Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ In which two hearts, unguess'd perchance before,
Rush'd each to each, and were as two no more;
While all thy being—by some Power, above
Its will constrain'd—sigh'd, trembling, "This is Love."
A look! and lo! they knew themselves alone!
Calantha's place was void—the witness gone;
They had not mark'd her sad step glide away,
When in sweet silence sank, less sweet, the lay;
For unto both abruptly came the hour
When springs the rose-fence round the fairy bower;
When earth shut out, all life transferr'd to one,
Each other life seems cloud before the sun ”

“ Red o'er the wave that yawns behind the shrine;
Red o'er the wave, as, under vaulted rock,56
Dark as Cocytus, the false smoothness flows;
But where the light fades—there is heard the shock
As hurrying down the headlong torrent goes;
With mocking oars, a raft sways, moor'd beside—
What keel save Charon's ploughs that dismal tide?
Proud Arthur smiled upon the guileful host,57
As welcome danger roused him and restored.—
"Friend," quoth the King, "methinks your streams might boast
A gentler margin and a fairer ford!"
"As birth to man," replied the priest, "the cave,
O guest, to thee! ”

“ The ebbing blood the wan cheek mantles o'er;
When stirs the pulse, when opes the glazing eye,
What voice of joy finds listeners in the sky?
"Bless thee, my God!—this mercy thine!—he lives:
Look in my heart, forgive, for it forgives!"
Then, while yet clear the heaven, he flies—he gains
The nearest roof—prompt aid his prayer obtains;
Well known the noble stranger's mien—they bear
To the rude home, and ply the zealous care;
Life with the dawn comes sure, if faint and slow,
And all night long the foeman watch'd the foe! ”

“ Beauty sublimed into the type of soul,
Fresh from such stars as ne'er on Paphos beam'd,
When first on Love the chastening vision stole,—
The sister virgin coil'd her clasp of woe;
Ev'n as that Sorrow which the Soul must know
Till Soul and Love meet never more to part.104
At last, from under his wide mantle's fold,
The strain'd arms lock'd on his loud-beating heart
(As if the anguish which the king controll'd,
The man could stifle) ,—Crida toss'd on high;—
And nature conquer'd in the father's cry! ”

“ And dreams restore the dews of Paradise;
But Night, discrown'd and sever'd from her twin,
No pause for Travail, no repose for Sin,
Vex'd by one chafed rebellion to her sway,
Flits o'er the lamp-lit streets—a phantom day!
Alone sat Morvale in the House of Gloom,
Alone—no! Death was in the darken'd room;
All hush'd save where, at distance faintly heard,
Lucy's low sob the depth of silence stirr'd;
Or where, without, the swift wheels hurrying by,
Bear those who live—as if life could not die.
Alone he sat! and in his breast began
Earth's deadliest strife—the Angel with the Man! ”

“ Not unfamiliar to the earlier strife;
Knit were the brows—and passion flush'd the hues,
And all were hush'd!—that, hush which is in life
As in the air, prophetic of a storm.
Uprose a shape [T] with dark bright eye;
It spoke—and at the word
The Dreamer breathed an angry sigh;
And starting—clutch'd his sword;
An instinct bade him hate and fear
That unknown shape—as if a foe were near—
For, mighty in that mien of thoughtful youth,
Spoke Fraud's most deadly foe—a soul on fire with Truth;
A soul without one stain
Save England's hallowing tears;—the sad and starry Vane. ”

“ The Art in which thine Italy
Still charm'd thy glazing look!
So feebly, and with wistful eyes,
He crawls along the floor;
A dying man, who, ere he dies,
Would count his treasures o'er.
And, from the landscape's soft repose,
Smiled thy calm soul, Lorraine;
And, from the deeps of Raphael, rose
Celestial Love again.
In pomp, which his own pomp recalls,
The haggard owner sees
Thy cloth of gold and banquet halls,
Thou stately Veronese!
While, cold as if they scorn'd to hail
Creations not their own,
The Gods of Greece stand marble-pale
Around the Thunderer's throne. ”

“ That rolls through cities in a sullen strife
With heaven, had raged on them, nor in the shock
Crumbled one atom from their base of love.
And, like still waters, poesy lay deep
Within the hush'd yet haunted soul of each;
And the fair moon, and all the stars that steep
Heaven's silence and its spirit in delight,
Had with that tide a sympathy and speech!
For them there was a glory in the night,
A whisper in the forest, and the air;
Love is the priest of Nature, and can teach
A world of mystery to the few that share,
With self-devoted faith, the wingèd Flamen's care. ”

“ How strong, how feeble, is thine art, O Man!
Thou coverest Earth with wonders—at thy hand
Curbs the meek water, blooms the subject land:
Why halts thy magic here?—Why only deck'd
Earth's sterile surface, mournful Architect?
Why art thou powerless o'er the world within?
Why raise the Eden, yet retain the sin?
Why, while the earth, thou but enjoy'st an hour,
Proclaims thy splendour and attests thy power,
Why o'er the spirit does thy sorcery cease?—
Lo the sweet landscape round thee lull'd in peace!
Why wakes each heart to sorrow, care, and strife? ”

“ Fierce wrathful yells the foe at bay reveal.
On spurs the Saxon, till, like some pale star,
Gleams on the hill a lance—a helm of steel.
The brow is gain'd; a space of level land,
Bare to the sun—a grove at either hand;
And in the middle of the space a mound;34
And on the mound a knight upon his barb.
No need for herald there his tromp to sound!—
No need for diadem and ermine garb!
Nature herself has crown'd that lion mien;
And in the man the king of men is seen. ”

“ Friendship submissive bow'd—its voice was still'd;
As when some mighty bard with sudden chords
Strikes down the passion he before had thrill'd,
Making grief awe;—so rush'd that sentence o'er
The soul it master'd;—Lancelot urged no more;
But loosing from the hand it clasp'd, his own,112
He waved farewell, and turn'd his face away;
His sorrow only by his silence shown:—
Thus, when from earth glides summer's golden day,
Music forsakes the boughs, and winds the stream;
And life, in deep'ning quiet, mourns the beam. ”

“ The brook still glides before.
Without the porch, one summer noon,
The Hermit-dweller see!
In musing silence bending down,
The book upon his knee.
Who stands between thee and the sun?—
A cloud herself,—the Wand'ring One!—
A vacant sadness in the eyes,
The mind a razed, defeatured scroll;
The light is in the laughing skies,
And darkness, Eva, in thy soul!
The beacon shaken in the storm,
Had struggled still to gleam above
The last sad wreck of human love,
Upon the dying child to shed
One ray—extinguish'd with the dead:
O'er earth and heaven then rush'd the night! ”

“ Which from the Augur's lips fell weird and cold,
Seem'd as the thread in fairy tales, [15] which strung
Enchanted pearls, won from the caves of old,
And woven round a sunbeam;—so was wrought
O'er cordial love the pure and delicate thought.
She spoke of youth's lost years, so lone before,84
And coming to the present, paused and blush'd;
As if Time's wing were spell-bound evermore,
And Life, the restless, in the hour were hush'd:
The pause, the blush, said more than words, "And thou
Art found!—thou lov'st me!—Fate is powerless now!" ”

“ Devours the Past, so let the Moment bloom,
And see Calantha's brother reconciled,
Kneel to Calantha's lover, for his child!'
It may not be; sad sophists were our vain
Desires, if Right were not a code so plain;
In good or ill leave casusits on the shelf,
'He never errs who sacrifices self!'"
Great Natures, Arden, thy strange lot to know
And lose!—twin souls thy mistress and thy foe!
How flash'd they, high and starry, through the dull
World's reeking air—earnest and beautiful!
Erring perchance, and yet divinely blind,
Such hero errors purify our kind! ”

“ Again the firm frame quiver'd;—roused again,
The bruisëd eagle struggled from the chain;
Till words found way, and with the effort grew
Man's crowning strength—Man's evil to subdue.
"Foeman—'tis past!—lo, in the strife between
Thy world and mine, the eternal victory seen!
Thou, with light arts, my realm hast overthrown,
And, see, revenge but threats to bless thine own!
My home is desolate—my hearth a grave—
The Heaven one hour that seem'd like justice gave,
The arm is raised, the sacrifice prepared—
The altar kindles, and the victim's—spared! ”

“ When the fell Fury, beckoning through the gloom,
Cried "Life for life—thou hast betray'd the tomb!"
For the grim Honour of the ancient time
Deem'd vengeance duty and forgiveness crime;
And the stern soul fanatic conscience scared,
For blood not shed, and injury weakly spared;—
Woe, if in hours like these, O more than woe,
Had the roused tiger met the pardon'd foe!
Nor when his instinct of the life afar
Soar'd from the soil and task'd the unanswering star,
Came more than Hope—that reflex-beam of Faith—
That fitful moonlight on the unknown path ”

“ Mock'd by the idle winds that waft; and all
Life's blooms, its last, in vain!
If vain for others, not in vain for me,—
Who builds an altar let him worship there;
What needs the crowd? though lone the shrine may be,
Not hallow'd less the prayer.
Eno' if haply in the after days,
When by the altar sleeps the funeral stone,
When gone the mists our human passions raise,
And Truth is seen alone:
When causeless Hate can wound its prey no more,
And fawns its late repentance o'er the dead,
If gentle footsteps from some kindlier shore
Pause by the narrow bed. ”