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Best Famous Enchantment Poems

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Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

 I

In my beginning is my end.
In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
In my beginning is my end.
Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon, Where you lean against a bank while a van passes, And the deep lane insists on the direction Into the village, in the electric heat Hypnotised.
In a warm haze the sultry light Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.
In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie— A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction, Holding eche other by the hand or the arm Whiche betokeneth concorde.
Round and round the fire Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles, Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes, Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth Mirth of those long since under earth Nourishing the corn.
Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts.
Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking.
Dung and death.
Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence.
Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides.
I am here Or there, or elsewhere.
In my beginning.
II What is the late November doing With the disturbance of the spring And creatures of the summer heat, And snowdrops writhing under feet And hollyhocks that aim too high Red into grey and tumble down Late roses filled with early snow? Thunder rolled by the rolling stars Simulates triumphal cars Deployed in constellated wars Scorpion fights against the Sun Until the Sun and Moon go down Comets weep and Leonids fly Hunt the heavens and the plains Whirled in a vortex that shall bring The world to that destructive fire Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.
That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
The poetry does not matter.
It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes.
There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been.
We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble, On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold, And menaced by monsters, fancy lights, Risking enchantment.
Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.
III O dark dark dark.
They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors, And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God.
As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away— Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing— I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.
You say I am repeating Something I have said before.
I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.
IV The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease If we obey the dying nurse Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam's curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees, The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood— Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
V So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.
And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.
The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from.
As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living.
Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise.
In my end is my beginning.


Written by Sidney Lanier | Create an image from this poem

The Crystal

 At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place, -- 'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave,
Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news
From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents,
Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all
That brood about the skies of poesy,
Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars;
Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none
With total lustre blazeth, no, not one
But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh
Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks
His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist
Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask
Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give,
We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet
Your largesse so with love, and interplight
Your geniuses with our mortalities.
Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakespeare sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise -- Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind; Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain; Last I forgive (with more delight, because 'Tis more to do) the labored-lewd discourse That e'en thy young invention's youngest heir Besmirched the world with.
Father Homer, thee, Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues That tease the patience of the centuries, Thy sleazy scrap of story, -- but a rogue's Rape of a light-o'-love, -- too soiled a patch To broider with the gods.
Thee, Socrates, Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies That were but dandy upside-down, thy words Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought.
So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was But not to be.
Worn Dante, I forgive The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed By death, nor time, nor love.
And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise And fill all heaven with folly.
Also thee, Brave Aeschylus, thee I forgive, for that Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love Stands shining.
So, unto thee, Lucretius mine (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this That's now complaining?), freely I forgive Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth Whose graves eat souls and all.
Yea, all you hearts Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large: Aurelius fine, oft superfine; mild Saint A Kempis, overmild; Epictetus, Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct; Rapt Behmen, rapt too far; high Swedenborg, O'ertoppling; Langley, that with but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; -- all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship seals to man.
But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What `if' or `yet', what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?"
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

 If you danced from midnight
to six A.
M.
who would understand? The runaway boy who chucks it all to live on the Boston Common on speed and saltines, pissing in the duck pond, rapping with the street priest, trading talk like blows, another missing person, would understand.
The paralytic's wife who takes her love to town, sitting on the bar stool, downing stingers and peanuts, singing "That ole Ace down in the hole," would understand.
The passengers from Boston to Paris watching the movie with dawn coming up like statues of honey, having partaken of champagne and steak while the world turned like a toy globe, those murderers of the nightgown would understand.
The amnesiac who tunes into a new neighborhood, having misplaced the past, having thrown out someone else's credit cards and monogrammed watch, would understand.
The drunken poet (a genius by daylight) who places long-distance calls at three A.
M.
and then lets you sit holding the phone while he vomits (he calls it "The Night of the Long Knives") getting his kicks out of the death call, would understand.
The insomniac listening to his heart thumping like a June bug, listening on his transistor to Long John Nebel arguing from New York, lying on his bed like a stone table, would understand.
The night nurse with her eyes slit like Venetian blinds, she of the tubes and the plasma, listening to the heart monitor, the death cricket bleeping, she who calls you "we" and keeps vigil like a ballistic missile, would understand.
Once this king had twelve daughters, each more beautiful than the other.
They slept together, bed by bed in a kind of girls' dormitory.
At night the king locked and bolted the door .
How could they possibly escape? Yet each morning their shoes were danced to pieces.
Each was as worn as an old jockstrap.
The king sent out a proclamation that anyone who could discover where the princesses did their dancing could take his pick of the litter.
However there was a catch.
If he failed, he would pay with his life.
Well, so it goes.
Many princes tried, each sitting outside the dormitory, the door ajar so he could observe what enchantment came over the shoes.
But each time the twelve dancing princesses gave the snoopy man a Mickey Finn and so he was beheaded.
Poof! Like a basketball.
It so happened that a poor soldier heard about these strange goings on and decided to give it a try.
On his way to the castle he met an old old woman.
Age, for a change, was of some use.
She wasn't stuffed in a nursing home.
She told him not to drink a drop of wine and gave him a cloak that would make him invisible when the right time came.
And thus he sat outside the dorm.
The oldest princess brought him some wine but he fastened a sponge beneath his chin, looking the opposite of Andy Gump.
The sponge soaked up the wine, and thus he stayed awake.
He feigned sleep however and the princesses sprang out of their beds and fussed around like a Miss America Contest.
Then the eldest went to her bed and knocked upon it and it sank into the earth.
They descended down the opening one after the other.
They crafty soldier put on his invisisble cloak and followed.
Yikes, said the youngest daughter, something just stepped on my dress.
But the oldest thought it just a nail.
Next stood an avenue of trees, each leaf make of sterling silver.
The soldier took a leaf for proof.
The youngest heard the branch break and said, Oof! Who goes there? But the oldest said, Those are the royal trumpets playing triumphantly.
The next trees were made of diamonds.
He took one that flickered like Tinkerbell and the youngest said: Wait up! He is here! But the oldest said: Trumpets, my dear.
Next they came to a lake where lay twelve boats with twelve enchanted princes waiting to row them to the underground castle.
The soldier sat in the youngest's boat and the boat was as heavy as if an icebox had been added but the prince did not suspect.
Next came the ball where the shoes did duty.
The princesses danced like taxi girls at Roseland as if those tickets would run right out.
They were painted in kisses with their secret hair and though the soldier drank from their cups they drank down their youth with nary a thought.
Cruets of champagne and cups full of rubies.
They danced until morning and the sun came up naked and angry and so they returned by the same strange route.
The soldier went forward through the dormitory and into his waiting chair to feign his druggy sleep.
That morning the soldier, his eyes fiery like blood in a wound, his purpose brutal as if facing a battle, hurried with his answer as if to the Sphinx.
The shoes! The shoes! The soldier told.
He brought forth the silver leaf, the diamond the size of a plum.
He had won.
The dancing shoes would dance no more.
The princesses were torn from their night life like a baby from its pacifier.
Because he was old he picked the eldest.
At the wedding the princesses averted their eyes and sagged like old sweatshirts.
Now the runaways would run no more and never again would their hair be tangled into diamonds, never again their shoes worn down to a laugh, never the bed falling down into purgatory to let them climb in after with their Lucifer kicking.
Written by Charles Baudelaire | Create an image from this poem

Beauty

 I AM as lovely as a dream in stone, 
And this my heart where each finds death in turn, 
Inspires the poet with a love as lone 
As clay eternal and as taciturn.
Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows, My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; I hate all movements that disturb my pose, I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
Before my monumental attitudes, That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, My poets pray in austere studious moods, For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.
Written by Aleister Crowley | Create an image from this poem

Lyric of Love to Leah

 Come, my darling, let us dance
To the moon that beckons us
To dissolve our love in trance
Heedless of the hideous
Heat & hate of Sirius-
Shun his baneful brilliance!

Let us dance beneath the palm
Moving in the moonlight, frond
Wooing frond above the calm
Of the ocean diamond
Sparkling to the sky beyond
The enchantment of our psalm.
Let us dance, my mirror of Perfect passion won to peace, Let us dance, my treasure trove, On the marble terraces Carven in pallid embroeideries For the vestal veil of Love.
Heaven awakes to encompass us, Hell awakes its jubilance In our hearts mysterious Marriage of the azure expanse, With the scarlet brilliance Of the Moon with Sirius.
Velvet swatches our lissome limbs Languid lapped by sky & sea Soul through sense & spirit swims Through the pregnant porphyry Dome of lapiz-lazuli:- Heart of silence, hush our hymns.
Come my darling; let us dance Through the golden galaxies Rythmic swell of circumstance Beaming passion’s argosies: Ecstacy entwined with ease, Terrene joy transcending trance! Thou my scarlet concubine Draining heart’s blood to the lees To empurple those divine Lips with living luxuries Life importunate to appease Drought insatiable of wine! Tunis in the tremendous trance Rests from day’s incestuous Traffic with the radiance Of her sire-& over us Gleams the intoxicating glance Of the Moon & Sirius.
Take the ardour of my impearled Essence that my shoulders seek To intensify the curled Candour of the eyes oblique, Eyes that see the seraphic sleek Lust bewitch the wanton world.
Come, my love, my dove, & pour From thy cup the serpent wine Brimmed & breathless -secret store Of my crimson concubine Surfeit spirit in the shrine- Devil -Godess -Virgin -Whore.
Afric sands ensorcel us, Afric seas & skies entrance Velvet, lewd & luminous Night surveys our soul askance! Come my love, & let us dance To the Moon and Sirius!


Written by Delmore Schwartz | Create an image from this poem

A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir

 Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
Foolish Follies.
They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness Of their youth and beauty In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of awareness Heightened, intensified and softened By the soft and the silk of the waters Blooded made ready by the energy set afire by the nakedness of the body, Electrified: deified: undenied.
A young man of thirty years beholds them from a distance.
He lives in the dungeon of ten million dollars.
He is rich, handsome and empty standing behind the linen curtains Beholding them.
Which girl does he think most desirable, most beautiful? They are all equally beautiful and desirable from the gold distance.
For if poverty darkens discrimination and makes perception too vivid, The gold of wealth is also a form of blindness.
For has not a Frenchman said, Although this is America.
.
.
What he has said is not entirely relevant, That a naked woman is a proof of the existence of God.
Where is he going? Is he going to be among them to splash and to laugh with them? They did not see him although he saw them and was there among them.
He saw them as he would not have seen them had they been conscious Of him or conscious of men in complete depravation: This is his enchantment and impoverishment As he possesses them in gaze only.
.
.
.
He felt the wood secrecy, he knew the June softness The warmth surrounding him crackled Held in by the mansard roof mansion He glimpsed the shadowy light on last year's brittle leaves fallen, Looked over and overlooked, glimpsed by the fall of death, Winter's mourning and the May's renewal.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

Each And All

 Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent:
All are needed by each one,
Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home in his nest at even;— He sings the song, but it pleases not now; For I did not bring home the river and sky; He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave; And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me; I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white quire; At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage,— The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet Truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,— I leave it behind with the games of youth.
" As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground; Above me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird;— Beauty through my senses stole, I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

Each and All

 Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The wexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the lader bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and the sky; - He sang to my ear, - they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the Bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty at the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid, As 'mid the virgin train she stayed, Nor knew her beauty's best attire Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage, Like the bird from the woodlandsto the cage; - The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth:" - As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burrs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird; - Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
Written by Walter de la Mare | Create an image from this poem

A Song of Enchantment

 A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green-green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree.
Widdershins turned I, singing it low, Watching the wild birds come and go; No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen Under the thick-thatched branches green.
Twilight came: silence came: The planet of Evening's silver flame; By darkening paths I wandered through Thickets trembling with drops of dew.
But the music is lost and the words are gone Of the song I sang as I sat alone, Ages and ages have fallen on me - On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.
Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley | Create an image from this poem

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepair'd, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight.
I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows; and yet more Than all, with a remember'd friend I love To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove The living spray along the sunny air Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north; And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth Harmonizing with solitude, and sent Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
So, as we rode, we talk'd; and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not, But flew from brain to brain--such glee was ours, Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours, None slow enough for sadness: till we came Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn The thoughts it would extinguish: 'twas forlorn, Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, The devils held within the dales of Hell Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, All that vain men imagine or believe, Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, We descanted, and I (for ever still Is it not wise to make the best of ill?) Argu'd against despondency, but pride Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paus'd ere it should alight, Over the horizon of the mountains--Oh, How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy! Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers Of cities they encircle! It was ours To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men Were waiting for us with the gondola.
As those who pause on some delightful way Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood Which lay between the city and the shore, Pav'd with the image of the sky.
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The hoar And aëry Alps towards the North appear'd Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd Between the East and West; and half the sky Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep West into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent Among the many-folded hills: they were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles, The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles-- And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been Dissolv'd into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering as from waves of flame Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent.
"Ere it fade," Said my companion, "I will show you soon A better station"--so, o'er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven.
I was about to speak, when--"We are even Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
"Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.
" I look'd, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island; such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, A windowless, deform'd and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance sway'd and swung; We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue: The broad sun sunk behind it, and it toll'd In strong and black relief.
"What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour Those who may cross the water, hear that bell Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, To vespers.
" "As much skill as need to pray In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they To their stern Maker," I replied.
"O ho! You talk as in years past," said Maddalo.
" 'Tis strange men change not.
You were ever still Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim Beware of Providence.
" I look'd on him, But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
"And such," he cried, "is our mortality, And this must be the emblem and the sign Of what should be eternal and divine! And like that black and dreary bell, the soul, Hung in a heaven-illumin'd tower, must toll Our thoughts and our desires to meet below Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do For what? they know not--till the night of death, As sunset that strange vision, severeth Our memory from itself, and us from all We sought and yet were baffled.
" I recall The sense of what he said, although I mar The force of his expressions.
The broad star Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill, And the black bell became invisible, And the red tower look'd gray, and all between The churches, ships and palaces were seen Huddled in gloom;--into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola Convey'd me to my lodgings by the way.
The following morn was rainy, cold and dim: Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him, And whilst I waited with his child I play'd; A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made, A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being, Graceful without design and unforeseeing, With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam With such deep meaning, as we never see But in the human countenance: with me She was a special favourite: I had nurs'd Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first To this bleak world; and she yet seem'd to know On second sight her ancient playfellow, Less chang'd than she was by six months or so; For after her first shyness was worn out We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, When the Count enter'd.
Salutations past-- "The word you spoke last night might well have cast A darkness on my spirit--if man be The passive thing you say, I should not see Much harm in the religions and old saws (Though I may never own such leaden laws) Which break a teachless nature to the yoke: Mine is another faith"--thus much I spoke And noting he replied not, added: "See This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free; She spends a happy time with little care, While we to such sick thoughts subjected are As came on you last night.
It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise.
We might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek But in our mind? and if we were not weak Should we be less in deed than in desire?" "Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire How vainly to be strong!" said Maddalo: "You talk Utopia.
" "It remains to know," I then rejoin'd, "and those who try may find How strong the chains are which our spirit bind; Brittle perchance as straw.
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We are assur'd Much may be conquer'd, much may be endur'd, Of what degrades and crushes us.
We know That we have power over ourselves to do And suffer--what, we know not till we try; But something nobler than to live and die: So taught those kings of old philosophy Who reign'd, before Religion made men blind; And those who suffer with their suffering kind Yet feel their faith, religion.
" "My dear friend," Said Maddalo, "my judgement will not bend To your opinion, though I think you might Make such a system refutation-tight As far as words go.
I knew one like you Who to this city came some months ago, With whom I argu'd in this sort, and he Is now gone mad--and so he answer'd me-- Poor fellow! but if you would like to go We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show How vain are such aspiring theories.
" "I hope to prove the induction otherwise, And that a want of that true theory, still, Which seeks a 'soul of goodness' in things ill Or in himself or others, has thus bow'd His being.
There are some by nature proud, Who patient in all else demand but this-- To love and be belov'd with gentleness; And being scorn'd, what wonder if they die Some living death? this is not destiny But man's own wilful ill.
" As thus I spoke Servants announc'd the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things