Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DISENCHANTMENT, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DISENCHANTMENT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Although from adam stained with crime
Last Line: The heart is disenchanted.
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Deception; Hallucinations And Illusions; Love; Reality


I.

ALTHOUGH from Adam stained with crime,
A halo girds the path of time,
As 'twere things humble with sublime,
Divine with mortal blending,
And that which is, with that which seems—
Till blazoned o'er were Jacob's dreams
With Heaven's angelic hosts, in streams
Descending and ascending.

II.

Ask of the clouds, why Eden's dyes
Have vanished from the sunset skies?
Ask of the winds, why harmonies
Now breathe not in their voices?
Ask of the spring, why from the bloom
Of lilies comes a less perfume?
And why the linnet, 'mid the broom,
Less lustily rejoices?

III.

Silent are now the sylvan tents;
The elves to airy elements
Resolved are gone; grim castled rents
No more show demons gazing,
With evil eyes, on wandering men;
And, where the dragon had his den
Of fire, within the haunted glen,
Now herds unharmed are grazing.

IV.

No more, as horror stirs the trees,
The path-belated peasant sees
Witches adown the sleety breeze,
To Lapland flats careering:
As on through storms the Sea-kings sweep,
No more the Kraken huge, asleep,
Looms like an island, 'mid the deep,
Rising and disappearing.

V.

No more, reclined by Cona's streams,
Before the seer, in waking dreams,
The dim funereal pageant gleams,
Futurity fore-showing;
No more, released from churchyard trance,
Athwart blue midnight spectres glance,
Or mingle in the bridal dance,
To vanish ere cock-crowing.

VI.

Alas! that Fancy's fount should cease!
In rose-hues limn'd, the myths of Greece
Have waned to dreams—the Colchian fleece,
And labours of Alcides:
Nay, Homer, even thy mighty line—
Thy living tale of Troy divine—
The sceptic scholiast doubts if thine,
Or Priam, or Pelides!

VII.

As silence listens to the lark,
And orient beams disperse the dark,
How sweet to roam abroad, and mark
Their gold the fields adorning!
But when we think of where are they,
Whose bosoms like our own were gay,
While April gladdened life's young day,
Joy takes the garb of mourning.

VIII.

Warm-gushing through the heart come back
The thoughts that brightened boyhood's track;
And hopes, as 'twere from midnight black,
All star-like reawaken;
Until we feel how, one by one,
The faces of the loved are gone,
And grieve for those left here alone,
Not those who have been taken.

IX.

The past returns in all we see,
The billowy cloud and branching tree;
In all we hear—the bird and bee
Remind of pleasures cherish'd;
When all is lost it loved the best,
Oh! pity on that vacant breast,
Which would not rather be at rest
Than pine amid the perish'd!

X.

A balmy eve! the round white moon
Imparadises midmost June,
Tune trills the nightingale on tune—
What magic! when a lover,
To him who, now grey-haired and lone,
Bends o'er the sad sepulchral stone
Of her, whose heart was once his own:
Ah! bright dream briefly over!

XI.

See how from port the vessel glides
With streamered masts, o'er halcyon tides;
Its laggard course the sea-boy chides,
All loth that calms should bind him;
But distance only chains him more,
With love-links, to his native shore,
And sleep's best dream is to restore
The home he left behind him.

XII.

To sanguine youth's enraptured eye
Heaven has its reflex in the sky,
The winds themselves have melody,
Like harp some seraph sweepeth;
A silver decks the hawthorn bloom,
A legend shrines the mossy tomb,
And spirits throng the starry gloom,
Her reign when midnight keepeth.

XIII.

Silence o'erhangs the Delphic cave;
Where strove the bravest of the brave,
Naught met the wandering Byron, save
A lone deserted barrow;
And Fancy's iris waned away
When Wordsworth ventured to survey,
Beneath the light of common day,
The dowie dens of Yarrow.

XIV.

Little we dream—when life is new,
And Nature fresh and fair to view,
When throbs the heart to pleasure true,
As if for naught it wanted—
That year by year, and ray by ray,
Romance's sunlight dies away,
And long before the hair is grey,
The heart is disenchanted.





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