Benjamin West Ball

“ Now the sweet autumnal Summer which the Indian loved so well,
Over mountain, plain, and hollow sheds the glory of its spell.
Softer breathe the gentle zephyrs, and like visitants they seem
From a latitude benigner, from a climate more serene. ”

“ Borne on to good or unevaded ill.
Ere weeping through the gates of life we came,
Our lots were fixed, each act and thought decreed:
In vain we strive—we stem the tide in vain;—
Alike the idiot’s brain, the sage’s rede.
Powerless before the unimpassioned Doom
The form of beauty and the lofty mind;
The shuttle speeds athwart the fatal loom—
Our lots are woven as the threads unwind.
Sorrow and gladness intertwined are ours,
Or woe unmixed, or pleasure undefiled;
Exult not, though thy path be strewn with flowers,
Oft mid their bloom the venomed asp lies coiled. ”

“ First made the mountain’s marble entrails teem
With images of beauty, lining all
Your sea-washed strand with fair columnar cities,
Built high of glossiest sun-enamelled stone.
Forever o’er your myrtle-shaded vales,
Reclined on summer clouds, did Aphrodite
And golden Eros lean, kindling the air
With passion’s rosy glow. In all the earth
Beside, did visible nature never wear [42]
Robes so resplendent. Through the luminous folds
Of your transparent atmosphere appeared
Unequalled prospects to enchant the eye ”

“ With roseal lustre and Hebean bloom;
Yet in their marble smoothness lay enshrined
A Titan’s energy—and his large eyes,
That dreamed and languished like Endymion’s,
When, vine-like, round his neck the lucent arms
Of Lycomedes’ daughter were entwined,
Glowed like a pard’s in fight. A glossy wealth
Of sunny Apollonian tresses loosely rolled
Adown his ivory shoulders. In his breast
A fiery-blooded heart throbbed fiercely—now
In sorrow unappeased venting itself
Above his fallen friend ”

“ And, breathing softly from the mild South-west,
The Indian Summer mitigates the air,
Me it delights, leaving the towers of men,
With devious feet, and void of fixed intent,
To wander far into the country still;
My path, some grassy road untrodden lone,
Which leads the steps through woods of dwarfish pines,
Where dwells unscared the solitary jay,
And sings the cricket, sole inhabitants.
In these sweet solitudes the soul becomes
Tranquil as seas mid happy isles embayed ”

“ The Plague of Ganges stalks and slays.
For he from Indian vales has come,
Following the circle of the sun;
Through Balk, and over Oxus’ stream,
Gliding as soundless as a dream,
Into the cities of the West,
That quail before the giant pest.
The stir of life in silence dies,
Where’er the mighty vampyre flies ”

“ When the year begins to wane,
In the grass and in the hedges
Trillest thou thy wiry strain.
Harp with clasps of ivory strengthened,
Unto thee does not belong;
Thine own body is a cithern,
Its pulsations make thy song. ”

“ Between tall sculptured piles that line the way,
Cool lymph in crystal jets, and sheaf-like spires,
From marble gorges spouted ceaselessly;
Whose myriad drops with charmed eyes he sees,
Bestrode by interwoven Irides. ”

“ Resounding through the torchlit street, what time
The star of love, thrice welcome Hesper, rose
Above some immemorial mountain’s brow;
The youthful vintagers, by moonlight pale
Bearing the grapes in osier talarisks,
While on his lute some beardless minstrel played
The Lay of Linus, regal boy, of all
The sons of men most musical, whose bloom
Was scorched and withered by the solar beam ”

“ With shriek, and dolorous sigh, and Koran chant;
And Persia’s rosy vales are thickly strewn
With lethal shafts that blight her spicy bloom,
And, through the palace of the Caliphate,
At blazing noontide speeds the wingëd fate; [108]
And over all the fields of ancient Roum
Settles a cloud of pestilential gloom;
The keen shafts leave the shrouded East behind,
Thridding like light the mazes of the wind.
Onward their course they hold, nor once relent
Until they reach the shrill-tongued Occident. ”

“ Like dreams, shall melt and wane. [98]
And Eden’s flag unrolled,
Again thy helm enfold;
The fires shall cease to burn,
Thy legions shall return!
The mystic feud shall end,
Thy willing knees shall bend;
Once more the central throne
Thy homage bright shall own.
In heaven thy starred domain
Shall greet its chief again;
The fires shall cease to burn,
Thy legions shall return!
Thine ancient halls of state,
So long left desolate,
Shall ring with joy once more,
Shall bloom with wreath and flower. ”

“ PAN AND LAÏS.
I.
Once on a time, grown tired of shepherd’s fare,
From hilly Arcady with swift descent,
Rough Pan in tunic wove of subtile air,
Invisible to sacred Corinth went;
Through his aerial vesture vision-proof,
No mortal eye could see or horn or hoof.
II.
With soundless tread he passed from street to street,
Through which as arteries the sea-winds blew;
And gorgeous shows the mighty rustic greet,
Where’er from right to left his glance he threw;
Poor seem his pastoral hills and forests all,
Matched with the Isthmus’ peerless capital. ”

“ Dream the heavens warm and glowing, shining veils of tepid haze,
Nimbus-like investing nature, through the long celestial days.
Cities, hamlets, russet woodlands, saintly halos seem to wear,
All transfigured in the splendor of the mild October air. [142]
Such perchance the lenient ether, such as these the tranquil skies,
Spread above the fields of heaven, arching over Paradise.
Brief their beauty, transient, fleeting—soon the north wind’s trump is blown,
Whirl the leaves in gusty eddies, and the rainy tempests moan.
[143]
HYMN TO PHOSPHOR.
Radiant Phosphor! ”

“ The Earth a happy Eden as of yore. [130]
This task no mortal skill can execute,
All Archimedean subtleties are vain;
Invention, sciences, and minds astute,
Are baulked, like those of old on Shinar’s plain.
Though unto us the elements become
Obsequious helots to our wills subdued;
Though, Ariel-like, the glittering lightning run,
To do our errands over land and flood;
All is in vain—a doom—a deadly blight
Is on us, and our space-embosomed home;
Our fallen natures can be made upright
By meek contrition and by faith alone.
[131]
OCEAN, THOU ART DISENCHANTED
Ocean, thou art disenchanted! ”

“ The immedicable ill,
The fell disease no art can heal,
Beyond the leech’s skill.
Sapped by its power my frame shall lie,
Mixed with its parent mould;
Once with those statues it could vie,
Which Hellas loved of old. [81]
Its day of splendor and of power
Even in my youth is past;
Its Phidian symmetry no more
Shall beauty’s promise blast.
Apostate to my father’s creed,
I from their heaven am banned;
How o’er Jehennan shall I speed,
By light Al Serat spanned?
The infernal surge, which moans below
Its gossamer arches frail,
Me, plunging to the gulfs of woe,
Will whelm in endless bale. ”

“ Sometimes they scour the flowery meads,
On nimble palfreys white;
Sometimes they dance beneath the shade
Through all the balmy night.
Their merry songs, their jocund notes,
Are borne from grove to grove;
Fill up your ears with molten wax,
Ye enemies of love!
IX.
Short was the siege those damsels laid—
The king has gone away,
In lonely woods his lady’s wrath
By penance to allay.
The famous lords, who round him sat,
Each, at his maid’s command,
Attend a year the couch of death,
Ere he can win her hand.
[55]
THE PLAGUE IN SUMMER.
Oh golden hours! ”

“ Through his well-jointed reeds the circling gyres
Of planets poured in song their soft desires,
And glad ovations, while their vernal dreams
The leaves did whisper, and the clouds and streams
And winds their fluent exultations pour,
With sky-pavilioned ocean’s organ-roar.
[38]
THE TEUTONIC MINSTREL’S TOMB.
Far north they say there lies a wizard land,
Which has above it all the changeless year,
A silver-shining, milk-warm atmosphere,
Amid whose windless calm the forests stand
As still as clustered obelisks. A bland
Delight is shed o’er all who enter here ”

“ She with her bees was often wont to roam
The Ægean isles, in quest of flowery prey;
And so it fell one summer afternoon,
As she led thence her train, each wing and thigh
Clogged with the sweets of many an island-bloom,
Just off Mount Sunium’s marble forehead high,
A sudden rain-gust blew them all awry
A thousand leagues into the western sky. [91]
Beneath their flight, a waste of surges wild,
Shoreless and gray the vast Atlantic rolled ”

“ Dear hand, that carved these love knots, ’neath the mould
Thou now alas! art shrunken, pulseless, cold!
And has he left the world forevermore,
That still contains his ill-starred paramour?
Oh, woe is me! Oh sickening, keen distress! ”

“ Where gentle Hafiz strayed;
The Indian Hollow far beyond,
By mountains tall embayed; [26]
Whose virgins boast a richer bloom
Than peaches of Cabool,
And nymph-like fall their marble urns
With fountain-waters cool ”

“ Two streams, through marble-paven channels, lined
By temples pillar-propt, whose snowy sheen
Glistens like silver through the olive’s green.
[77]
ACHILLES’ SONG.
I.
Glory is in the balance laid,
An early doom and endless praise;
’Gainst these in adverse scale are weighed
The joys of peace and length of days.
Give me the grave—the glory give,
The field of honor, and the tomb!
What boots it like a hind to live,
And sink at last in lampless gloom? ”

“ In streets, in fields, in ships are heard alone.
Unknelled, unshrived, in yawning trenches deep,
The bursting corses fall a livid heap;
Death, at the growing carnage, laughs elate,
While round his throne Sesostres shrouded wait. ”

“ Here weary hearts a balsam for their woes,
In whispering boughs and silent skies can find.
And here, amid the calm and liberal air,
The heated brain grows cool from contact free;
How sweet to live a sylvan eremite,
By some sequestered lake in forests hid, [124]
Or pebble-paven urn, the cradle cool
Of tiny brook, or gently lapsing stream.
Legends there are of fallen kings, who held
Their exiled courts beneath the forest boughs;
Better their faded state in such pure haunts,
Than when it shone in haughty palaces!
[125]
O POWER OF MUSIC
O power of Music! ”

“ The red shafts quench their rage, and cease to slay.
[110]
THE AUTUMNAL RIDE.
October glittered brazen-hued
Beneath the keen autumnal sun;
Their leaves the ash and maple strewed
Like fiery coals of martyrdom.
The mountains reared their granite cones
Through veils of ether opaline;
Their bases cinctured round with zones
Of giant beech and Delphic pine.
We sucked the air with Ariel’s greed,
And chest and nostril ampler grew;
Mile after mile rushed by with speed—
We felt the freshness of the dew;
While dimpled laughter soon began
To loosen up the heart and brain ”

“ Their hounds, the passions, which no arts can tame—
The ruthless beagles still pursue their game. [106]
No sop, that puny science can devise,
Will hush their yells, or drowse their dragon eyes;
The melancholy Asia mourns afar,
Drooping in sorrow ’neath the Plague’s red star. ”

“ While round him, bound with leafed and roseal wreaths, [45]
Mid fountain spray and snowy columns, danced
Ionia’s raven-tressed voluptuous girls.
Minstrel of beauty, love, and vinous joy,
Thy festal spirit yet survives on earth,
Clad in a garment of enduring verse,
The asbestine robe of all-immortal song!
[1] Sappho was an Æolian, but she is commonly included in this cluster of poets.
[46]
THRENODY.
Though my boyhood scarce is over,
Yet the dark Plutonian tide
Many a friend and loyal lover
From my bosom doth divide. ”