Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal
Live from the censer-shapely or uncouth,
Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of
truth
Undeaden'd by a lie,—(you have my mind)—
For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind
And blank before, when Hayley and the rest. . . .
But let the dead successors worst and best
Bury their dead: with life be my concern-
Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn
Is just-(suppose me haply ignorant
Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt)
Just this-why only once the fire-flame was.
That here a poet was who always could
Never before did-never after would
Achieve the feat: how were such fact explain'd?
THE super-human poet-pair.
From Sordello.
-APPEAR,
Verona stay-thou, spirit, come not near
Now-not this time desert thy cloudy place
To scare me, thus employ'd, with that pure face!
I need not fear this audience, I make free
With them, but then this is no place for thee!
The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
Up out of memories of Marathon,
Would echo like his own sword's griding screech
Braying a Persian shield,—the silver speech
Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
The knights to tilt,-wert thou to hear!
AH, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems, and new!
But you were living before that,
And you are living after;
And the memory I started at-
My starting moves your laughter!
I cross'd a moor, with a name of its own
And a use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:
For there I pick'd up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
From One Word More.
My moon of poets!
From The Ring and the Book. [1869
O LYRIC Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart-
When the first summons from the darkling earth Reach'd thee amid thy chambers, blanch'd their blue,
And bared them of the glory-to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand—
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile :
-Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,—so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!
From A Dream of Fair Women.
I READ, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
The Legend of Good Women, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
THEN in the towers I placed great bells that swung,
Moved of themselves, with silver sound;
And with choice paintings of wise men I hung
The royal dais round,
For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song,
And somewhat grimly smiled.
And there the Ionian father of the rest;
A million wrinkles carved upon his skin;
A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast,
From cheek and throat and chin.
O MIGHTY-mouth'd inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrëan
Rings to the roar of an angel onset-
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.
From Dedication to the Queen. [1851
THIS laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.
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