Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
James Thomson 183482Melencolia
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Stands out level upland bleak and bare,
From which the city east and south and west
Sinks gently in long waves; and throned there
An Image sits, stupendous, superhuman,
The bronze colossus of a winged Woman,
Upon a graded granite base foursquare.
With cheek on clench’d left hand, the forearm’s might
Erect, its elbow on her rounded knee;
Across a clasp’d book in her lap the right
Upholds a pair of compasses; she gazes
With full set eyes, but wandering in thick mazes
Of sombre thought beholds no outward sight.
That solemn sketch the pure and artist wrought
Three centuries and three score years ago,
With fantasies of his peculiar thought:
The instruments of carpentry and science
Scatte’d about her feet, in strange alliance
With the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught;
The grave and solid infant perch’d beside,
With open winglets that might bear a dove,
Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed;
Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle
But all too impotent to lift the regal
Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride;
Wreath which seems
To mock her grand head and the knotted frown
Of forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
The household bunch of keys, the house-wife’s gown
Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid
As if a shell of burnish’d metal frigid,
The feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down;
The massy rainbow curv’d in front of it
Beyond the village with the masts and trees;
The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the Pit,
Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions
Her name unfolded in the sun’s dominions,
The “MELENCOLIA” that transcends all wit.
Surrounded to expound her form sublime,
Her fate heroic and calamitous;
Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time,
Unvanquish’d in defeat and desolation,
Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration
Of the day setting on her baffled prime.
Weary and sick of soul she works the more,
Sustain’d by her indomitable will:
The hands shall fashion and the brain shall pore,
And all her sorrow shall be turn’d to labor,
Till Death the friend-foe piercing with his sabre
That mighty heart of ends bitter war.
With tenfold gloom on moonless night unstarr’d,
A sense more tragic than defeat and blight,
More desperate than strife with hope debarr’d,
More fatal than the adamantine Never
Encompassing her passionate endeavor,
Dawn glooming in her tenebrous regard:
Because Fate holds no prize to crown success;
That all the oracles are dumb or cheat
Because they have no secret to expresses;
That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain
Because there is no light beyond the curtain;
That all is vanity and nothingness.
That City’s sombre Patroness and Queen,
In bronze sublimity she gazes forth
Over her Capital of teen and threne,
Over the river with its isles and bridges,
The marsh and moorland, to the stern rock-ridges,
Confronting them with a coeval mien.
Circle before her in the sea of air;
Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest.
Her subjects often gaze up to her there:
The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance,
The weak new terrors; all, renew’d assurance
And confirmation of the old despair.