Роберт Сеймур Бриджес (Robert Seymour Bridges)

Shorter Poems. Book V. 15. “The north wind came up yesternight”

The north wind came up yesternight
  With the new year’s full moon,
And rising as she gained her height,
  Grew to a tempest soon.
Yet found he not on heaven’s face
  A task of cloud to clear;
There was no speck that he might chase
  Off the blue hemisphere,
Nor vapour from the land to drive:
  The frost-bound country held
Nought motionable or alive,
  That ’gainst his wrath rebelled.
There scarce was hanging in the wood
  A shrivelled leaf to reave;
No bud had burst its swathing hood
  That he could rend or grieve:
Only the tall tree-skeletons,
  Where they were shadowed all,
Wavered a little on the stones,
  And on the white church-wall.

—Like as an artist in his mood,
  Who reckons all as nought,
So he may quickly paint his nude,
  Unutterable thought:
So Nature in a frenzied hour
  By day or night will show
Dim indications of the power,
  That doometh man to woe.
Ah, many have my visions been,
  And some I know full well:
I would that all that I have seen
  Were fit for speech to tell.—

And by the churchyard as I came,
  It seemed my spirit passed
Into a land that hath no name,
  Grey, melancholy and vast;
Where nothing comes: but Memory,
  The widowed queen of Death,
Reigns, and with fixed, sepulchral eye
  All slumber banisheth.

Each grain of writhen dust, that drapes
  That sickly, staring shore,
Its old chaotic change of shapes
  Remembers evermore.
And ghosts of cities long decayed,
  And ruined shrines of Fate
Gather the paths, that Time hath made
  Foolish and desolate.
Nor winter there hath hope of spring,
  Nor the pale night of day,
Since the old king with scorpion sting
  Hath done himself away.

   *   *   *   *   *

The morn was calm; the wind’s last breath
  Had fal’n: in solemn hush
The golden moon went down beneath
  The dawning’s crimson flush.