Thomas Campbell

“ These drops?—Oh, God! the life-blood is her own!
And faltering, on her Waldegrave’s bosom thrown—
“Weep not, O Love!” she cries, “to see me bleed—
Thee, Gertrude’s sad survivor, thee alone
Heaven’s peace commiserate; for scarce I heed
These wounds; yet thee to leave is death, is death indeed.
XXIX.
“Clasp me a little longer on the brink
Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress:
And when this heart hath ceased to beat—oh! think,
And let it mitigate thy woe’s excess,
That thou hast been to me all tenderness,
And friend to more than human friendship just. ”

“ Where the flower of my forefathers grew.
Sweet bud of the wilderness! emblem of all
That remains in this desolate heart!
The fabric of bliss to its centre may fall,
But patience shall never depart!
Though the wilds of enchantment, all vernal and bright,
In the days of delusion by fancy combined
With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight,
Abandon my soul, like a dream of the night,
And leave but a desert behind. [183]
Be hushed, my dark spirit! for wisdom condemns
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore! ”

“ Then, then every rapture was young and sincere,
Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimmed by a tear,
And a sweeter delight every scene seemed to lend,
That the mansion of peace was the house of a friend.
Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart,
All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart;
Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease,
For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace.
But hushed be the sigh that untimely complains,
While Friendship and all its enchantment remains,
While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime,
Untainted by chance, unabated by time. ”

“ But if there should be none to aid you, Poles,
Ye’ll but to prouder pitch wind up your souls,
Above example, pity, praise or blame,
To sow and reap a boundless field of Fame.
Ask aid no more from Nations that forget
Your championship—old Europe’s mighty debt.
Though Poland (Lazarus-like) has burst the gloom,
She rises not a beggar from the tomb:
In Fortune’s frown, on Danger’s giddiest brink,
Despair and Poland’s name must never link.
All ills have bounds—plague, whirlwind, fire, and flood:
E’en power can spill but bounded sums of blood. ”

“ The Polish Eagle’s fall is big with fate to man.
Proud bird of old! Mohammed’s moon recoiled
Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold,
That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled
Earth’s new oppressors, as it foiled her old.
Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold:
And colder still Polonia’s children find
The sympathetic hands, that we outhold.
But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind,
Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind.
So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part,
My pride repudiates e’en the sigh that blends
With Poland’s name—name written on my heart. ”

“ For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy tempests blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow.
III.
Britannia needs no bulwark,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep. [113]
With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,—
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy tempests blow:
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy tempests blow. ”

“ Prophetic murmurs breathing on the shell,
And solemn sounds that awe the listening mind,
Roll on the azure paths of every wind.
"Foes of mankind! (her guardian spirits say,)
Revolving ages bring the bitter day,
When heaven's unerring arm shall fall on you,
And blood for blood these Indian plains bedew;
Nine times have Brama's wheels of lightning hurl'd
His awful presence o'er the alarmed world;
Nine times hath Guilt, through all his giant frame,
Convulsive trembled, as the Mighty came;
Nine times hath suffering Mercy spared in vain—
But Heaven shall burst her starry gates again! ”

“ Hail! welcome tide of life, when no tumultuous billows roll,
How wondrous to myself appears this halcyon calm of soul!
The wearied bird blown o’er the deep would sooner quit its shore,
Than I would cross the gulf again that time has brought me o’er.
Why say the Angels feel the flame?—Oh, spirits of the skies!
Can love like ours, that doats on dust, in heavenly bosoms rise?—
Ah no; the hearts that best have felt its power, the best can tell,
That peace on earth itself begins, when Love has bid farewell. ”

“ THE
DEATH-BOAT OF HELIGOLAND
Can restlessness reach the cold sepulchred head?—
Ay, the quick have their sleep-walkers, so have the dead
There are brains, though they moulder, that dream in the tomb,
And that maddening forehear the last trumpet of doom,
Till their corses start sheeted to revel on earth,
Making horror more deep by the semblance of mirth:
By the glare of new-lighted volcanoes they dance,
Or at mid-sea appal the chilled mariner’s glance.
Such I wot, was the band of cadaverous smile
Seen ploughing the night-surge of Heligo’s isle. ”

“ And charm—when pleasures lose the power to please!
Yes; let each rapture, dear to Nature, flee:
Close not the light of Fortune’s stormy sea—
Mirth, Music, Friendship, Love’s propitious smile,
Chase every care, and charm a little while,
Ecstatic throbs the fluttering heart employ,
And all her strings are harmonised to joy!—
But why so short is Love’s delighted hour?
Why fades the dew on Beauty’s sweetest flower?
Why can no hymnèd charm of music heal
The sleepless woes impassioned spirits feel?
Can Fancy’s fairy hands no veil create,
To hide the sad realities of fate?—
No! ”

“ Arrest the rolling world, or chain the deep?
No!—the wild wave contemns your sceptred hand.
It rolled not back when Canute gave command!
Man! can thy doom no brighter soul allow?
Still must thou live a blot on Nature’s brow?
Shall War’s polluted banner ne’er be furled?
Shall crimes and tyrants cease but with the world?
What! are thy triumphs, sacred Truth, belied?
Why then hath Plato lived—or Sidney died?— [17]
Ye fond adorers of departed fame,
Who warm at Scipio’s worth, or Tully’s name!
Ye that, in fancied vision, can admire
The sword of Brutus, and the Theban lyre! ”

“ Where rapture utter'd vows, and wept between;
'Tis your's, unmoved, to sever and to meet;
No pledge is sacred, and no home is sweet!
Who that would ask a heart to dulness wed,
The waveless calm, the slumber of the dead?
No; the wild bliss of Nature needs alloy,
And fear and sorrow fan the fire of joy!
And say, without our hopes, without our fears,
Without the home that plighted love endears,
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh! what were man?—a world without a sun! ”

“ For marshalling thy waves—
Yet, potent sea!
How placidly thy moist lips speak e’en now
Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be
So fanciless as to feel no gratitude
That power and grandeur can be so serene,
Soothing the home-bound navy’s peaceful way,
And rocking e’en the fisher’s little bark
As gently as a mother rocks her child?—
The inhabitants of other worlds behold
Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share
On earth’s rotundity; and is he not
A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man
Who sees not or who seeing has no joy
In thy magnificence? ”

“ To count the joys of Fortune’s better day!
Lo, nature, life, and liberty relume
The dim-eyed tenant of the dungeon gloom,
A long-lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;
Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,
And virtue triumphs o’er remembered woe.
Chide not his peace, proud Reason! nor destroy
The shadowy forms of uncreated joy,
That urge the lingering tide of life, and pour
Spontaneous slumber on his midnight hour.
Hark! the wild maniac sings, to chide the gale
That wafts so slow her lover’s distant sail ”

“ O’er mountain, tower, and town,
Or mirrored in the ocean vast,
A thousand fathoms down!
As fresh in yon horizon dark,
As young thy beauties seem,
As when the eagle from the ark
First sported in thy beam
For, faithful to its sacred page,
Heaven still rebuilds thy span,
Nor lets the type grow pale with age
That first spoke peace to man.
[116]
THE LAST MAN.
All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!
I saw a vision in my sleep,
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulph of Time! ”

“ Dropt on the world—a sacred gift to man.
Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature’s languid hour,
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There, as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms the Æolian organ play,
And sweep the furrowed lines of anxious thought away.
Angel of life! thy glittering wings explore
Earth’s loneliest bounds, and Ocean’s wildest shore.
Lo! to the wintry winds the pilot yields
His bark careering o’er unfathomed fields ”

“ The chief went down with all his gallant men,
Or whether by the storm and wild sea flood
He perished, or by wilder men of blood—
The shudd’ring Fancy only guess’d his doom,
And Doubt to Sorrow gave but deeper gloom.
An age elapsed—when men were dead or grey,
Whose hearts had mourned him in their youthful day
Fame traced on Mannicōlo’s shore at last
The boiling surge had mounted o’er his mast.
The islesmen told of some surviving men,
But Christian eyes beheld them ne’er again. ”

“ And Hope, thy sister, ceased with thee to smile,
When leagued Oppression poured to Northern wars
Her whiskered pandoors and her fierce hussars,
Waved her dread standard to the breeze of morn,
Pealed her loud drum, and twanged her trumpet horn;
Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland—and to man!
Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed
Wide o'er the fields, a waste of ruin laid,—
Oh! Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!—
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet; though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise; fellow-men! ”

“ Had its shroud like a plaid flying loose to the storm;
With an oar in each pulseless and icy-cold hand,
Fast they ploughed, by the lee-shore of Heligoland,
Such breakers as boat of the living ne’er crossed;
Now surf-sunk for minutes again they uptossed,
And with livid lips shouted reply o’er the flood
To the challenging watchman that curdled his blood—
“We are dead—we are bound from our graces in the west,
First to Hecla, and then to——” Unmeet was the rest
For man’s ear. ”

“ Still slowly pass'd the melancholy day,
And still the stanger wist not where to stray.
The world was sad!—the garden was a wild!
And Man, the hermit, sigh'd—till Woman smil'd!
True, the sad power to generous hearts may bring
Delirious anguish on his fiery wing!
Barr'd from delight by Fate's untimely hand,
By wealthless lot, or pitiless command;
Or doom'd to gaze on beauties that adorn
The smile of triumph, or the frown of scorn;
While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew;
Peace may depart—and life and nature seem
A barren path—a wildness, and a dream! ”

“ Remote from busy Life’s bewildered way,
O’er all his heart shall Taste and Beauty sway!
Free on the sunny slope, or winding shore,
With hermit steps to wander and adore!
There shall he love, when genial morn appears,
Like pensive Beauty smiling in her tears,
To watch the brightening roses of the sky,
And muse on Nature with a poet’s eye!—
And when the sun’s last splendour lights the deep,
The woods and waves, and murmuring winds asleep ”

“ Where Europe’s anchor ne’er had bit the sand,
Where scarce a roving wild tribe crossed the plain,
Or human voice broke nature’s silent reign;
But vast and grassy deserts feed the bear,
And sweeping deer-herds dread no hunter’s snare.
Such young delight his real records brought,
His truth so touched romantic springs of thought,
That all my after-life—his fate and fame
Entwined romance with La Perouse’s name. ”

“ Tell, that when silent years have pass'd away,
That when his eye grows dim, his tresses grey,
These busy hands a lovelier cot shall build,
And deck with fairer flowers his little field,
And call from Heaven propitious dews to breathe
Arcadian beauty on the barren heath;
Tell, that while Love's spontaneous smile endears
The days of peace, the sabbath of his years,
Health shall prolong to many a festive hour
The social pleasures of his humble bower.
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps ”

“ Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy’s anticipated hour?
Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man—
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
Or, if she hold an image to the view,
’Tis Nature pictured too severely true.
With thee, sweet Hope! resides the heavenly light,
That pours remotest rapture on the sight:
Thine is the charm of life’s bewildered way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play. ”