Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Heath’s Book of Beauty, 1833/Meditation
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MEDITATION
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MEDITATION.
A sweet and melancholy face, that seems
Haunted with earnest thought; the dark midnight
Has given its raven softness to her hair;
And evening, starry eve, half clouds, half light,
Is in the shadowy beauty of her eyes.
How quietly has Night come down,
Quiet as the sweet sleep she yields!
A purple shadow marks yon town,
A silvery hue the moonlit fields;
And one or two white turrets rise
Glittering beneath the highest ray—
As conscious of the distant skies,
To which they teach and point the way.
The river in the lustre gleams,
Where hang the blossomed shrubs above—
The flushed and drooping rose, whose dreams
Must be of summer and of love.
The pale acacia's fragrant bough
Is heavy with its weight of dew;
And every flower and leaf have now
A sweeter sigh, a deeper hue.
There breathes no song, there stirs no wing—
Mute is the bird, and still the bee;
Only the wind is wandering—
Wild Wind, is there no rest for thee?
Oh, wanderer over many flowers,
Have none of them for thee repose?
Go sleep amid the lime-tree bowers,
Go rest by yon white gelder-rose.
What! restless still? methinks thou art
Fated for aye to bear along
The beating of the poet's heart,
The sorrow of the poet's song.
Or has thy voice before been heard,
The language of another sphere,
And every tone is but a word
Mournful, because forgotten here?
Some memory, or some sympathy,
Is surely in thy murmur brought:
Ah, all in vain the search must be,
To pierce these mysteries of thought!
They say that, hung in ancient halls,
At midnight from the silent lute
A melancholy music falls
From chords which were by daylight mute.
And so the human heart by night
Is touched by some inspired tone,
Harmonious in the deep delight,
By day it knew not was its own.
Those stars upon the clear blue heaven—
Those stars we never see by day—
Have in their hour of beauty given
A deeper influence to their sway—
Felt on the mind and on the soul—
For is it not in such an hour
The spirit spurns the clay's control,
And genius knows its glorious power?—
All that the head may e'er command,
All that the heart can ever feel,
The tuneful lip, the gifted hand,
Such hours inspire, such hours reveal.
The morrow comes with noise and toil,
The meaner cares, the hurried crowd,
The culture of the barren soil,
And gain the only wish avowed:
The loftier vision is gone by—
The hope which then in light had birth,
The flushing cheek, the kindling eye,
Are with the common things of earth.
Yet all their influence is not gone:
Perchance in that creative time
Some high attraction first was known,
Some aim and energy sublime.
In such an hour doth sculptor know
What shapes within the marble sleep;
His Sun-god lifts the radiant bow,
His Venus rises from the deep.
And imaged on the azure air
The painter marks his shadows rise—
A face than mortal face more fair,
And colours which are of the skies.
The hero sees the field his own,
The banners sweep o'er glittering spears,
And in the purple and the throne
Forgets their cost of blood and tears.
And he who gave to Europe's sight
Her sister world, till then unseen,
How long to his inspired night
Familiar must that world have been!
All Genius ever yet combined,
In its first hour could only seem,
And rose embodied in the mind
From some imaginative dream.
O beauty of the midnight skies!
O mystery of each distant star!
O dreaming hours, whose magic lies
In rest and calm, with Day afar!
Thanks for the higher moods that wake
Our thoughtful and immortal part!—
Out on our life, could we not make
A spiritual temple of the heart!