With what dull pain
Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
Tennyson
" Here her face
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.
She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
Losing her carol I stood pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.
"Alas! alas! " a low voice, full of care,
Murmur'd beside me: "Turn and look on me:
I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,
If what I was I be.
"Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor!
O me, that I should ever see the light!
Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor
Do haunt me, day and night. "
She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust:
To whom the Egyptian: "O, you tamely died!
You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust
The dagger thro' her side".
With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams,
Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery
Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark,
Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance
Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, [28]
A light of ancient France;
Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, [29]
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
No memory labours longer from the deep
Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore
That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep
To gather and tell o'er
Each little sound and sight.
With what dull pain
Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
But no two dreams are like.
As when a soul laments, which hath been blest,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,
In yearnings that can never be exprest
By sighs or groans or tears;
Because all words, tho' cull'd [30] with choicest art,
Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,
Wither beneath the palate, and the heart
Faints, faded by its heat.
[Footnote 1: Suggested apparently by Denham, 'Verses on Cowley's
Death':--
Old Chaucer, like the morning star
To us discovers
Day from far. ]
[Footnote 2: Here follow in 1833 two stanzas excised in 1842:--
In every land I thought that, more or less,
The stronger sterner nature overbore
The softer, uncontrolled by gentleness
And selfish evermore:
And whether there were any means whereby,
In some far aftertime, the gentler mind
Might reassume its just and full degree
Of rule among mankind. ]
[Footnote 3: 1833. Screamed. ]
[Footnote 4: The Latin 'testudo' formed of the shields of soldiers
held over their heads. ]
[Footnote 5: 1883 to 1848 inclusive. Stedfast. ]
[Footnote 6: 1833.
Clasping jasmine turned
Its twined arms festooning tree to tree.
Altered to present reading, 1842. ]
[Footnote 7: A lady, i. e. , Helen.
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.
She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood:
"Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
Losing her carol I stood pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.
"Alas! alas! " a low voice, full of care,
Murmur'd beside me: "Turn and look on me:
I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,
If what I was I be.
"Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor!
O me, that I should ever see the light!
Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor
Do haunt me, day and night. "
She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust:
To whom the Egyptian: "O, you tamely died!
You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust
The dagger thro' her side".
With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams,
Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery
Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark,
Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance
Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, [28]
A light of ancient France;
Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, [29]
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
No memory labours longer from the deep
Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore
That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep
To gather and tell o'er
Each little sound and sight.
With what dull pain
Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
But no two dreams are like.
As when a soul laments, which hath been blest,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,
In yearnings that can never be exprest
By sighs or groans or tears;
Because all words, tho' cull'd [30] with choicest art,
Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,
Wither beneath the palate, and the heart
Faints, faded by its heat.
[Footnote 1: Suggested apparently by Denham, 'Verses on Cowley's
Death':--
Old Chaucer, like the morning star
To us discovers
Day from far. ]
[Footnote 2: Here follow in 1833 two stanzas excised in 1842:--
In every land I thought that, more or less,
The stronger sterner nature overbore
The softer, uncontrolled by gentleness
And selfish evermore:
And whether there were any means whereby,
In some far aftertime, the gentler mind
Might reassume its just and full degree
Of rule among mankind. ]
[Footnote 3: 1833. Screamed. ]
[Footnote 4: The Latin 'testudo' formed of the shields of soldiers
held over their heads. ]
[Footnote 5: 1883 to 1848 inclusive. Stedfast. ]
[Footnote 6: 1833.
Clasping jasmine turned
Its twined arms festooning tree to tree.
Altered to present reading, 1842. ]
[Footnote 7: A lady, i. e. , Helen.
