an ebook published by Project Gutenberg Australia

Title: A Poet's Home

Author: Charles Harpur

Date first posted: 2021

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A Poet's Home

Charles Harpur

CONTENTS

A Poet's Home

The Poet

A Poet’s Home

Here in this lonely rill-engirdled spot,

The world forgetting, by the world forgot,

With one vowed to me with beloved lips

How sweet to draw, as hiddenly from Time,

As from its rocks yon shaded fountain slips,

My yet remaining prime!

Here early rising from a sinless bed

How sweet it were to view Aurora shed

Her first white glances o’er the dusky wood,

When powdered as with pearls the sprays all gleam

Through the grey dawn, like prophecies of good

Or like some fairy dream.

And while the clouds imbibed a golden hue,

And purple streaks grained yon ethereal blue,

By the glad voice of every early bird

(As some full lake by breezes in their glee

Is rippled into smiles) how sweetly stirred

My spirit then should be!

And as like burning bullion brightened still

The cloud-hung Orient, o’er yon misty hill

I’d watch the sun’s ethereal chariot come,

Flooring the glades with flakes of crystal fire

And the green spaces round my rural home,

Where slept mine Heart’s Desire.

When, if sweet memories of her sleeping smile

Should my devotion thitherward beguile,

Cheating the morn of its observance due,

My happy voice should not be wanting long,

To wile her forth with loving transport true,

Or wake her with a song.

“Awake, my fair One! for the glowing skies

Desire thee, and a thousand flowery eyes

Look for thy coming from each pathway side;

With all things fresh and beautiful and bright

The earth’s illumin’d like an Eastern bride,—

Arise, my best delight!

What can be deeper than the heavens o’erbending,

Or rarer—richer than the colours blending

Beyond the green cones of the misty hill!

What gladder than the runnel’s silvery fall!

And yet my spirit asketh something still—

’Tis thee—the crown of all!”

Joined by the Angel of my life—the Day’s

Full glory, setting the moist hills ablaze,

How lovelier now for her dear loveliness!

The birds—the stream—the forest’s leafy stir,

Catch from her voice a double power to bless,

And the flowers breathe of her!

The dews are brighter for her love-bright eyes

And the air sweeter for the sweet surprise

In every gesture of her gentle face!

So widely love’s invisible spirit flings

The visible enrichment of its grace

O’er all regarded things.

Filled with the fresh keen life that so sublimes

Both mind and body, we should then betimes

Repair us to our cheerful morning meal,

Not more attuned by thankfulness of heart

Well to enjoy, than willing in our weal

To spare a stranger part.

Sufficed and grateful, to her household care

Should she betake her then,—I fieldward fare

To till the thriving maize or guide the plough

Through the rich loam; or, while the slant sunshine

Carressed them, to remark the melons, how

They lumped from out their vine.

Or of its weeds to rid some border, rich

With fragrant shrubs, the folded blooms of which

Might seem all dreaming of their dewy bliss!

Till, by the breeze awakened, they should more

Like blushes rousing to the passionate kiss

Of a too open love.

Or else to loop against its latticed frame

Some runner’s coils, all tremulous and a-flame

With crimson stars,—or hung with silver bells

Such as the Fays ring, when, on summer nights,

Their sparkling revels out of forest dells

Scatter wild glancing lights!

Thence to the orchard—to well-prune the robes

The orange trees embossed with golden globes;

Or then the peachy tribes all ruddy cheeked,

Or plum’s live rubies,—and, with these, the rare

Boom nectarine’s fragrant swarms so lushly streaked,

That flavour even the air.

To tithe the rich pips of the apricot,

So early ripe, where in some sheltered spot

They gleam like nuggets hung in brilliant hoards;

Or prop the pear’s long branches, loading low;

Or mark if the pomegranites, lamped with gourds,

Stretch in a perfect row.

To pluck the fig, that in its broad-leafed shade

Secretes its ripeness—even like a maid

Mature for love, who yet through bashfulness

Doth shun each would-be wooer’s amorous gaze;

Or stay the drooping vines, whose every tress

Should catch the morning rays;—

The glad green vines! exuberant in health,

And overladen with their clustered wealth

Of bloomy grapes nectareous;—some all bright

And half diaphanous, like a precious stone;

Some darkly purple, like thick-clouded light

Up from the sunset thrown.

So should the noon draw on: when in yon shade

Beside the rill, on the green couch-grass laid

In careless luxury my faint limbs should be;

And hearing but the splash of feathered things

Then fluttering downward from some neighbouring tree

To dip their shining wings;

Or the slow-rising and most summery hum

Of gorgeous insects that at times might come

Over the runnel, and so voyage by;

Or the light footfall on the further brink

Of some wild creature, from its covert nigh

Just venturing forth to drink;

I’d calmly think of all my wandering youth

Had suffered, with a heart so dear to Truth

That she at length had portioned it with love,

And then of her who to my being’s good

Was what the vitalising Sun doth prove

To Nature’s bountihood!.

Thus rested, when the fierier-winged hours

Were quenching in the west, with freshened powers

The field again in honorable toil

Should hear me ending what the morn begun,—

Till the dressed orchard or the well-turned soil,

Showed a good day’s work done.

Then whilst the unharnessed steer I woodward took,

Or sought the kine, that in some grassy nook

Were ruminating all in full-fed ease,

The sun should ’light upon his western hill,

Slanting his last beams through the shadowing trees,

And up the gleaming rill:

Then, sinking, make a heaven’s lit draperies seem

Golden confessions of the love supreme

My heart poured out on Nature, and on Her

Now waiting me at our peace-hallowed board:

Thus placed, who’d care amongst the great to stir

Or with the rich to hoard?

The pens secured, the final meal in haste

Despatched though savoury,—both should forth to taste

Eve’s odorous breath and with renewed surprise,

To find Elysiums painted in the west,

We then should look into each other’s eyes,

To feel that we were blest!

And feeling thus up through that golden glow,

Thanksgivings from our mutual hearts should go,

Golden as it,—to Him who made the time

So beautiful, that only then to be

Was sure baptism into a sublime

Sense of his Deity!

Obsedrving afterwards how soon ’tis given

For richest things to change. For lo, in heaven

Recesses of a loveliness divine,

Transform, ere long, into abysms grey,

And dim-drawn reefy seas that, widening, shine

Round headlands far away,

And thence out—infinitely out, with not

One shore-like limit or one isle-like spot;

Then, in a moment, all again is change,

As more the congregated vapours loom,

And where those sky-seas were, broad prairies range

Oft clumped with groves of gloom;

Or craggy glens appear, and gorges dark,

Browed in by mountains more abrupt and stark

Than their similitudes the Alps of Earth—

Towered high with castles, spectral and remote,

And altering ever to some wilder birth

As up the cloud-banks bloat.

More solemn, though less beautiful, so seen,

Is the wide-bending heaven, than when the sheen

Of sunset drapes in their most rich array

Those western depths of wonder. Such the close

Meetest to glory dying with the day—

Mutation ere repose.

And when the gloaming followed evening’s flight,

Down o’er yon hills,—whence yet a skiey light

Kept mellowing upward, near to where, first seen,

The glowing Leader of the starry quire

Comes wingedly from out the blue serene,

Even like a bird of fire,

The hushing bounties of those twilight hours

Falling into our souls, as in the flowers’

Balm-breathing bosoms melt the silent dews,

Should freshen every feeling mild and wise,

And thence o’er all our charities diffuse

The quiet of the skies.

Thus should the Night in solemn guise come o’er,

With all her far ethereal eyes to pore

Upon my happy life, and draw my soul

To wander like a star, the stars among,

And homeward point from the resplendent pole

Uranian beams of song.

Or while the moon, the world’s apparent queen,

Came whitening up in majesty serene,

Reminding us of some dear long past night,

I’d chronicle in rhyme the many things

Of lovely thought, that from her mystic light

Had woven then their wings.

At length retired to our most cozy room

Stored with such books as Fancy’s fires relume,

Some chosen song together we’d rehearse

To its meet air with a long-dying close;

Or list great Milton’s or save Wordsworth’s verse,

Or Lander’s noble prose.

Or musical movements, such as foretastes are

Of deeper being in some fairer star,

Should flood our quietude,—till it might seem

The very Immortality of love

Came spell-drawn down, to perfect Feeling’s dream

With dream-power from above.

Or reading of Sweet Genevieve, whose own

Great minstrel Wooer did so well intone

The Legend of the Lady and the Knight!

With nearer pleadings,—we might sweetlier know

How first our hearts, too, into sudden light

Rushed, joining,—long ago.

Or of Endymion should the lonely rhyme

With mythic pageants wile the listening time—

Visions that sparkled from his starry mind

Whose memory is like a fervent tune

Heard richly prospering in a Summer wind

Under the midnight moon.

Or by mild Spencer’s dreamy love we’d live

Awhile in Beauty’s rarest breath, and give

Our spirits to sail—borne bark-like on by this—

O’er Fairy seas all billowed with delights,

And round the wonder-witching Bower of Bliss,

Peopled with magic sleights.

And suddenly wrapt in such a sunset blaze

Of music—flushing through arborious ways

From birds and waves, voices and viols sweet,

All mingled in a weired wind warbling low—

Yea, such as might, so long as heard, even cheat

The damned of their woe.

And lastly, ere the drowsy hours of sleep

Came hushing o’er grateful hearts should steep

Their happiness in prayer; acknowledging

His goodness, who hath filled the day and night

With strength and bounty, poured as from a spring

For all who live aright.

The Poet

Both great and bountiful is he,

The Poet,—he whose glorious gift

Free of the world, and making free,

Heavenward on wings of melody

Can all things lift!

Yes, well may we account him great

Who through his every living line,

Doth, elevated, elevate,

And throw Into the Mind’s estate

A ray divine!

And bountiful as well as great,

Who still, in every song of power,

Commissioned, God-like, to create,

Bequeaths to Nature and to Fate

A rarer flower!

A rose of joy that cannot die!

A gem of light that nought may dim!

Some well of faith no drouth shall dry!

Some foretaste of those anthems high

The Seraphs hymn!

Some glimpse of God—some mightier star

Isling a supersensual sky!

Some glory without stint or bar—

A value over-valuing far

All Pride can buy!

All Pride can buy, or Avarice hoard,

Or earth-born influence attain!

A loveliness by Love adored—

A stuff by royal natures stored

As priceless gain!

Then great and bounteous both is he,

The Poet,—he whose glorious gift,

Free of the world, and making free,

Heavenward on wings of melody

Can all things lift!

Yea, whatso he hath seen or heard—

As at the morning’s golden rise,

The lark from his ground-nest is stirred,

And lifted, till he flames—a bird

Of Paradise!

THE END

Project Gutenberg Australia

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

A Poet’s Home

The Poet

THE END