Timbuctoo / Lord Alfred Tennyson

Deep in that lion-haunted island lies

    A mystic city, goal of enterprise.

    (Chapman.)

  I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks

  The narrow seas, whose rapid interval

  Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun

  Had fall'n below th' Atlantick, and above

  The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light,

  Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,

  Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue

  Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars

  Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.

  I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,

  There where the Giant of old Time infixed

  The limits of his prowess, pillars high

  Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the sea

  When weary of wild inroad buildeth up

  Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.

  And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old

  Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth

  Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;

  But had their being in the heart of Man

  As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then

  A center'd glory--circled Memory,

  Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves

  Have buried deep, and thou of later name

  Imperial Eldorado roof'd with gold:

  Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,

  All on-set of capricious Accident,

  Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.

  As when in some great City where the walls

  Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd

  Do utter forth a subterranean voice,

  Among the inner columns far retir'd

  At midnight, in the lone Acropolis.

  Before the awful Genius of the place

  Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while

  Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks

  Unto the fearful summoning without:

  Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,

  Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on

  Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith

  Her phantasy informs them. Where are ye

  Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?

  Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,

  The blossoming abysses of your hills?

  Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays

  Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?

  Where are the infinite ways which, Seraph-trod,

  Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes,

  Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love,

  Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd,

  Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems,

  And ever circling round their emerald cones

  In coronals and glories, such as gird

  The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?

  For nothing visible, they say, had birth

  In that blest ground but it was play'd about

  With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd

  My voice and cried "Wide Afric, doth thy Sun

  Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair

  As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World?

  Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo

  A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?"

  A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!

  A rustling of white wings! The bright descent

  Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me

  There on the ridge, and look'd into my face

  With his unutterable, shining orbs,

  So that with hasty motion I did veil

  My vision with both hands, and saw before me

  Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes

  Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun.

  Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath

  His breast, and compass'd round about his brow

  With triple arch of everchanging bows,

  And circled with the glory of living light

  And alternation of all hues, he stood.

  "O child of man, why muse you here alone

  Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old

  Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness,

  Which flung strange music on the howling winds,

  And odours rapt from remote Paradise?

  Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,

  Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:

  Open thine eye and see." I look'd, but not

  Upon his face, for it was wonderful

  With its exceeding brightness, and the light

  Of the great angel mind which look'd from out

  The starry glowing of his restless eyes.

  I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit

  With supernatural excitation bound

  Within me, and my mental eye grew large

  With such a vast circumference of thought,

  That in my vanity I seem'd to stand

  Upon the outward verge and bound alone

  Of full beautitude. Each failing sense

  As with a momentary flash of light

  Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw

  The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,

  The indistinctest atom in deep air,

  The Moon's white cities, and the opal width

  Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights

  Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,

  And the unsounded, undescended depth

  Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy

  Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,

  Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light

  Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth

  And harmony of planet-girded Suns

  And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,

  Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men,

  Or other things talking in unknown tongues,

  And notes of busy life in distant worlds

  Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

  A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts

  Involving and embracing each with each

  Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,

  Expanding momently with every sight

  And sound which struck the palpitating sense,

  The issue of strong impulse, hurried through

  The riv'n rapt brain: as when in some large lake

  From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse

  Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope

  At slender interval, the level calm

  Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres

  Which break upon each other, each th' effect

  Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong

  Than its precursor, till the eye in vain

  Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade

  Dappled with hollow and alternate rise

  Of interpenetrated arc, would scan

  Definite round.

                  I know not if I shape

  These things with accurate similitude

  From visible objects, for but dimly now,

  Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream,

  The memory of that mental excellence

  Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine

  The indecision of my present mind

  With its past clearness, yet it seems to me

  As even then the torrent of quick thought

  Absorbed me from the nature of itself

  With its own fleetness. Where is he that borne

  Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,

  Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,

  And muse midway with philosophic calm

  Upon the wondrous laws which regulate

  The fierceness of the bounding element?

  My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime

  Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house

  Beneath unshaken waters, but at once

  Upon some earth-awakening day of spring

  Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft

  Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides

  Double display of starlit wings which burn

  Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom:

  E'en so my thoughts, ere while so low, now felt

  Unutterable buoyancy and strength

  To bear them upward through the trackless fields

  Of undefin'd existence far and free.

  Then first within the South methought I saw

  A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile

  Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,

  Illimitable range of battlement

  On battlement, and the Imperial height

  Of Canopy o'ercanopied.

                          Behind,

  In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones

  Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's

  As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft

  Upon his narrow'd Eminence bore globes

  Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances

  Of either, showering circular abyss

  Of radiance. But the glory of the place

  Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold

  Interminably high, if gold it were

  Or metal more ethereal, and beneath

  Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze

  Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan

  Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall,

  Part of a throne of fiery flame, where from

  The snowy skirting of a garment hung,

  And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes

  That minister'd around it--if I saw

  These things distinctly, for my human brain

  Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night

  Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

  With ministering hand he rais'd me up;

  Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,

  Which but to look on for a moment fill'd

  My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,

  In accents of majestic melody,

  Like a swol'n river's gushings in still night

  Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:

  "There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway

  The heart of man: and teach him to attain

  By shadowing forth the Unattainable;

  And step by step to scale that mighty stair

  Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds

  Of glory of Heaven. [1] With earliest Light of Spring,

  And in the glow of sallow Summertide,

  And in red Autumn when the winds are wild

  With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs

  The headland with inviolate white snow,

  I play about his heart a thousand ways,

  Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears

  With harmonies of wind and wave and wood--

  Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters

  Betraying the close kisses of the wind--

  And win him unto me: and few there be

  So gross of heart who have not felt and known

  A higher than they see: They with dim eyes

  Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee

  To understand my presence, and to feel

  My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power.

  I have rais'd thee nigher to the Spheres of Heaven,

  Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense

  Listenest the lordly music flowing from

  Th'illimitable years. I am the Spirit,

  The permeating life which courseth through

  All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins

  Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread

  With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,

  Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,

  Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth:

  So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in

  The fragrance of its complicated glooms

  And cool impleached twilights. Child of Man,

  See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,

  Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through

  The argent streets o' the City, imaging

  The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes.

  Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,

  Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells.

  Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite,

  Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,

  And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring

  To carry through the world those waves, which bore

  The reflex of my City in their depths.

  Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd

  To be a mystery of loveliness

  Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come

  When I must render up this glorious home

  To keen 'Discovery': soon yon brilliant towers

  Shall darken with the waving of her wand;

  Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,

  Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,

  Low-built, mud-wall'd, Barbarian settlement,

  How chang'd from this fair City!"

                                    Thus far the Spirit:

  Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I

  Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon

  Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

[Footnote 1: Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.]