Not so in deserts where the grand —
The wild – the terrible conspire
With their own breath to fan his fire.
Look ‘round thee now on Samarcand! —
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand
Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling – her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne —
And who her sovereign? Timour – he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o’er empires haughtily
A diadem’d outlaw!
O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall’st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-wither’d plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav’st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth —
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.
When Hope, the eagle that tower’d, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly —
And homeward turn’d his soften’d eye.
’Twas sunset: when the sun will part
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon
The glory of the summer sun.
That soul will hate the ev’ning mist
So often lovely, and will list
To the sound of the coming darkness (known
To those whose spirits harken) as one
Who, in a dream of night, would fly
But cannot from a danger nigh.
What tho’ the moon – the white moon
Shed all the splendor of her noon,
Her smile is chilly – and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one —
For all we live to know is known
And all we seek to keep hath flown —
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noon-day beauty – which is all.
I reach’d my home – my home no more —
For all had flown who made it so.
I pass’d from out its mossy door,
And, tho’ my tread was soft and low,
A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known —
О, I defy thee, Hell, to show
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart – a deeper woe.
Father, I firmly do believe —
I know – for Death who comes for me
From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,
Hath left his iron gate ajar,
