To the Moon
With musing mind I watch thee steal
Above those envious clouds that hid
Till now thy face; thou dost reveal
More than the glaring sunlight did;
So round me would I have thy light
In one broad sea of beauty lie,
And who, while thou dost rule the night,
For day would sigh,
Nor long for wings that he might flee
To find thy hidden face and ride the dark with thee?
And hence it was that ever forth
My fancy doated more and more
Upon the wild poetic worth
Of that old tale in Grecian lore,
Which to the head of Latmos gave
Supernal glories, passion-won
By him who, in the mystic cave—
Endymion—
Was wont to meet thee night by night,
And drink into his soul the spirit of thy light.
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Cloud
One summer morn, out of the sea-waves wild,
A speck-like Cloud, the season’s fated child,
Came softly floating up the boundless sky,
And o’er the sun-parched hills all brown and dry.
Onward she glided through the azure air,
Borne by its motion without toil or care,
When looking down in her ethereal joy,
She marked earth’s moilers at their hard employ;
“And oh!” she said, “that by some act of grace
’Twere mine to succour yon fierce-toiling race,
To give the hungry meat, the thirsty drink—
The thought of good is very sweet to think.”
The day advanced, and the cloud greater grew,
And greater; likewise her desire to do
Some charity to men had more and more,
As the long sultry summer day on wore,
Greatened and warmed within her fleecy breast,
Like a dove fledging in its downy nest.
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Death of Shelley
Fit winding-sheet for thee
Was the upheaving eternal sea,
Fit dirge the tempest’s slave-alarming roll
For yokeless as the waves alway
Thy thoughts went sounding forth, as they
Were marshalling to the trumpet of the universal soul.
Yet tell me, spirit bright,
Did nature sorrow not for thee?
That day, veiled not the sun his light
When rolling over Italy?
Paled not the stricken moon, that night,
When gazing down upon the doomful sea?
Yet tell me, for from under them
Was never reft away before a richer, purer gem
Than was thy being, wherein love did dwell
With joy and natural piety as well,—
Inraying it with a deep life,
So sweetly deep, so wildly bright,
Such as no words may tell!
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poem by Charles Harpur
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To the Moon [Earlier Version]
WITH silent step behold her steal
Over those envious clouds that hid
Till now her face, then stand—a seal
Of silver on heaven’s mighty lid!
So round me would I have her light
In one broad burst of beauty play,
And who whilst thus she rules the night
Would wish the day,
Nor feel his yearning spirit fraught
With sweetly solemn strains of visionary thought?
Love of my childhood! for but when
A child I loved thee of all things—
Yea, with what ecstacies I then
Did hail thee, what dear visionings!
And when between us up the sky
Obscuring glooms have wildly thronged,
With shortened breath and searching eye
How have I longed
For wings that I away might flee
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Drowned Alive
I was one so deeply drowned,
That when the drag my body found,
Twas void of motion, void of breath,
And to sensation dead as death.
In a languid summer mood
I had plunged into a flood,
That to the low sun’s slanting beams
Gleamed with only quiet gleams,
Each with a wide flicker sheeting
From its still floor, fast and fleeting,
E’en such a flood as, one would say,
Could never, or by night or day,
Have drenched a man’s warm life away.
But what are these down in its bed
That trail so long and look so red,
Moving as in conscious sport?
Are they weeds of curious sort?
But I’ll drive to them and see
Into all their mystery.
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Dream by the Fountain
Thought-weary and sad, I reclined by a fountain
At the head of a white-cedar-shaded ravine,
And the breeze that fell over the high glooming mountain
Sang a lullaby low as I gazed o’er the scene.
Long I’d reclined not till slumber came o’er me,
Grateful as balm to a suffering child:
When a glorious maiden seemed standing before me
With a lyre in her hand—O so sounding and wild!
Bright was her brow, not the morning’s brow brighter,
But her eyes were two midnights of passionate thought;
Light was her motion, the breeze’s not lighter,
And her looks were like sunshine and shadow in-wrought.
Never before did my bosom inherit
Emotion so thrilling, such exquisite awe!
Never such wonder exalted my spirit
Before, as did now, through the vision I saw.
Robed for the chase like a nymph of Diana,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Vision of the Rock
I SATE upon a lonely peak,
A backwood river’s course to view,
And watched the changing shadows freak
Its liquid length of gleaming blue,
Streaked by the crane slow gliding o’er,
Or chequering to the leafy roar
Of woods that ’neath me grew,
Or curdling dark, as high o’erhead
The gathering clouds before the sounding breezes fled.
Straight I bethought how once the scene
Spread in its primal horror there,
When, but some lone bird’s weary threne
Or howlings from the wild dog’s lair,
Or rush of startled kangaroo,
As near some stealthy savage drew
With hunger in his air,
Or, from the stream some murmur’d sound
Broke the dread slumbrous calm of solitude profound.
A change came o’er my thoughts—behind
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poem by Charles Harpur
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Shakespeare
Standing alone, a study in itself,
How Shakespeare’s volume glorifies my shelf!
For thence his spirit forth on mine has shined,
Like a great morning on the hills of mind.
Sphered in the light of his creative powers,
A wonder-world, inorbing this of ours,
Gathers around us, like the peopled haze
That wraps some roamer in a dream’s wild ways.
Lean fatal hags ride in the troubled air,
And wing’d immortals meet us everywhere;
These of a silken loveliness that shows
Like the dim beauty of a moonlit rose;
Lined rigidly as sculptured iron those.
Lo! Now futurity uplifts her veil,
And pours her phantom kings before the tyrant pale.
Now in the moon’s quick glimpses gleaming cold,
A mail-clad monarch’s spectral form behold;
Whilst, like to echoes from oblivion’s coast,
Comes the dread speech of the unquiet ghost!
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Nevers of Poetry
Never say aught in verse, or grave or gay,
That you in prose would hesitate to say.
Never in rhyme pretend to tears, unless
True feeling sheds them in unfeigned distress;
Or some dream-grief, with such a mournful strain
As night winds make in pine tops, stirs your brain,
To shake them, dew-like, o’er the flowers that bloom
In the wild dark, round Joy’s imagined tomb;
Or save when doubts that over Love may lower,
Like summer clouds, break in a sunny shower
Out of your gladdened eyes, to freshen all
The bowers of memory with their grateful fall.
Never too much affect that polished thing—
Once belauded—known as point, or sting.
The highest and the noblest growths of wit
Are never, or but seldom, touched with it.
For of the muse it is not truly born
Unless the apex of some burst of scorn,
Or irony, or hate all torture-torn!
Not to increase the passion, but to make
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Ideal
Spirit of Dreams! When many a toilsome height
Shut paradise from exiled Adam’s sight,
Two wedded powers were given thenceforth to stray
On either hand, companions of his way;
This Hope was named in heaven, whence he came,
And that of Melancholy bore the name;
Thy parents these—who clothed thee with a ray
Snatched from Perfection as she passed away,
And to their gentle child bequeathed the grace
Wherewith they once adorned unfallen nature’s face.
Queen-mother of Elysiums, and all fair
Hesperian gardens, hear thy suppliant’s prayer!
Lend me the hues with which the mortal eyes
Thou dost bring back the tints of paradise—
Hues drawn from all the splendours that there be
In this new world, from earth and sky and sea;
From nameless flowers, that wild in forests run,
Up to the glories of the setting sun—
From those white flickers that round fountains leap,
From the phosphoric lightenings of the deep,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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