Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: MACROMICROS, by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: It is the star of solitude Last Line: The sea-nymphs wander and weep. Alternate Author Name(s): Meredith, Owen; Lytton, 1st Earl Of; Lytton, Robert Subject(s): Netherlands; Travel; Holland; Dutch People; Journeys; Trips | ||||||||
IT is the star of solitude, Alight in yon lonely sky. The sea is silent in its mood, Motherlike moaning a lullaby, To hush the hungering mystery To sleep on its breast subdued. The night is alone, and I. It is not the scene I am seeing, The lonely sky and the sea, It is the pathos of Being That is making so dark in me This silent and solemn hour: -- The bale of baffled power, The wail of unbaffled desire, The fire that must ever devour The source by which it is fire. My spirit expands, expands! I spread out my soul on the sea. I feel for yet unfound lands, And I find but the land where She Sits, with her sad white hands, At her golden broidery, In sight of the sorrowful sands, In an antique gallery, Where, ever beside her, stands (Moodily mimicking me) The ghost of a something her heart demands For a blessing which cannot be. And broider, broider by night and day The brede of thy blazing broidery! Till thy beauty be wholly woven away Into the desolate tapestry. Let the thread be scarlet, the gold be gay, For the damp to dim, and the moth to fray: Weave in the azure, and crimson, and green! Till the slow threads, needling out and in, To take a fashion and form begin: Yet, for all the time and toil, I see The work is vain, and will not be Like what it was meant to have been. O woman, woman, with face so pale! Pale woman, weaving away A frustrate life at a lifeless loom, Early or late, 't is of little avail That thou lightest the lamp in the gloom. Full well, I see, there is coming a day When the work shall forever rest incomplete. Fling, fling the foolish blazon away, And weave me a winding-sheet! It is not for thee, in this dreary hour, That I walk, companionless here by the shore. I am caught in the eddy and whirl of a power Which is not grief, and is not love, Though it loves, and grieves, Within me, without me, wherever I move In the going out of the ghostly eves, And is changing me more and more. I am not mourning for thee, although I love thee, and thou art lost: Nor yet for myself, albeit I know That my life is flawed and crost: But for that sightless, sorrowing Soul That is feeling, blind with immortal pain, All round, for what it can never attain; That prisoned, pining, and passionate soul, So vast, and yet so small; That seems, now nothing, now all, That moves me to pity beyond control, And repulses pity again. I am mourning, since mourn I must, With those patient Powers that bear, 'Neath the unattainable stars up there, With the pomp and pall of funeral, Subject and yet august, The weight of this world's dust: -- The ruined giant under the rock: The stricken spirit below the ocean: And the winged things wounded of old by the shock That set the earth in motion. Ah yet, ... and yet, and yet, If She were here with me, If she were here by the sea, With the face I cannot forget, Then all things would not be So fraught with my own regret, But what I should feel and see, And seize it at last, at last, -- The secret known and lost in the past, To unseal the Genii that sleep In vials long hid in the deep; By forgotten, fashionless spells held fast, Where through streets of the cities of coral, aghast, The sea-nymphs wander and weep. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING THE LAST WISH by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: AUX ITALIENS by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: THE CHESSBOARD by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |
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