The people here, a beast of burden slow, The heads and crowns of kings; Here rose, an athlete, strong to break or bind And here once more like some sick man declined, But over these she trod: and those great bells To sing her songs alone. And thro' the topmost Oriels' colored flame And all those names, that in their motion were Thro' which the lights, rose, amber, emerald, blue, Flush'd in her temples and her eyes, And from her lips, as morn from Memnon, drew Rivers of melodies. No nightingale delighteth to prolong Her low preamble all alone, More than my soul to hear her echo'd song Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth, Lord over Nature, Lord of the visible earth, Communing with herself: "All these are mine, "Tis one to me." She-when young night divine Crown'd dying day with stars, Making sweet close of his delicious toils- To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands and cried, "I marvel if my still delight In this great house so royal-rich, and wide, "O all things fair to sate my various eyes! O God-like isolation which art mine, What time I watch the darkening droves of swine "In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin, Then of the moral instinct would she prate "I take possession of man's mind and deed. Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Yet none the less held she her solemn mirth, And so she throve and prosper'd: so three years Lest she should fail and perish utterly, The abysmal deeps of Personality, Plagued her with sore despair. When she would think, where'er she turn'd her sight The airy hand confusion wrought, Wrote "Mene, mene," and divided quite The kingdom of her thought. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was born Scorn of herself; again, from out that mood Laughter at her self-scorn. "What! is not this my place of strength,” she said, But in dark corners of her palace stood On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, A spot of dull stagnation, without light A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand; A star that with the choral starry dance Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. "No voice," she shriek'd in that lone hall, "No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world: One deep, deep silence all !" She, mouldering with the dull earth's mouldering sod, Lay there exiled from eternal God, And death and life she hated equally, Remaining utterly confused with fears, Shut up as in a crumbling tomb, girt round Far off she seem'd to hear the dully sound As in strange lands a traveller walking slow, A little before moon-rise hears the low And knows not if it be thunder or a sound Of great wild beasts; then thinketh, "I have found She howl'd aloud, "I am on fire within. So when four years were wholly finished, She threw her royal robes away. "Make me a cottage in the vale," she said, "Where I may mourn and pray. "Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. ADY Clara Vere de Vere, LA Of me you shall not win renown: You thought to break a country heart |