CONNECTED POEMS.
CONNECTED POEMS.
BY
CHARLES SEABRIDGE.
Oubliant tout à fait la race humaine, je me fis des sociétés decréatures parfaites, aussi celestes par leurs vertus que par leursbeautés, d’amis sûrs, tendres, fidèles, tels que je n’en troüvaijamais ici-bas.—Confessions de Rousseau, Partie II., livre 9.
Qui Deum amat, conari non potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amet.—B.de Spinoza, Ethica, Pars. V.
LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW,
1866.
CONNECTED POEMS.
I.
O poor preludings to some happier praise,
Thou frail decoy to merit myriad-hued,
The violets of whose virtue pave your ways,
Breathing beneficence on your sullen mood;
Go, test your worth, nor once obtrude the award
On who, unanxious, cannot pant for fame;
His only verdict, whom these lines applaud,
Shall touch my soul with sense of praise or blame,
Howe’er it be; this verse has frighted woe,
And caught the glimpses of a banished Heaven,
Haply surpassing in its quiet glow
Life’s fickle transports, nourishment and leaven;
If here is aught, its dues shall be allow’d;
I rest content, but of my office proud.
Thou frail decoy to merit myriad-hued,
The violets of whose virtue pave your ways,
Breathing beneficence on your sullen mood;
Go, test your worth, nor once obtrude the award
On who, unanxious, cannot pant for fame;
His only verdict, whom these lines applaud,
Shall touch my soul with sense of praise or blame,
Howe’er it be; this verse has frighted woe,
And caught the glimpses of a banished Heaven,
Haply surpassing in its quiet glow
Life’s fickle transports, nourishment and leaven;
If here is aught, its dues shall be allow’d;
I rest content, but of my office proud.
II.
Aye fashioned from the mirror of the soul
That lends its shadow to this fleeting world,
How doth thy beauty in itself control
The spirit and the form wherein ’tis whirled;
In others earth beneath the inward fire
Sinks down, abashed, nor knows to bear the fame,
While some more mean exalt the entrancing mire,
Smothering the sparkles of celestial flame;
Yet either wanting, for, with those of earth,
Earth’s purer mixture hallows what it lends,
And easier leads the sons of self-same birth
To fathom beauty in its heavenlier ends:
’Tis fit Nature should find a lovely hearse,
When man by death springs from the Universe.
That lends its shadow to this fleeting world,
How doth thy beauty in itself control
The spirit and the form wherein ’tis whirled;
In others earth beneath the inward fire
Sinks down, abashed, nor knows to bear the fame,
While some more mean exalt the entrancing mire,
Smothering the sparkles of celestial flame;
Yet either wanting, for, with those of earth,
Earth’s purer mixture hallows what it lends,
And easier leads the sons of self-same birth
To fathom beauty in its heavenlier ends:
’Tis fit Nature should find a lovely hearse,
When man by death springs from the Universe.
III.
If there be some true meaning and a sign
In all the altars where sad suppliants pray,
And if the words they sometime subtly twine,
Be not unpregnant of a deeper lay,
What depths of mystery might not then be read,
What gages of new hope lie undiscerned,
In all the purpose that thy beauties wed,
And all the thought in glowing shrine inurned,
In the unfathomable music, weaving
The young glad utterance of unconscio
In all the altars where sad suppliants pray,
And if the words they sometime subtly twine,
Be not unpregnant of a deeper lay,
What depths of mystery might not then be read,
What gages of new hope lie undiscerned,
In all the purpose that thy beauties wed,
And all the thought in glowing shrine inurned,
In the unfathomable music, weaving
The young glad utterance of unconscio
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