THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.A Poem. BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. "Magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas." --KEATS. PHILADELPHIA:PARRY & McMILLAN, SUCCESSORS TO A. HART, LATE CAREY & HART.1855. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page verso Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by PARRY & McMILLAN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND CO. PHILADELPHIA PRINTED BY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [5] He told a tale as wild as sad; And they who listened deemed it mad-- Mad as the delirious dream Of one who, on an Indian stream Floating in a Morphean bark, Feeds on the charméd lotus leaf-- While under the palms, in visions brief, Through shadows of sunset, golden-dark, The camels and camelopards stand With pluméd tribes on the yellow sand, To gaze with steadfast, wondering eyes Where the feeding dreamer floating lies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [7] TO HIRAM POWERS, AS AN EVIDENCE OF FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION, THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. Bagni di Lucca, Sept. 1st, 1855. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [9] Table of Contents Part First [11] Part Second [89] THE House by the Sea IN TWO PARTS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [10] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [11] Part First. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page [12] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 13 I. ON a little, seaward-sloping lawn, The first bright half-hour after dawn-- With golden hair and cheeks as red As the hue in the brightening orient spread, The child and the light of the fisherman's home, Bearing a pail that dript its foam Like snowflakes on the wayside grass, Went singing as if her soul would pass Into the air, and o'ertake that bird Which sang in the sky less seen than heard. Her path was along the sweetbrier lane, Dividing the sea from the clover plain: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 14 Below the billows inland bore, And threw their foam-wreaths on the shore: Above, the orchards, lightly blown, Scattered their snowy garlands down, As if the very trees would spread A pure white path for her virgin tread. She plucked a violet from the hedge, And then a flower from the perilous edge Of a cliff where foamed the sea's white ire,-- And now a bloom from the wayside brier; Then placed them in her russet vest, To sway to the heaving of her breast. Descending the steep of the seaside rocks, In pathways worn by the shepherd's flocks, She saw the Stranger, whose cliff-perched home Stood higher than ever the wild sea-foam Could leap; and only the gust of spray, Seeking the cloud, passed up that way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 15 It might be a moon of dawns, perchance, Since first the stranger met her glance, And never at any later time Than the crimson flush of the morning's prime, With the latest star he walked the shore, And when that failed was seen no more. They grew acquainted--yet did not speak: There was a sadness on his cheek His smile made sadder; and his look Seemed to reflect some parchment book Writ in a cave by a wizard gray To spirit both body and soul away. Her heart's deep instinct read in his eye How he had sought that height to die; And, as one bears flowers of sweetest bloom To brighten a sick man's twilight room, When now they met, with resistless grace She stood before him--scarce looked in his face, Tendered the blossoms, then quickened her pace. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 16 He pressed them to his lips, and then Strolled round to his cloudy home again. He climbed to his gusty balcony, That overbrowed the eastern sea: Like a spirit in a dusky cloud, O'erleaning the world in wonder bowed, Pale Roland leaned, and gazed below Into the gulfs -- until on the flow Of the billows his fancies seemed to go: And thus to the air and the spirits of air, Those delicate listeners everywhere, He winged his thoughts with careless words, Till they sailed the ocean like sea-born birds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 17 II. "My house is built on the cliff's tall crest, As high as an eagle might choose her nest: The builders have descended the hill, Like spirits who have done their master's will. Below, the billows in endless reach Commune in uncomprehended speech-- A language still--there is no sound But symbols something though unfound. "Here from the world I can safely lean And feel, if not hear, what the billows mean; And dropping this flower, I can watch it sway Till it diminishes into the spray. The little alien from its hillside home Is clasped and whirled in the heartless foam! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 18 Oh, reckless hand! it was the flower The peasant-girl gave me this very hour! Well, it is gone--so let it be: Not Indus could restore to me, With all its dew and odour fine, Fresh and free from the bitter brine, That victim of a heedless hand! But it must be fretted along the sand Till drowned and crushed, a noisome thing At last, where the foulest seaweeds cling! "Thus with the maid it may be, perchance, Borne away from her vernal haunts To make some heartless breast look bright, Then carried to some dizzy height And dropt from a hand relentlessly Into the gulfs of a pitiless sea-- Into the tumultuous fret and foam To perish--an alien far from home! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 19 "Here I stand, like a Persian priest, Gazing forever into the east, And bow my head before the sun, The symbol of a mightier One. "Beheld from here, with march unending, By night and by day the sky is ascending; This is the vision of youth--the scope Where rises the golden scale of Hope,-- When the heart in its freshness stout and hale Reeks not of the opposing scale, Which, though unseen in the future air, Sinks and sinks with its weight of despair. "Nothing sets save yonder sail Chased away by an outward gale, And every hour to my straining gaze Some new bark issues through the haze,-- Fresh perchance from the Orient, Its sails with spicy breezes bent, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 20 Like that barge on the Cydnus seen Laden with odours that veiled a queen. It comes from what mysterious land? With freight of Bagdat or Samarcand? From under the guns of Arabian forts, Or out of Al-Raschid's golden ports? From India, or the barbarous isles Where the Pacific summer smiles? I envy the sea-bird sailing there In the trackless ocean of blue air; It can see and it can hear What may never meet my eye or ear. "I look to the east--all things ascend, And with them the eye and the heart must tend,-- Only the heavy earth opprest, Turning forever out of the west, Rolls down and down: the fancy feels The sinking, and the spirit reels! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 21 What was the east an hour ago Even while I gaze is no longer so-- I am plunging now through its azure veil, While another rises dim and pale, And this must shortly sink afar To hold in the west the evening-star. "Here clinging we are daily cast Into the future, out of the past-- Through the sunshine into the night,-- Through the darkness into the light. Thus we whirl in the noiseless stream, And the sky glides over us like a dream, Full of stars and mystery And prophecy of things to be. "This very moment we hold a place Never filled before in space-- Where never again the world shall reel-- The same wave never revisits the wheel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 22 Year by year our course is run In a voyage around the sun; In million circlings forth and back We never retrace a once gone track. Did the countless earths abroad, like snails, Leave behind them shining trails, What a web of strange design Through the eternal space would shine! And such a web of marvellous lines Left by each satellite and sun, Though by us unseen, still clearly shines To the observant eye of One. "And did the countless souls of men Leave life-trails visible to the ken, Each hued with colour to betray The character which passed that way, How intricate and variously hued Would seem the woof of pathways rude -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 23 Across the world's great surface laid! And so inwoven with lines of shade, Of vice and cruelty, anger and hate, That darkness would preponderate! And such a woof of tangled trails Lies o'er the world and never pales-- Never varies. On earth's great page Each soul records its pilgrimage, And under the eye of God each shines As visible in eternal lines, As on the cliff I see from here The various strata lines appear. "Thank Heaven! my path shall no longer run With the common highways under the sun! From the ways of men it shall lie apart, On a new and a separate chart; No other foot shall e'er intrude In my skiey holds of solitude. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 24 Henceforth alone I walk afar In the dream which death shall scarcely mar, Far above the obtrusive ken And idle inquiry of men. Already I can here rehearse The higher life of the universe, Commune with those spirits whose white tents Are never stirred by these elements, Camped on the dim ethereal fields With meteor banners and starry shields! "Henceforth my sole companion shall be My sorrow embodied; and, hermit-like, we Will renounce the world and rest at ease, Content with our own sweet sympathies. Tell me no more of that larger plan, The charity for and the faith in man: I have tried it well, and ever found The seven sins filling its utmost bound! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 25 And they who live in the world must be One with the world, or content to see Their dearest rights and their holiest trust With heels of steel trampled into the dust! All this I have suffered, and scarcely restrained At times the revenge whose swift blow would have gained The bad world's respect, and left me exempt A little from all save my soul's self-contempt. I was as a weed that is chafed on the beach; But, Heaven be praised! being thrown out of reach, I have taken firm root in the cliff, where no more The billows affright with their roll and their roar. I have tasted the best which the world can bestow, But friendship turned bitter--love ended in wo! "In the school of envy, and malice, and strife, I have studied and learned the lesson of life; Studied it well from that dreary hour When the dark-hearted Fates had power, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 26 Ministering at my birth--who threw Upon my brow their black baptismal dew! From that sad night what time my spirit's bark, Sailing over the sea of space, In a moment ominous and dark, Was stranded on this desert place,-- This treacherous reef of time, This rank and poisonous clime Called earth, where savage men In hut or palace make their hateful den,-- I have known little peace and less of joy! And even when a pleasure-seeking boy, Unlovely faces with distempered tongue Were my attendants, and they ever hung Inseparably about me, like the shades From a baleful torchlight flung, Which the torch-bearer not evades Until the light be drenched, And in the oblivious sea of death and darkness quenched. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 27 And I have borne this torch-- This flickering life--and still must bear, Watching it flaunt and flare, Where all my hopes, like night-moths, fly and scorch Their airy pinions, till their writhing forms Drop round my feet a mass of wingless worms! "But, lo! the tempest of the world is past! Its passion-bolts are no longer cast About me, and I feel as one Who stands to gaze when life is done! Even the peasant with her bright blue eye Seemed but the remnant of a cloud gone by; Or rather let me deem her form The farewell rainbow of the storm. I am glad that in leaving this gallery Of horrors that have frowned on me, A living thing so pure and bright Should have closed the hateful place from sight. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 28 "How sweet it is to find release In this aerial tower of peace! In this antechamber of the sky Next to the halls of eternity-- With only one thin door between This and the outer world serene, Waiting to take that one step more When opens the celestial door, And then, with the sudden splendour blind, Hear the great portals close behind!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 29 III. 'TWAS evening, and he mounted high Up to the terrace that faced the sky. The fisherman, in his boat below Swinging to the billows' flow, Beheld him like a guard of old On a dusky tower--a shadow bold Standing against the sundown gold. There Roland watched the dome of day In a conflagration fall away, And saw the first white star that sped To gaze at the sunset ere it fled. Westward he saw the spires and domes Overtopping the noisy homes Of toil and trade, but all so far He felt no tremor of the jar -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 30 That like a daily earthquake rolls Through the world of dust-bound souls. Out of the east the moon arose Red as Mont Blanc at morning glows; Over the sea, like a ship on fire, She sailed with her one star sailing by her. Long, long he gazed, till he felt the might And glory that pervade the night. Awhile he looked upon the seas, Then gazed to the shadowy orchard trees, And saw the fisherman's quiet home Sitting under the vernal dome Of one great elm, where the fireflies played With their feast of lanterns nightly made. He saw the various shadows pass Over the illumined glass,-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 31 Saw tapers, moving to and fro, From window to window come and go, Like those lights which phantom hands Wave at night o'er marshy lands,-- Saw the maid at her casement lean, And her shade steal into the night serene. "Thus from the casements of life," he mused, "Our shadows are outward cast, confused Into a greater shade. What eye Shall trace these phantoms where they fly? None:--And it much behooves us all That the lights from whence these shadows fall Should be guarded well and trimmed with care, That the flame shall neither sink nor flare, Protected from the fitful gusts Blown from the lips of Caliban lusts." Here and there a meteor fleet Struck from the invisible feet