A Symphony Of Sonnets. I. To X. Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

IN EAR OF CLUNY WATER.
I.

BREAK, break, O heart! upon this stony shore
Of Time, for not the most tormented sea
Knoweth the deep unrest that stirs in thee,
Or hath thy mournful motive in its roar;
Beat out your whole complaint, tell o'er and o'er
The cruel wrongs of your captivity
Bound, darkened soul that would be light and free,
Cry out, and break, if you can do no more.

I see the kine a-graze on yonder hill,
And, sunk in joys responding to their zest,
They are in brute beatitude at rest;
So were my soul at peace had she her fill,—
This hungry soul that now must make her moan,
And faint and famish for some good unknown.


II.

Mock not our anguish, you who can lay down
The hope, which first to ravished love revealed,
Is still of every tender thought the shield,
And own no more of grief than you can drown
In shallow plaudits of the heartless town;
Love knoweth well his lieges, will not yield
His gifts, and, when bereft on some lost field,
Will hold their sorrow still for kingly crown.

Sad legatees of Love, let none impose
Base counsels on your conscience or your pride;
A recreant peace hath been to you denied,
But not this comfort in your mortal throes:
Haply your groans that so offend the night
Are of the travail-pangs of coming sight.


III.

All ye who lightly hold the high bequest,
The crown immortal by great Love alone,
And oftenest to his martyred ones foreshown,
How is it with you when some tenderer breast,
Long time of fledgling love the chosen nest,
Has had to mourn its brooding care outgrown?
How then with ravished nest, and nestling flown,
How has the mother-heart in you found rest?

Nay, it not rests, but dies in such a case;
The woman-soul that nourishes a seed,
Charged with the hope supernal of the race,
Fades as it fades, sustained by no low greed;
Fades, falls, and, trampled out by grosser need,
Lives not to consummate its own disgrace.


IV.

Melodious Cluny winding through the vale,
Falling on deepest harmonies unsought,
While singing to the stolid hills of nought,
Why must my burthened tongue so faint and fail
While thy light strains with every heart prevail?
Lend thou thy sweet voice to my bitter thought,
That of my kin some prouder souls be wrought
To sympathy, whose frown is music's bale.

Yet no, fair Cluny; resting on the sward
In ear of thy so irrespective song,
My vain request hath done thy lesson wrong.
Teach but the lay to rise above the Bard,
The song above the Self and those who scorn,—
And so to wait the opening lids of morn.


V.

Where is the east? Sirs, we have journeyed far,
And, wearying for the signs of some new birth,
Have wandered o'er the sun-forsaken earth,
Asking the nearest way, and in the jar
Of many counsels, each with each at war,
Have lost our bearings. More than all words' worth
Were one faint ray to cheer us in our dearth;—
Where is the east? And shines there any star?

Dear God, what strife of tongues! and still for light
Only the lamps of men who read by night;
No star in heaven, no hill-top touched with fire.
Poor baffled soul, that knows not where to wend,
Make for the morning still, take heart, ascend,—
And, in ascending, strengthen your desire.


VI.

Make for the morning, wingless one, possest
Of sun-ward yearnings; your free life disdains
To stagnate in the cities of the plains;
Make for the morning, and if ye must breast
The mountain slopes with toil, upon their crest,
Breathing the recreative air that sanes,
Ye, fledgling spirits, briefly for your pains
May share the callow eagle's lofty rest.

Rise, brothers, rise! howe'er the way be steep,
For we may dare in such high place to sleep,
And watching, weeping long, our eyes are sore;
There at the sun's réveillé we may mount,
Drawn by the Day-beams, nearer to their fount,—
Or fall into the gulf, and know no more.


VII.

What if like those who tread some burning plain,
And, looking through bleared eyes, wherein is blown
The dust of men and cities overthrown,
See, as the gliding ghosts of all their slain
And desiccated joys, a shining main,
Fair ships, and paradises overgrown
With rain-washed flowers,—what, brothers, if our own
High hope were but such coinage of the brain?

Nay, truth may vouch that of our desert-dreams
Not one but somewhere is the thing it seems;
Yet, were the phantoms nought but only fair,
In such hard strait this would make good their call:
They found us help, as men to rise or fall,
E'en in the barren womb of our despair.


VIII.

I love the rolling moor, which is the hive
Of wingèd things whereof the day is sweet
And innocent, however it be fleet;
I love to breathe and know myself alive
With careless creatures that not need to strive;
To drink new joy at every stream I meet,
Earth's flowery laughters breaking at my feet,
And feel the lustier blood within me thrive.

Yes, it is good, though we may not forget,
To rise above the fever and the fret,
And, wistful of the end, to know no sorrow,
That thou must lapse, sweet Cluny, in the Dee,
Which in its turn must sink into the Sea,—
And I must lose my careless life to-morrow!


IX.

I hear thee, Cluny, in the vale below,
As once again I breast this breezy hill,
And take of unreflecting joy my fill,
With thee, sweet Cluny, singing as I go.
The ruddy, sun-kist heather, all aglow,
Melts into ever bluer waves, until
It faints upon a sky of daffodil,
And I cry out for joy that it is so.

Vain glories that make glad the face of Earth,
What are ye, so to move me with your mirth?
What help, for one who fades, that ye are fine?
The hills aërial bloom I cannot touch,
No fairest form I may embrace as such,—
What sovereign source regales your life and mine?


X.

Dear Cluny Water, thou hast been to me
No fount whereof more temperate poets drink
The sparkling water, lingering on the brink,
But I have sate until I ceased to be,
Filled with thy music, and absorbed of thee;
Have known the chains that bound me, link on link
Fall off, and leave me on thy breast to sink,
And lose my weary self as in a sea.

Then thought has closed the door, for none may know
The central secret of the birth of Song,
But at my lips I felt an overflow
As of thy music; I have done it wrong,
It is my voice that sings so faint and low,
Only your sylvan heart hath made mine strong.