Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Soul's Travelling lyrics

I. I dwell amid the city ever. The great humanity which beats Its life along the stony streets, Like a strong and unsunned river In a self-made course, I sit and hearken while it rolls. Very sad and very hoarse Certes is the flow of souls; Infinitest tendencies By the finite prest and pent, In the finite, turbulent: How we tremble in surprise When sometimes, with an awful sound, God's great plummet strikes the ground! II. The champ of the steeds on the silver bit, As they whirl the rich man's carriage by; The beggar's whine as he looks at it,— But it goes too fast for charity; The trail on the street of the poor man's broom, That the lady who walks to her palace-home, On her silken skirt may catch no dust; The tread of the business-men who must Count their per-cents by the paces they take; The cry of the babe unheard of its mother Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other Laid yesterday where it will not wake; The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks Held out in the smoke, like stars by day; The gin-door's oath that hollowly chinks Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate; The cabman's cry to get out of the way; The dustman's call down the area-grate; The young maid's jest, and the old wife's scold, The haggling talk of the boys at a stall, The fight in the street which is backed for gold, The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall; The drop on the stones of the blind man's staff As he trades in his own grief's sacredness, The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh, The hum upon 'Change, and the organ's grinding, (The grinder's face being nevertheless Dry and vacant of even woe While the children's hearts are leaping so At the merry music's winding;) The black-plumed funeral's creeping train, Long and slow (and yet they will go As fast as Life though it hurry and strain!) Creeping the populous houses through And nodding their plumes at either side,— At many a house, where an infant, new To the sunshiny world, has just struggled and cried,— At many a house where sitteth a bride Trying to-morrow's coronals With a scarlet blush to-day:  Slowly creep the funerals, As none should hear the noise and say "The living, the living must go away   To multiply the dead."  Hark! an upward shout is sent, In grave strong joy from tower to steeple   The bells ring out, The trumpets sound, the people shout, The young queen goes to her Parliament. She turneth round her large blue eyes More bright with childish memories Than royal hopes, upon the people; On either side she bows her head  Lowly, with a queenly grace And smile most trusting-innocent, As if she smiled upon her mother; The thousands press before each other   To bless her to her face; And booms the deep majestic voice Through trump and drum,—"May the queen rejoice   In the people's liberties!" III.   I dwell amid the city,   And hear the flow of souls in act and speech, For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly:   I hear the confluence and sum of each, And that is melancholy! Thy voice is a complaint, O crownèd city, The blue sky covering thee like God's great pity. IV. O blue sky! it mindeth me Of places where I used to see Its vast unbroken circle thrown From the far pale-peakèd hill Out to the last verge of ocean, As by God's arm it were done Then for the first time, with the emotion Of that first impulse on it still. Oh, we spirits fly at will Faster than the wingèd steed Whereof in old book we read, With the sunlight foaming back From his flanks to a misty wrack, And his nostril reddening proud As he breasteth the steep thundercloud,— Smoother than Sabrina's chair Gliding up from wave to air, While she smileth debonair Yet holy, coldly and yet brightly, Like her own mooned waters nightly,  Through her dripping hair. V. Very fast and smooth we fly, Spirits, though the flesh be by; All looks feed not from the eye Nor all hearings from the ear: We can hearken and espy Without either, we can journey Bold and gay as knight to tourney, And, though we wear no visor down To dark our countenance, the foe Shall never chafe us as we go. VI. I am gone from peopled town! It pa**eth its street-thunder round My body which yet hears no sound, For now another sound, another Vision, my soul's senses have— O'er a hundred valleys deep Where the hills' green shadows sleep Scarce known because the valley-trees Cross those upland images, O'er a hundred hills each other Watching to the western wave, I have travelled,—I have found The silent, lone, remembered ground. VII. I have found a gra**y niche Hollowed in a seaside hill, As if the ocean-grandeur which Is aspectable from the place, Had struck the hill as with a mace Sudden and cleaving. You might fill That little nook with the little cloud Which sometimes lieth by the moon To beautify a night of June; A cavelike nook which, opening all To the wide sea, is disallowed From its own earth's sweet pastoral: Cavelike, but roofless overhead And made of verdant banks instead Of any rocks, with flowerets spread Instead of spar and stalactite, Cowslips and daisies gold and white: Such pretty flowers on such green sward, You think the sea they look toward Doth serve them for another sky As warm and blue as that on high. VIII. And in this hollow is a seat, And when you shall have crept to it, Slipping down the banks too steep To be o'erbrowzèd by the sheep, Do not think—though at your feet The cliffs disrupt—you shall behold The line where earth and ocean meet; You sit too much above to view The solemn confluence of the two: You can hear them as they greet, You can hear that evermore Distance-softened noise more old Than Nereid's singing, the tide spent Joining soft issues with the shore In harmony of discontent, And when you hearken to the grave Lamenting of the underwave, You must believe in earth's communion Albeit you witness not the union. IX. Except that sound, the place is full Of silences, which when you cull By any word, it thrills you so That presently you let them grow To meditation's fullest length Across your soul with a soul's strength: And as they touch your soul, they borrow Both of its grandeur and its sorrow, That d**hly odour which the clay Leaves on its d**hlessness alwày. X. Alway! alway? must this be? Rapid Soul from city gone, Dost thou carry inwardly What doth make the city's moan? Must this deep sigh of thine own Haunt thee with humanity? Green visioned banks that are too steep To be o'erbrowzèd by the sheep, May all sad thoughts adown you creep Without a shepherd? Mighty sea, Can we dwarf thy magnitude And fit it to our straitest mood? O fair, fair Nature, are we thus Impotent and querulous Among thy workings glorious, Wealth and sanctities, that still Leave us vacant and defiled And wailing like a soft-kissed child, Kissed soft against his will? XI.     God, God!    With a child's voice I cry,    Weak, sad, confidingly—     God, God! Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up Unto Thy love, (as none of ours are) droop  As ours, o'er many a tear; Thou knowest, though Thy universe is broad, Two little tears suffice to cover all: Thou knowest, Thou who art so prodigal Of beauty, we are oft but stricken deer Expiring in the woods, that care for none Of those delightsome flowers they die upon. XII. O blissful Mouth which breathed the mournful breath We name our souls, self-spoilt!—by that strong pa**ion Which paled Thee once with sighs, by that strong d**h Which made Thee once unbreathing—from the wrack Themselves have called around them, call them back, Back to Thee in continuous aspiration!   For here, O Lord, For here they travel vainly, vainly pa** From city-pavement to untrodden sward Where the lark finds her deep nest in the gra** Cold with the earth's last dew. Yea, very vain The greatest speed of all these souls of men Unless they travel upward to the throne Where sittest Thou the satisfying One, With help for sins and holy perfectings For all requirements: while the archangel, raising Unto Thy face his full ecstatic gazing, Forgets the rush and rapture of his wings.