And Now In Accents Deep And Low

from The Sylphs of the Seasons

AND now, in accents deep and low,

Like voice of fondly-cherish'd woe,

The Sylph of Autumn sad:

Though I may not of raptures sing,

That grac'd the gentle song of Spring,

Like Summer, playful pleasures bring,

Thy youthful heart to glad;

Yet still may I in hope aspire

Thy heart to touch with chaster fire,

And purifying love:

For I with vision high and holy,

And spell of quick'ning melancholy,

Thy soul from sublunary folly

First rais'd to worlds above.

What though be mine the treasures fair

Of purple grape and yellow pear,

And fruits of various hue,

And harvests rich of golden grain,

That dance in waves along the plain

To merry song of reaping swain,

Beneath the welkin blue;

With these I may not urge my suit,

Of Summer's patient toil the fruit,

For mortal purpose given:

Nor may it fit my sober mood

To sing of sweetly murmuring flood,

Or dies of many-colour'd wood,

That mock the bow of heaven.

But, know, 'twas mine the secret power

That wak'd thee at the midnight hour,

In bleak November's reign:

'Twas I the spell around thee cast,

When thou didst hear the hollow blast

In murmurs tell of pleasures past,

That ne'er would come again:

And led thee, when the storm was o'er,

To hear the sullen ocean roar,

By dreadful calm opprest;

Which still, though not a breeze was there,

Its mountain-billows heav'd in air,

As if a living thing it were,

That strove in vain for rest.

'Twas I, when thou, subdued by woe,

Didst watch the leaves descending slow,

To each a moral gave;

And as they mov'd in mournful train,

With rustling sound, along the plain,

Taught them to sing a seraph's strain

Of peace within the grave.

And then uprais'd thy streaming eye,

I met thee in the western sky

In pomp of evening cloud;

That, while with varying form it roll'd,

Some wizard's castle seem'd of gold,

And now a crimson'd knight of old,

Or king in purple proud.

And last, as sunk the setting sun,

And Evening with her shadows dun,

The gorgeous pageant past,

'Twas then of life a mimic shew,

Of human grandeur here below,

Which thus beneath the fatal blow

Of Death must fall at last.

Oh, then with what aspiring gaze

Didst thou thy tranced vision raise

To yonder orbs on high,

And think how wondrous, how sublime

'Twere upwards to their spheres to climb,

And live, beyond the reach of Time,

Child of Eternity!

And last the Sylph of Winter spake;

The while her piercing voice did shake

The castle-vaults below.

Oh, youth, if thou, with soul refin'd,

Hast felt the triumph pure of mind,

And learnt a secret joy to find

In deepest scenes of woe;

If e'er with fearful ear at eve

Hast heard the wailing tempest grieve

Through chink of shatter'd wall;

The while it conjur'd o'er thy brain

Of wandering ghosts a mournful train,

That low in fitful sobs complain,

Of Death's untimely call:

Or feeling, as the storm increas'd,

The love of terror nerve thy breast,

Didst venture to the coast;

To see the mighty war-ship leap

From wave to wave upon the deep,

Like chamoise goat from steep to steep,

'Till low in valleys lost;

Then, glancing to the angry sky,

Behold the clouds with fury fly

The lurid moon athwart;

Like armies huge in battle, throng,

And pour in vollying ranks along,

While piping winds in martial song

To rushing war exhort:

Oh, then to me thy heart be given,

To me, ordain'd by Him in heaven

Thy nobler powers to wake.

And oh! if thou with poet's soul,

High brooding o'er the frozen pole,

Hast felt beneath my stern control

The desert region quake;

Or from old Hecla's cloudy height,

When o'er the dismal, half-year's night

He pours his sulph'rous breath,

Hast known my petrifying wind

Wild ocean's curling billows bind,

Like bending sheaves by harvest hind,

Erect in icy death;

Or heard adown the mountain's steep

The northern blast with furious sweep

Some cliff dissever'd dash;

And seen it spring with dreadful bound

From rock to rock, to gulph profound,

While echoes fierce from caves resound

The never-ending crash:

If thus, with terror's mighty spell

Thy soul inspir'd, was wont to swell,

Thy heaving frame expand;

Oh, then to me thy heart incline;

For know, the wondrous charm was mine

That fear and joy did thus combine

In magick union bland.

Nor think confin'd my native sphere

To horrors gaunt, or ghastly fear,

Or desolation wild:

For I of pleasures fair could sing,

That steal from life its sharpest sting,

And man have made around it cling,

Like mother to her child.

When thou, beneath the clear blue sky,

So calm no cloud was seen to fly,

Hast gaz'd on snowy plain,

Where Nature slept so pure and sweet,

She seem'd a corse in winding-sheet,

Whose happy soul had gone to meet

The blest Angelic train;

Or mark'd the sun's declining ray

In thousand varying colours play

O'er ice-incrusted heath,

In gleams of orange now, and green,

And now in red and azure sheen,

Like hues on dying dolphins seen,

Most lovely when in death;

Or seen at dawn of eastern light

The frosty toil of Fays by night

On pane of casement clear,

Where bright the mimic glaciers shine,

And Alps, with many a mountain pine,

And armed knights from Palestine

In winding march appear:

'Twas I on each enchanting scene

The charm bestow'd that banish'd spleen

Thy bosom pure and light.

But still a nobler power I claim;

That power allied to poets' fame,

Which language vain has dar'd to name-

The soul's creative might.

Though Autumn grave, and Summer fair,

And joyous Spring demand a share

Of Fancy's hallow'd power,

Yet these I hold of humbler kind,

To grosser means of earth confin'd,

Through mortal sense to reach the mind,

By mountain, stream, or flower.

But mine, of purer nature still,

Is that which to thy secret will

Did minister unseen,

Unfelt, unheard; when every sense

Did sleep in drowsy indolence,

And Silence deep and Night intense

Enshrowded every scene;

That o'er thy teeming brain did raise

The spirits of departed days

Through all the varying year;

And images of things remote,

And sounds that long had ceas'd to float,

With every hue, and every note,

As living now they were:

And taught thee from the motley mass

Each harmonizing part to class,

(Like Nature's self employ'd;)

And then, as work'd thy wayward will,

From these with rare combining skill,

With new-created worlds to fill

Of space the mighty void.

Oh then to me thy heart incline;

To me whose plastick powers combine

The harvest of the mind;

To me, whose magic coffers bear

The spoils of all the toiling year,

That still in mental vision wear

A lustre more refin'd.

She ceas'd-And now in doubtful mood,

All motionless and mute I stood,

Like one by charm opprest:

By turns from each to each I rov'd,

And each by turns again I lov'd;

For ages ne'er could one have prov'd

More lovely than the rest.

"Oh blessed band, of birth divine,

What mortal task is like to mine!"-

And further had I spoke,

When, lo! there pour'd a flood of light

So fiercely on my aching sight,

I fell beneath the vision bright,

And with the pain I woke.

Washington Allston

On Rembrant

Occasioned by His Picture of Jacob's Dream

AS in that twilight, superstitious age

When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind

Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind,

When e'en the learned philosophic sage,

Wont with the stars thro' boundless space to range,

Listen'd with rev'rence to the changeling's tale;

E'en so, thou strangest of all beings strange!

E'en so thy visionary scenes I hail;

That like the ramblings of an idiot's speech,

No image giving of a thing on earth,

Nor thought significant in Reason's reach,

Yet in their random shadowings give birth

To thoughts and things from other worlds that come,

And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb.

Washington Allston

Boyhood

AH, then how sweetly closed those crowded days!

The minutes parting one by one like rays,

That fade upon a summer's eve.

But O, what charm or magic numbers

Can give me back the gentle slumbers

Those weary, happy days did leave?

When by my bed I saw my mother kneel,

And with her blessing took her nightly kiss;

Whatever Time destroys, he cannot this;--

E'en now that nameless kiss I feel.

Washington Allston