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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ave! (An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I <br> O tranquil meadows, grassy Tantramar, <br> Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air, <br> Whether beneath the sole and spectral star <br> The dear severity of dawn you wear, <br> Or whether in the joy of ample day <br> And speechless ecstasy of growing June <br> You lie and dream the long blue hours away <br> Till nightfall comes too soon, <br> Or whether, naked to the unstarred night, <br> You strike with wondering awe my inward sight, --<br>II </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You know how I have loved you, how my dreams <br> Go forth to you with longing, though the years <br> That turn not back like your returning streams <br> And fain would mist the memory with tears, <br> Though the inexorable years deny <br> My feet the fellowship of your deep grass, <br> O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky, <br> Cloud phantoms drift and pass, --<br> You know my confident love, since first, a child, <br> Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild.<br>III </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Inconstant, eager, curious, I roamed; <br> And ever your long reaches lured me on; <br> And ever o'er my feet your grasses foamed, <br> And in my eyes your far horizons shone. <br> But sometimes would you (as a stillness fell <br> And on my pulse you laid a soothing palm) <br> Instruct my ears in your most secret spell; <br> And sometimes in the calm <br> Initiate my young and wondering eyes <br> Until my spirit grew more still and wise.<br>IV</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire <br> I entered fearless the most holy place, <br> Received between my lips the secret fire, <br> The breath of inspiration on my face. <br> But not for long these rare illumined hours, <br> The deep surprise and rapture not for long. <br> Again I saw the common, kindly flowers, <br> Again I heard the song <br> Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat <br> Peeled like a tangle of small bells afloat.<br>V </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The pounce of mottled marsh-hawk on his prey; <br> The flicker of sand-pipers in from sea <br> In gusty flocks that puffed and fled; the play <br> Of field-mice in the vetches, -- these to me <br> Were memorable events. But most availed <br> Your strange unquiet waters to engage <br> My kindred heart's companionship; nor failed <br> To grant this heritage, --<br> That in my veins forever must abide <br> The urge and fluctuation of the tide. <br>VI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The mystic river whence you take your name, <br> River of hubbub, raucous Tantramar, <br> Untamable and changeable as flame, <br> It called me and compelled me from afar, <br> Shaping my soul with its impetuous stress. <br> When in its gaping channel deeps withdrawn <br> Its waves ran crying of the wilderness <br> And winds and stars and dawn, <br> How I companioned them in speed sublime, <br> Led out a vagrant on the hills of Time! <br>VII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And when the orange flood came roaring in <br> From Fundy's tumbling troughs and tide-worn caves, <br> While red Minudie's flats were drowned with din <br> And rough Chignecto's front oppugned the waves, <br> How blithely with the refluent foam I raced <br> Inland along the radiant chasm, exploring <br> The green solemnity with boisterous haste; <br> My pulse of joy outpouring <br> To visit all the creeks that twist and shine <br> From Beauséjour to utmost Tormentine.<br>VIII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And after, when the tide was full, and stilled <br> A little while the seething and the hiss, <br> And every tributary channel filled <br> To the brim with rosy streams that swelled to kiss <br> The grass-roots all awash and goose-tongue wild <br> And salt-sap rosemary, -- then how well content <br> I was to rest me like a breathless child <br> With play-time rapture spent, --<br> To lapse and loiter till the change should come<br> And the great floods turn seaward, roaring home. <br>IX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And now, O tranquil marshes, in your vast <br> Serenity of vision and of dream, <br> Wherethrough by every intricate vein have passed <br> With joy impetuous and pain supreme <br> The sharp, fierce tides that chafe the shores of earth <br> In endless and controlless ebb and flow, <br> Strangely akin you seem to him whose birth <br> One hundred years ago <br> With fiery succour to the ranks of song <br> Defied the ancient gates of wrath and wrong. <br>X </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Like yours, O marshes, his compassionate breast, <br> Wherein abode all dreams of love and peace, <br> Was tortured with perpetual unrest. <br> Now loud with flood, now languid with release, <br> Now poignant with the lonely ebb, the strife <br> Of tides from the salt sea of human pain <br> That hiss along the perilous coasts of life <br> Beat in his eager brain; <br> But all about the tumult of his heart <br> Stretched the great calm of his celestial art. <br>XI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Therefore with no far flight, from Tantramar <br> And my still world of ecstasy, to thee, <br> Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar <br> Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire, and Liberty; <br> To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer <br> And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise, <br> Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear <br> The pure and sacred bays <br> I worship, and have worshipped since the hour <br> When first I felt thy bright and chainless power. <br>XII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> About thy sheltered cradle in the green <br> Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded forms <br> That to the mother's eye remained unseen, --<br> Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and storms <br> Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred <br> Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings, <br> And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred, <br> With lust of meaner things, <br> With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime <br> Dared in the face of unforgetful Time. <br>XIII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> The star that burns on revolution smote <br> Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere, <br> Whose influence thereafter seemed to float <br> Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear, <br> Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love. <br> But still supreme in thy nativity, <br> All dark, invidious aspects far above, <br> Beamed one clear orb for thee, -- <br> The star whose ministrations just and strong <br> Controlled the tireless flight of Dante's song. <br>XIV </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> With how august contrition, and what tears <br> Of penitential unavailing shame, <br> Thy venerable foster-mother hears <br> The sons of song impeach her ancient name, <br> Because in one rash hour of anger blind <br> She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet <br> Too soon to earth's wild outer ways consigned, -- <br> Far from her well-loved seat, <br> Far from her studious halls and storied towers <br> And weedy Isis winding through his flowers. <br>XV </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> And thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change, <br> Thine own Alastor, on an endless quest <br> Of unimagined loveliness didst range, <br> Urged ever by the soul's divine unrest. <br> Of that high quest and that unrest divine <br> Thy first immortal music thou didst make, <br> Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine,<br> And phantom seas that break <br> In soundless foam along the shores of Time, <br> Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme. <br>XVI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Thyself the lark melodious in mid-heaven; <br> Thyself the Protean shape of chainless cloud, <br> Pregnant with elemental fire, and driven <br> Through deeps of quivering light, and darkness loud <br> With tempest, yet beneficent as prayer; <br> Thyself the wild west wind, relentless strewing <br> The withered leaves of custom on the air, <br> And through the wreck pursuing <br> O'er lovelier Arnos, more imperial Romes, <br> Thy radiant visions to their viewless homes.<br>XVII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> And when thy mightiest creation thou <br> Wert fain to body forth, -- the dauntless form, <br> The all-enduring, all-forgiving brow <br> Of the great Titan, flinchless in the storm <br> Of pangs unspeakable and nameless hates, <br> Yet rent by all the wrongs and woes of men, <br> And triumphing in his pain, that so their fates <br> Might be assuaged, -- oh then <br> Out of that vast compassionate heart of thine <br> Thou wert constrained to shape the dream benign.<br>XVIII</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> -- O Baths of Caracalla, arches clad <br> In such transcendent rhapsodies of green <br> That one might guess the sprites of spring were glad <br> For your majestic ruin, yours the scene, <br> The illuminating air of sense and thought; <br> And yours the enchanted light, O skies of Rome, <br> Where the giant vision into form was wrought; <br> Beneath your blazing dome <br> The intensest song our language ever knew <br> Beat up exhaustless to the blinding blue! --<br>XIX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> The domes of Pisa and her towers superb, <br> The myrtles and the ilexes that sigh <br> O'er San Giuliano, where no jars disturb <br> The lonely aziola's evening cry, <br> The Serchio's sun-kissed waters, -- these conspired <br> With Plato's theme occult, with Dante's calm <br> Rapture of mystic love, and so inspired <br> Thy soul's espousal psalm, <br> A strain of such elect and pure intent <br> It breathes of a diviner element. <br>XX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Thou on whose lips the word of Love became <br> A rapt evangel to assuage all wrong, <br> Not Love alone, but the austerer name <br> Of Death engaged the splendours of thy song. <br> The luminous grief, the spacious consolation <br> Of thy supreme lament, that mourned for him <br> Too early haled to that still habitation <br> Beneath the grass-roots dim, -- <br> Where his faint limbs and pain-o'erwearied heart <br> Of all earth's loveliness became a part, <br>XXI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> But where, thou sayest, himself would not abide, -- <br> Thy solemn incommunicable joy <br> Announcing Adonais has not died, <br> Attesting death to free but not destroy, <br> All this was as thy swan-song mystical. <br> Even while the note serene was on thy tongue <br> Thin grew the veil of the Invisible, <br> The white sword nearer swung, -- <br> And in the sudden wisdom of thy rest <br> Thou knewest all thou hadst but dimly guessed.<br>XXII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Lament, Lerici, mourn for the world's loss! <br> Mourn that pure light of song extinct at noon! <br> Ye waves of Spezzia that shine and toss <br> Repent that sacred flame you quenched too soon! <br> Mourn, Mediterranean waters, mourn <br> In affluent purple down your golden shore! <br> Such strains as his, whose voice you stilled in scorn, <br> Our ears may greet no more, <br> Unless at last to that far sphere we climb <br> Where he completes the wonder of his rhyme!<br>XXIII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> How like a cloud she fled, thy fateful bark, <br> From eyes that watched to hearts that waited, till <br> Up from the ocean roared the tempest dark -- <br> And the wild heart Love waited for was still! <br> Hither and thither in the slow, soft tide, <br> Rolled seaward, shoreward, sands and wandering shells <br> And shifting weeds thy fellows, thou didst hide <br> Remote from all farewells, <br> Nor felt the sun, nor heard the fleeting rain, <br> Nor heeded Casa Magni's quenchless pain. <br>XXIV </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Thou heedest not? Nay, for it was not thou, <br> That blind, mute clay relinquished by the waves <br> Reluctantly at last, and slumbering now <br> In one of kind earth's most compassionate graves! <br> Not thou, not thou, -- for thou wert in the light <br> Of the Unspeakable, where time is not. <br> Thou sawest those tears; but in thy perfect sight <br> And thy eternal thought <br> Were they not even now all wiped away <br> In the reunion of the infinite day! <br>XXV </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> There face to face thou sawest the living God <br> And worshippedst, beholding Him the same <br> Adored on earth as Love, the same whose rod <br> Thou hadst endured as Life, whose secret name <br> Thou now didst learn, the healing name of Death. <br> In that unroutable profound of peace, <br> Beyond experience of pulse and breath, <br> Beyond the last release <br> Of longing, rose to greet thee all the lords <br> Of Thought, with consummation in their words: <br>XXVI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> He of the seven cities claimed, whose eyes, <br> Though blind, saw gods and heroes, and the fall <br> Of Ilium, and many alien skies, <br> And Circe's Isle; and he whom mortals call <br> The Thunderous, who sang the Titan bound <br> As thou the Titan victor; the benign <br> Spirit of Plato; Job; and Judah's crowned <br> Singer and seer divine; <br> Omar; the Tuscan; Milton, vast and strong; <br> And Shakespeare, captain of the host of Song. <br>XXVII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Back from the underworld of whelming change <br> To the wide-glittering beach thy body came; <br> And thou didst contemplate with wonder strange <br> And curious regard thy kindred flame, <br> Fed sweet with frankincense and wine and salt, <br> With fierce purgation search thee, soon resolving <br> Thee to the elements of the airy vault <br> And the far spheres revolving, <br> The common waters, the familiar woods, <br> And the great hills' inviolate solitudes. <br>XXVIII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> Thy close companions there officiated <br> With solemn mourning and with mindful tears, -- <br> The pained, imperious wanderer unmated <br> Who voiced the wrath of those rebellious years; <br> Trelawney, lion-limbed and high of heart; <br> And he, that gentlest sage and friend most true, <br> Whom Adonais loved. With these bore part <br> One grieving ghost, that flew <br> Hither and thither through the smoke unstirred <br> In wailing semblance of a wild white bird. <br>XXIX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> O heart of fire, that fire might not consume, <br> Forever glad the world because of thee; <br> Because of thee forever eyes illume <br> A more enchanted earth, a lovelier sea! <br> O poignant voice of the desire of life, <br> Piercing our lethargy, because thy call <br> Aroused our spirits to a nobler strife <br> Where base and sordid fall, <br> Forever past the conflict and the pain <br> More clearly beams the goal we shall attain! <br>XXX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> And now once more, O marshes, back to you <br> From whatsoever wanderings, near or far, <br> To you I turn with joy forever new, <br> To you, O sovereign vests of Tantramar! <br> Your tides are at the full. Your wizard flood, <br> With every tribute stream and brimming creek, <br> Ponders, possessor of the utmost good, <br> With no more left to seek, --<br> But the hour wanes and passes; and once more <br> Resounds the ebb with destiny in its roar.<br>XXXI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=519153" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br> So might some lord of men, whom force and fate <br> And his great heart's unvanquishable power <br> Have thrust with storm to his supreme estate, <br> Ascend by night his solitary tower <br> High o'er the city's lights and cries uplift. <br> Silent he ponders the scrolled heaven to read <br> And the keen stars' conflicting message sift, <br> Till the slow signs recede, <br> And ominously scarlet dawns afar <br> The day he leads his legions forth to war.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Sir+Charles+George+Douglas+Roberts">Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts</a></strong></div>