On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there Of some burgher home returning, By the street lamps faintly burning, For a moment woke the echoes Of the ancient town of Bruges.
But amid my broken slumbers Still I heard those magic numbers, As they loud proclaimed the flight And stole marches of the night; Till their chimes in sweet collision Mingled with each wandering vision, Mingled with the fortune-telling Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, Which amid the waste expanses Of the silent land of trances Have their solitary dwelling; All else seemed asleep in Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city.
And I thought how like these chimes Are the poet's airy rhymes, All his rhymes and roundelays, His conceits, and songs, and ditties, From the belfry of his brain, Scattered downward, though in vain, On the roofs and stones of cities! For by night the drowsy ear Under its curtains cannot hear, And by day men go their ways, Hearing the music as they pass, But deeming it no more, alas ! Than the hollow sound of brass.
Yet perchance a sleepless wight, Lodging at some humble inn In the narrow lanes of life, When the dusk and hush of night Shut out the incessant din
Of daylight and its toil and strife, May listen with a calm delight To the poet's melodies,
Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long ; Hears amid the chime and singing The bells of his own village ringing, And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes Wet with most delicious tears.
Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé, Listening with a wild delight To the chimes that, through the night, Rang their changes from the Belfry Of that quaint old Flemish city.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
CLARENCE. O, I have passed a miserable night! So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 't were to buy a world of happy days, -- So full of dismal terror was the time ! Methought that I had broken from the Tower, And was embarked to cross to Burgundy, And, in my company, my brother Gloster, Who from my cabin tempted me to walk Upon the hatches; thence we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times, During the wars of York and Lancaster, That had befallen us. As we paced along Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in fall- ing,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of water in mine ears! What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea: Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept (As 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. BRAKENBURY. Had you such leisure, in the time of death,
To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?
CLAR. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopt in my soul, and would not let it forth To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smothered it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
BRAK. Awaked you not with this sore agony? CLAR. No, no, my dream was lengthened after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul ! I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul Was my great father-in-law, renownéd Warwick ; Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence!" And so he vanished: then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
OUR life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off waking toils, They do divide our being; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity; They pass like spirits of the past,
Like sibyls of the future; they have power, The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; They make us what we were not, what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by, The dread of vanished shadows. Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind? The mind can make Substances, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed Perchance in sleep,- for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of a mild declivity, the last As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man : These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing, the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself, but the boy gazed on her; And both were young, and one was beautiful : And both were young, yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one belovéd face on earth, And that was shining on him; he had looked Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers; She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words; she was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, Which colored all his objects; he had ceased To live within himself: she was his life, Which terminated all; upon a tone, The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously, his heart Unknowing of its cause of agony. But she in these fond feelings had no share : Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother, but no more; 't was much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Herself the solitary scion left Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Of a time-honored race. It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not,
and why? Time taught him a deep answer- when she loved And on the summit of that hill she stood Another; even now she loved another, Looking afar if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed From out the massy gate of that old Hall. And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt With strange and dusky aspects; he was not Himself like what he had been; on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain; and a man, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumbered around: And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better: in her home, A thousand leagues from his, — her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of beauty, — but behold! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. What could her grief be? - she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be?—she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which preyed Upon her mind a spectre of the past.
His bosom in its solitude; and then- As in that hour -a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reeled around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been,
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back And thrust themselves between him and the light; What business had they there at such a time!
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love; -O, she was changed, As by the sickness of the soul! her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, They had not their own lustre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things; And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight familiar were to hers. And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift; What is it but the telescope of truth? Which strips the distance of its fantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real!
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontiac monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Through that which had been death to many men.
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries; To him the book of Night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and a secret. Be it so.
My dream was past; it had no further change. It was of a strange order, that the doom
JAFFAR, the Barmecide, the good vizier, The poor man's hope, the friend without a peer, Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust; And guilty Haroun, sullen with mistrust Of what the good, and e'en the bad, might say, Ordained that no man living from that day' Should dare to speak his name on pain of death. All Araby and Persia held their breath;
All but the brave Mondeer: he, proud to show How far for love a grateful soul could go,
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out And facing death for very scorn and grief Almost like a reality, the one
A STRANGER came one night to Yussouf's tent, Saying, "Behold one outcast and in dread, Against whose life the bow of power is bent, Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head ; I come to thee for shelter and for food,
To Yussouf, called through all our tribes 'The Good.""
"This tent is mine," said Yussouf, "but no more Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace ; Freely shalt thou partake of all my store As I of His who buildeth over these Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay.”
So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, And, waking him ere day, said : "Here is gold, My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight, Depart before the prying day grow bold." As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
(For his great heart wanted a great relief), Stood forth in Bagdad daily, in the square Where once had stood a happy house, and there Harangued the tremblers at the scymitar On all they owed to the divine Jaffar.
"Bring me this man," the caliph cried; the man Was brought, was gazed upon. The mutes began To bind his arms. "Welcome, brave cords," cried he;
"From bonds far worse Jaffar delivered me; From wants, from shames, from loveless house- hold fears;
Made a man's eyes friends with delicious tears; Restored me, loved me, put me on a par With his great self. How can I pay Jaffar?"
Haroun, who felt that on a soul like this The mightiest vengeance could but fall amiss, Now deigned to smile, as one great lord of fate Might smile upon another half as great. He said, "Let worth grow frenzied if it will; The caliph's judgment shall be master still. Go, and since gifts so move thee, take this gem, The richest in the Tartar's diadem,
And hold the giver as thou deemest fit!" "Gifts!" cried the friend; he took, and hold-
High toward the heavens, as though to meet his star,
That inward light the stranger's face made grand, Exclaimed, "This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffar!"
Which shines from all self-conquest; kneeling low,
He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, Sobbing: "O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so; I will repay thee; all this thou hast done Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son!"
"Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, "for with thee
Into the desert, never to return, My one black thought shall ride away from me; First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, Balanced and just are all of God's decrees; Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!"
Now the third and fatal conflict for the Persian throne was done,
And the Moslem's fiery valor had the crowning victory won.
Harmosan, the last and boldest the invader to defy,
Captive, overborne by numbers, they were bringing forth to die.
Then exclaimed that noble captive: "Lo, I perish in my thirst;
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not
Give me but one drink of water, and let then | Replied the angel. — Abou spoke more low, arrive the worst!"
In his hand he took the goblet; but awhile the draught forbore,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
Seeming doubtfully the purpose of the foeman to It came again, with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!
Well might then have paused the bravest, — for, around him, angry foes
With a hedge of naked weapons did that lonely man enclose.
"But what fear'st thou?" cried the caliph; "is it, friend, a secret blow?
Fear it not our gallant Moslems no such treacherous dealing know.
"Thou mayst quench thy thirst securely, for thou shalt not die before
ABOU BEN ADHEM.
ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold: Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?"-The vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the
TELL me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what hey seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!
« AnteriorContinuar » |