 1810.

THE SPANISH MAID.

FIVE weary months sweet Inez number'd
From that unfading bitter day
When last she heard the trumpet bray
That call'd her Isidor away-

That never to her heart has slumber'd;

She hears it now, and sees, far bending
Along the mountain's misty side,
His plumed troop, that, waving wide,
Seems like a rippling, feathery tide,
Now bright, now with the dim shore blending;
She hears the cannon's deadly rattle-
And fancy hurries on to strife,

And hears the drum and screaming fife
Mix with the last sad cry of life.

O, should he should he fall in battle!
Yet still his name would live in story,
And every gallant bard in Spain
Would fight his battles o'er again.
And would not she for such a strain
Resign him to his country's glory?

Thus Inez thought, and pluck'd the flower
That grew upon the very bank

Where first her ear bewilder'd drank
The plighted vow-where last she sank
In that too bitter parting hour.

But now the sun is westward sinking;
And soon amid the purple haze,
That showers from his slanting rays,
A thousand loves there meet her gaze,
To change her high heroic thinking.

Then hope, with all its crowd of fancies,
Before her flits and fills the air;

And, deck'd in victory's glorious gear,
In vision Isidor is there.

Then how her heart mid sadness dances!

Yet little thought she, thus forestalling
The coming joy, that in that hour
The future, like the colour'd shower
That seems to arch the ocean o'er,
Was in the living present falling.

The foe is slain. His sable charger

All fleck'd with foam comes bounding on; The wild Morena rings anon,

And on its brow the gallant Don,

And gallant steed grow larger, larger;

And now he nears the mountain-hollow;
The flowery bank and little lake
Now on his startled vision break-
And Inez there.-He's not awake-
Ah, what a day this dream will follow!

But no he surely is not dreaming.
Another minute makes it clear.
A scream, a rush, a burning tear
From Inez' cheek, dispel the fear
That bliss like his is only seeming.

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