The Recollection
NOW the last day of many daysAll beautiful and bright as thou,The loveliest and the last, is dead:Rise, Memory, and write its praise!Up—to thy wonted work! come, traceThe epitaph of glory fled,For now the earth has changed its face,A frown is on the heaven’s brow.
We wandered to the Pine ForestThat skirts the Ocean’s foam;The lightest wind was in its nest,The tempest in its home.The whispering waves were half asleep,The clouds were gone to play,And on the bosom of the deepThe smile of heaven lay;It seemed as if the hour were oneSent from beyond the skiesWhich scattered from above the sunA light of Paradise!
We paused amid the pines that stoodThe giants of the waste,Tortured by storms to shapes as rudeAs serpents interlaced,—And soothed by every azure breathThat under heaven is blown,To harmonies and hues beneath,As tender as its own:Now all the tree-tops lay asleepLike green waves on the sea,As still as in the silent deepThe ocean-woods may be.
How calm it was!—The silence thereBy such a chain was bound,That even the busy woodpeckerMade stiller with her soundThe inviolable quietness;The breath of peace we drewWith its soft motion made not lessThe calm that round us grew.There seemed, from the remotest seatOf the white mountain wasteTo the soft flower beneath our feet,A magic circle traced,—A spirit interfused around,A thrilling silent life;To momentary peace it boundOur mortal nature’s strife;—And still I felt the centre ofThe magic circle thereWas one fair form that filled with loveThe lifeless atmosphere.
We paused beside the pools that lieUnder the forest bough;Each seemed as ’twere a little skyGulfed in a world below;A firmament of purple lightWhich in the dark earth lay,More boundless than the depth of nightAnd purer than the day—In which the lovely forests grewAs in the upper air,More perfect both in shape and hueThan any spreading there.There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,And through the dark green woodThe white sun twinkling like the dawnOut of a speckled cloud.Sweet views, which in our world aboveCan never well be seen,Were imaged in the water’s loveOf that fair forest green:And all was interfused beneathWith an Elysian glow,An atmosphere without a breath,A softer day below.Like one beloved, the scene had lentTo the dark water’s breastIts every leaf and lineamentWith more than truth exprest;Until an envious wind crept by,Like an unwelcome thoughtWhich from the mind’s too faithful eyeBlots one dear image out.—Though thou art ever fair and kind,The forests ever green,Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mindThan calm in waters seen!