| THE SOUTH-WIND brings | |
| Life, sunshine, and desire, | |
| And on every mount and meadow | |
| Breathes aromatic fire; | |
| But over the dead he has no power, | 5 |
| The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; | |
| And, looking over the hills, I mourn | |
| The darling who shall not return. | |
| |
| I see my empty house, | |
| I see my trees repair their boughs; | 10 |
| And he, the wondrous child, | |
| Whose silver warble wild | |
| Outvalued every pulsing sound | |
| Within the air’s cerulean round,— | |
| The hyacinthine boy, for whom | 15 |
| Morn well might break and April bloom, | |
| The gracious boy, who did adorn | |
| The world whereinto he was born, | |
| And by his countenance repay | |
| The favor of the loving Day,— | 20 |
| Has disappeared from the Day’s eye; | |
| Far and wide she cannot find him; | |
| My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. | |
| Returned this day, the south-wind searches, | |
| And finds young pines and budding birches; | 25 |
| But finds not the budding man; | |
| Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; | |
| Fate let him fall, Fate can’t retake him; | |
| Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. | |
| |
| And whither now, my truant wise and sweet, | 30 |
| O, whither tend thy feet? | |
| I had the right, few days ago, | |
| Thy steps to watch, thy place to know; | |
| How have I forfeited the right? | |
| Hast thou forgot me in a new delight? | 35 |
| I hearken for thy household cheer, | |
| O eloquent child! | |
| Whose voice, an equal messenger, | |
| Conveyed thy meaning mild. | |
| What though the pains and joys | 40 |
| Whereof it spoke were toys | |
| Fitting his age and ken, | |
| Yet fairest dames and bearded men, | |
| Who heard the sweet request, | |
| So gentle, wise, and grave, | 45 |
| Bended with joy to his behest, | |
| And let the world’s affairs go by, | |
| A while to share his cordial game, | |
| Or mend his wicker wagon-frame, | |
| Still plotting how their hungry ear | 50 |
| That winsome voice again might hear; | |
| For his lips could well pronounce | |
| Words that were persuasions. | |
| |
| Gentlest guardians marked serene | |
| His early hope, his liberal mien; | 55 |
| Took counsel from his guiding eyes | |
| To make this wisdom earthly wise. | |
| Ah, vainly do these eyes recall | |
| The school-march, each day’s festival, | |
| When every morn my bosom glowed | 60 |
| To watch the convoy on the road; | |
| The babe in willow wagon closed, | |
| With rolling eyes and face composed; | |
| With children forward and behind, | |
| Like Cupids studiously inclined; | 65 |
| And he the chieftain paced beside, | |
| The centre of the troop allied, | |
| With sunny face of sweet repose, | |
| To guard the babe from fancied foes. | |
| The little captain innocent | 70 |
| Took the eye with him as he went, | |
| Each village senior paused to scan | |
| And speak the lovely caravan. | |
| From the window I look out | |
| To mark thy beautiful parade, | 75 |
| Stately marching in cap and coat | |
| To some tune by fairies played; | |
| A music heard by thee alone | |
| To works as noble led thee on. | |
| |
| Now Love and Pride, alas! in vain, | 80 |
| Up and down their glances strain. | |
| The painted sled stands where it stood; | |
| The kennel by the corded wood; | |
| His gathered sticks to stanch the wall | |
| Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall; | 85 |
| The ominous hole he dug in the sand, | |
| And childhood’s castles built or planned; | |
| His daily haunts I well discern,— | |
| The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn,— | |
| And every inch of garden ground | 90 |
| Paced by the blessed feet around, | |
| From the roadside to the brook | |
| Whereinto he loved to look. | |
| Step the meek fowls where erst they ranged; | |
| The wintry garden lies unchanged; | 95 |
| The brook into the stream runs on; | |
| But the deep-eyed boy is gone. | |
| On that shaded day, | |
| Dark with more clouds than tempests are, | |
| When thou didst yield thy innocent breath | 100 |
| In birdlike heavings unto death, | |
| Night came, and Nature had not thee; | |
| I said, “We are mates in misery.” | |
| The morrow dawned with needless glow; | |
| Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must crow; | 105 |
| Each tramper started; but the feet | |
| Of the most beautiful and sweet | |
| Of human youth had left the hill | |
| And garden,—they were bound and still | |
| There ’s not a sparrow or a wren, | 110 |
| There ’s not a blade of autumn grain, | |
| Which the four seasons do not tend | |
| And tides of life and increase lend; | |
| And every chick of every bird, | |
| And weed and rock-moss is preferred. | 115 |
| O ostrich-like forgetfulness! | |
| O loss of larger in the less! | |
| Was there no star that could be sent, | |
| No watcher in the firmament, | |
| No angel from the countless host | 120 |
| That loiters round the crystal coast, | |
| Could stoop to heal that only child, | |
| Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled, | |
| And keep the blossom of the earth, | |
| Which all her harvests were not worth? | 125 |
| Not mine,—I never called thee mine, | |
| But Nature’s heir,—if I repine, | |
| And seeing rashly torn and moved | |
| Not what I made, but what I loved, | |
| Grow early old with grief that thou | 130 |
| Must to the wastes of Nature go,— | |
| ’T is because a general hope | |
| Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. | |
| For flattering planets seemed to say | |
| This child should ills of ages stay, | 135 |
| By wondrous tongue, and guided pen, | |
| Bring the flown Muses back to men. | |
| Perchance not he but Nature ailed, | |
| The world and not the infant failed. | |
| It was not ripe yet to sustain | 140 |
| A genius of so fine a strain, | |
| Who gazed upon the sun and moon | |
| As if he came unto his own, | |
| And, pregnant with his grander thought, | |
| Brought the old order into doubt. | 145 |
| His beauty once their beauty tried; | |
| They could not feed him, and he died, | |
| And wandered backward as in scorn, | |
| To wait an æon to be born. | |
| Ill day which made this beauty waste, | 150 |
| Plight broken, this high face defaced! | |
| Some went and came about the dead; | |
| And some in books of solace read; | |
| Some to their friends the tidings say; | |
| Some went to write, some went to pray; | 155 |
| One tarried here, there hurried one; | |
| But their heart abode with none. | |
| Covetous death bereaved us all, | |
| To aggrandize one funeral. | |
| The eager fate which carried thee | 160 |
| Took the largest part of me: | |
| For this losing is true dying; | |
| This is lordly man’s down-lying, | |
| This his slow but sure reclining, | |
| Star by star his world resigning. | 165 |
| |
| O child of paradise, | |
| Boy who made dear his father’s home, | |
| In whose deep eyes | |
| Men read the welfare of the times to come, | |
| I am too much bereft. | 170 |
| The world dishonored thou hast left. | |
| O truth’s and nature’s costly lie! | |
| O trusted broken prophecy! | |
| O richest fortune sourly crossed! | |
| Born for the future, to the future lost! | 175 |
| The deep Heart answered, “Weepest thou? | |
| Worthier cause for passion wild | |
| If I had not taken the child. | |
| And deemest thou as those who pore, | |
| With aged eyes, short way before,— | 180 |
| Think’st Beauty vanished from the coast | |
| Of matter, and thy darling lost? | |
| Taught he not thee—the man of eld, | |
| Whose eyes within his eyes beheld | |
| Heaven’s numerous hierarchy span | 185 |
| The mystic gulf from God to man? | |
| To be alone wilt thou begin | |
| When worlds of lovers hem thee in? | |
| To-morrow, when the masks shall fall | |
| That dizen Nature’s carnival, | 190 |
| The pure shall see by their own will, | |
| Which overflowing Love shall fill, | |
| ’T is not within the force of fate | |
| The fate-conjoined to separate. | |
| But thou, my votary, weepest thou? | 195 |
| I gave thee sight—where is it now? | |
| I taught thy heart beyond the reach | |
| Of ritual, bible, or of speech; | |
| Wrote in thy mind’s transparent table, | |
| As far as the incommunicable; | 200 |
| Taught thee each private sign to raise | |
| Lit by the supersolar blaze. | |
| Past utterance, and past belief, | |
| And past the blasphemy of grief, | |
| The mysteries of Nature’s heart; | 205 |
| And though no Muse can these impart, | |
| Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast, | |
| And all is clear from east to west. | |
| |
| “I came to thee as to a friend; | |
| Dearest, to thee I did not send | 210 |
| Tutors, but a joyful eye, | |
| Innocence that matched the sky, | |
| Lovely locks, a form of wonder, | |
| Laughter rich as woodland thunder, | |
| That thou mightst entertain apart | 215 |
| The richest flowering of all art: | |
| And, as the great all-loving Day | |
| Through smallest chambers takes its way, | |
| That thou mightst break thy daily bread | |
| With prophet, savior and head; | 220 |
| That thou mightst cherish for thine own | |
| The riches of sweet Mary’s Son, | |
| Boy-Rabbi, Israel’s paragon. | |
| And thoughtest thou such guest | |
| Would in thy hall take up his rest? | 225 |
| Would rushing life forget her laws, | |
| Fate’s glowing revolution pause? | |
| High omens ask diviner guess; | |
| Not to be conned to tediousness. | |
| And know my higher gifts unbind | 230 |
| The zone that girds the incarnate mind. | |
| When the scanty shores are full | |
| With Thought’s perilous, whirling pool; | |
| When frail Nature can no more, | |
| Then the Spirit strikes the hour: | 235 |
| My servant Death, with solving rite, | |
| Pours finite into infinite. | |
| Wilt thou freeze love’s tidal flow, | |
| Whose streams through nature circling go? | |
| Nail the wild star to its track | 240 |
| On the half-climbed zodiac? | |
| Light is light which radiates, | |
| Blood is blood which circulates, | |
| Life is life which generates, | |
| And many-seeming life is one,— | 245 |
| Wilt thou transfix and make it none? | |
| Its onward force too starkly pent | |
| In figure, bone, and lineament? | |
| Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, | |
| Talker! the unreplying Fate? | 250 |
| Nor see the genius of the whole | |
| Ascendant in the private soul, | |
| Beckon it when to go and come, | |
| Self-announced its hour of doom? | |
| Fair the soul’s recess and shrine, | 255 |
| Magic-built to last a season; | |
| Masterpiece of love benign, | |
| Fairer that expansive reason | |
| Whose omen ’t is, and sign. | |
| Wilt thou not hope thy heart to know | 260 |
| What rainbows teach, and sunsets show? | |
| Verdict which accumulates | |
| From lengthening scroll of human fates, | |
| Voice of earth to earth returned, | |
| Prayers of saints that inly burned,— | 265 |
| Saying, What is excellent, | |
| As God lives, is permanent; | |
| Hearts are dust, hearts’ loves remain; | |
| Heart’s love will meet thee again. | |
| Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye | 270 |
| Up to his style, and manners of the sky. | |
| Not of adamant and gold | |
| Built he heaven stark and cold; | |
| No, but a nest of bending reeds, | |
| Flowering grass and scented weeds; | 275 |
| Or like a traveller’s fleeing tent, | |
| Or bow above the tempest bent; | |
| Built of tears and sacred flames, | |
| And virtue reaching to its aims; | |
| Built of furtherance and pursuing, | 280 |
| Not of spent deeds, but of doing. | |
| Silent rushes the swift Lord | |
| Through ruined systems still restored, | |
| Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, | |
| Plants with worlds the wilderness; | 285 |
| Waters with tears of ancient sorrow | |
| Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. | |
| House and tenant go to ground, | |
Lost in God, in Godhead found.”
http://www.bartleby.com/248/166.html
……
那是個陰天,烏雲壟罩,
天色陰暗更勝於風暴。
你天真的呼吸像鳥一樣地升降,
你終於把呼吸交與死神,
夜到了,大自然失去了你;
我說,「我們是苦痛中的伴侶。」
天亮了,那亮光很不必要;
每一隻鳥啾唧著,每一隻雞都叫,
每一個流浪者都上路了;但是那最美麗、
最甜蜜的年輕人的腳已然
離開了花園與小山--
他的腳是困縛著、靜止的。
……
那野性的星辰爬上它天空的軌道,
你難道要把它在半路上釘牢?
光若是光,它必須向四周放散。
血液若是血液,它必須循環。
生命若是生命,它必須生產,
而生命只有一種,雖然外表像有多種,
你難道要消滅它,使它木立不動?
(你難道要)將它前進的力量完全幽閉
在形體骨骼與容貌裡面嗎? |
|