Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)
Seven Sonnets
- I. "That children in their loveliness should die"
- II. "That there are better things within the womb"
- III. "To see the rich autumnal tints depart"
- IV. "But if, as (not by what the soul desired..."
- V. "If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws"
- VI. "But whether in the uncoloured light of truth"
- VII. "Shall I decide it by a random shot?"
The Shady Lane
- Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how?
- Thou, where with idle heart ten years ago
- I wandered and with childhood's paces slow,
- So long unthought of, and remembered now.
- Again in vision clear thy pathwayed side
- I tread, and view thy orchard plots again
- With yellow fruitage hung,--and glimmering grain
- Standing or shocked through the thick hedge espied.
- This hot still noon of August brings the sight;
- This quelling silence as of eve or night,
- Wherein earth (feeling as a mother will
- After her travail's latest bitterest throes)
- Looks up, so seemeth it one half repose,
- One half in effort, straining, suffering still.
On the Thought of Death
I
- If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws
- What it at first as casually did make,
- Say what amount of ages it will take,
- With tardy rare concurrences of laws
- And subtle multiplicities of cause,
- The thing they once had made us to remake;
- May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake
- Even after utmost interval of pause,
- What revolutions must have passed before
- The great celestial cycles shall restore
- The starry sign whose present hour is gone;
- What worse than dubious chances interpose,
- With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose
- The skiey picture we had gazed upon.
II
- That children in their loveliness should die
- Before the dawning beauty, which we know
- Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
- That when a certain period has passed by,
- People of genius and of faculty,
- Leaving behind them some result to show
- Having performed some function, should forgo
- The task which younger hands can better ply,
- Appears entirely natural.
- But that one
- Whose perfectness did not at all consist
- In things towards forming which time can have done
- Anything--whose sole office was to exist--
- Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
- Is the extreme of all perplexity.
"Yes, I have lied, and so must walk my way,"
- Yes, I have lied, and so must walk my way,
- Bearing the liar's curse upon my head;
- Letting my weak and sickly heart be fed
- On food which does the present craving stay,
- But may be clean-denied me e'en today,
- And though 'twere certain, yet were ought but bread;
- Letting--for so they say, it seems, I said,
- And I am all too weak to disobey!
- Therefore for me sweet Nature's scenes reveal not
- Their charm; sweet Music greets me and I feel not;
- Sweet eyes pass off me uninspired; yea, more,
- The golden tide of opportunity
- Flows wafting-in friendships and better,--I
- Unseeing, listless, pace along the shore.
"Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent"
- Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent,
- One-third departed of the mortal span,
- Carrying on the child into the man,
- Nothing into reality. Sails rent,
- And rudder broken,--reason impotent,--
- Affections all unfixed; so forth I fare
- On the mid seas unheedingly, so dare
- To do and to be done by, well content.
- So was it from the first, so is it yet;
- Yea, the first kiss that by these lips was set
- On any human lips, methinks was sin--
- Sin, cowardice, and falsehood; for the will
- Into a deed e'en then advanced, wherein
- God, unidentified, was thought-of still.
Seven Sonnets
I
- That children in their loveliness should die
- Before the dawning beauty, which we know
- Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
- That when a certain period has passed by,
- People of genius and of faculty,
- Leaving behind them some result to show,
- Having performed some function, should forego
- A task which younger hands can better ply,
- Appears entirely natural. But that one
- Whose perfectness did not at all consist
- In things towards forming which time could have done
- Anything,--whose sole office was to exist
- Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
- Calls up the hardest questions. . . .
II
- That there are better things within the womb
- Of Nature than to our unworthy view
- She grants for a possession, may be true:
- The cycle of the birthplace and the tomb
- Fulfils at least the order and the doom
- Of her, that has not ordinance to do
- More than to withdraw and to renew,
- To show one moment and the next resume:
- The law that we return from whence we came
- May for the flowers, beasts, and most men remain;
- If for ourselves, we [ask] not nor complain:
- But for a being that demands the name
- We highest deem--a Person and a Soul
- It troubles us if this should be the whole.
III
- To see the rich autumnal tints depart,
- And view the fading of the roseate glow
- That veils some Alpine altitude of snow,
- To hear some mighty masterpiece of art
- Lost or destroyed, may to the adult heart,
- Impatient of the transitory show
- Of lovelinesses that but come and go,
- A positive strange thankfulness impart.
- When human pure perfections disappear,
- Not at the first, but at some later day,
- The buoyancy of such reaction may
- With strong assurance conquer blank dismay.
- * * * * * *
IV
- But if, as (not by what the soul desired
- Swayed in the judgment) wisest men have thought,
- And (furnishing the evidence it sought)
- Man's heart hath ever fervently required,
- And story, for that reason deemed inspired,
- To every clime, in every age, hath taught;
- If in this human complex there be aught
- Not lost in death, as not in birth acquired,
- O then, though cold the lips that did convey
- Rich freights of meaning, dead each living sphere
- Where thought abode and fancy loved to play,
- Thou, yet we think, somewhere somehow still art,
- And satisfied with that the patient heart
- The where and how doth not desire to hear.
V
- If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws
- What it at first as casually did make,
- Say what amount of ages it will take
- With tardy rare concurrences of laws,
- And subtle multiplicities of cause,
- The thing they once had made us to remake;
- May hopes dead-slumbering dare to reawake,
- E'en after utmost interval of pause?
- What revolutions must have passed, before
- The great celestial cycles shall restore
- The starry [sign] whose present hour is gone;
- What worse than dubious chances interpose,
- With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose
- The skiey picture we had gazed upon.
VI
- But whether in the uncoloured light of truth
- This inward strong assurance be, indeed,
- More than the self-willed arbitrary creed,
- Manhood's inheritor to the dream of youth;
- Whether to shut out fact because forsooth
- To live were insupportable unfreed,
- Be not or be the service of untruth;
- Whether this vital confidence be more
- Than his, who upon death's immediate brink
- Knowing, perforce determines to ignore;
- Or than the bird's, that when the hunter comes
- Burying her eyesight, can forget her fear;
- Who about this shall tell us what to think?
-
VII
- Shall I decide it by a random shot?
- Our happy hopes, so happy and so good,
- Are not mere idle motions of the blood;
- And when they seem most baseless, most are not.
- A seed there must have been [up]on the spot
- Where the flowers grow, without it ne'er they could.
- The confidence of growth least understood
- Of some deep intuition was begot.
- What if despair and hope alike be true?
- The heart, 'tis manifest, is free to do
- Whichever Nature and itself suggest;
- And always 'tis a fact that we are here;
- And with being here, doth palsy-giving fear,
- Whoe'er can ask, or hope accord the best?