Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts
II
Brief glimpses of the bright celestial spheres,False lights, false shadows, vague, uncertain gleams,Pale vaporous mists, wan streaks of lurid flame,The climbing of the upward-sailing cloud,The sinking of the downward-falling star,All these are pictures of the changing moodsBorne through the midnight stillness of my soul.
Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock,Prey to the vulture of a vast desireThat feeds upon my life. I burst my bandsAnd steal a moment’s freedom from the beak,The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes;Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;“Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dustLike the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies!Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee,Unchanging as the belt Orion wears,Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown,The spangled stream of Berenice’s hair!”And so she twines the fetters with the flowersAround my yielding limbs, and the fierce birdStoops to his quarry,—then to feed his rageOf ravening hunger I must drain my bloodAnd let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding nightSteal all the freshness from my fading cheek,And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes.All for a line in some unheeded scroll;All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns,“Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clodWhere squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!”
I marvel not at him who scorns his kindAnd thinks not sadly of the time foretoldWhen the old hulk we tread shall be a wreck,A slag, a cinder drifting through the skyWithout its crew of fools! We live too longAnd even so are not content to die,But load the mould that covers up our bonesWith stones that stand like beggars by the roadAnd show death’s grievous wound and ask for tears;Write our great books to teach men who we are,Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phraseThe secrets of our lives, and plead and prayFor alms of memory with the after time,Those few swift seasons while the earth shall wearIts leafy summers, ere its core grows coldAnd the moist life of all that breathes shall die;Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise,Would have us deem, before its growing mass,Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls,Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Manand his works and all that stirred itselfOf its own motion, in the fiery glowTurns to a flaming vapor, and our orbShines a new sun for earths that shall be born.
I am as old as Egypt to myself,Brother to them that squared the pyramidsBy the same stars I watch. I read the pageWhere every letter is a glittering world,With them who looked from Shinar’s clay-built towers,Ere yet the wanderer of the Midland seaHad missed the fallen sister of the seven.I dwell in spaces vague, remote, unknown,Save to the silent few, who, leaving earth,Quit all communion with their living time.I lose myself in that ethereal void,Till I have tired my wings and long to fillMy breast with denser air, to stand, to walkWith eyes not raised above my fellow-men.Sick of my unwalled, solitary realm,I ask to change the myriad lifeless worldsI visit as mine own for one poor patchOf this dull spheroid and a little breathTo shape in word or deed to serve my kind.
Was ever giant’s dungeon dug so deep,Was ever tyrant’s fetter forged so strong,Was e’er such deadly poison in the draughtThe false wife mingles for the trusting fool,As he whose willing victim is himself,Digs, forges, mingles, for his captive soul?