Songs of the Affections, with Other Poems/The Storm Painter in his Dungeon
THE STORM PAINTER[1]
IN HIS DUNGEON.
Where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those that shake the human breast?
Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
Childe Harold.
Midnight, and silence deep!
—The air is fill'd with sleep,
With the stream's whisper, and the citron's breath;
The fix'd and solemn stars
Gleam through my dungeon bars—
Wake, rushing winds! this breezeless calm is death!
Ye watch-fires of the skies!
The stillness of your eyes
Looks too intensely through my troubled soul:
I feel this weight of rest
An earth-load on my breast—
Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!
I am your own, your child,
O ye, the fierce and wild
And kingly tempests!—will ye not arise?
Hear the bold spirit's voice,
That knows not to rejoice
But in the peal of your strong harmonies.
By sounding ocean-waves,
And dim Calabrian caves,
And flashing torrents, I have been your mate;
And with the rocking pines
Of the olden Apennines,
In your dark path stood fearless and elate:
Your lightnings were as rods,
That smote the deep abodes
Of thought and vision—and the stream gush'd free;
Come, that my soul again
May swell to burst its chain—
Bring me the music of the sweeping sea!
Within me dwells a flame,
An eagle caged and tame,
Till call'd forth by the harping of the blast;
Then is its triumph's hour,
It springs to sudden power,
As mounts the billow o'er the quivering mast.
Then, then, the canvass o'er,
With hurried hand I pour
The lava-waves and gusts of my own soul!
Kindling to fiery life
Dreams, worlds, of pictured strife;—
Wake, rushing winds, awake! and, dark clouds, roll!
Wake, rise! the reed may bend,
The shivering leaf descend,
The forest branch give way before your might;
But I, your strong compeer,
Call, summon, wait you here,—
Answer, my spirit!—answer, storm and night!
- ↑ Pietro Mulier, called II Tempesta, from his surprising pictures of storms. "His compositions," says Lanzi, "inspire a real horror, presenting to our eyes death-devoted ships overtaken by tempests and darkness; fired by lightning; now rising on the mountain-wave, and again submerged in the abyss of ocean." During an imprisonment of five years in Genoa, the pictures which he painted in his dungeon were marked by additional power and gloom.—See Lanzi's History of Painting, translated by Roscoe.