Invocation.

[V, vi., August, 1832.]


Say, Lord! for Thou alone canst tell
Where lurks the good invisible
Amid the depths of discord's sea -
That seem, alas! so dark to me!
Oppressive to a mighty state,
Contentions, feuds, the people's hate -
But who dare question that which fate
Has ordered to have been?
Haply the earthquake may unfold
The resting-place of purest gold,
And haply surges up have rolled
The pearls that were unseen!

G.W.M. REYNOLDS.

Victor-Marie Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest French writers, with works such as "Les Misérables" and "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame." His literary works often explore themes of justice, love, and human rights. In addition to his literary achievements, he was also a politician and human rights activist. Hugo's influence extends beyond literature into politics and society.

Victor-Marie Hugo

The Universal Republic.

Victor-Marie Hugo, Simple Poetry

Charity.

Victor-Marie Hugo, Simple Poetry

To Albert Dürer.

Victor-Marie Hugo, Simple Poetry

Come When I Sleep.

Victor-Marie Hugo, Simple Poetry

English

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An Invocation

We are what suns and winds and waters make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles.
But where the land is dim from tyranny,
There tiny pleasures occupy the place
Of glories and of duties; as the feet
Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down
Trip oer the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then Justice, calld the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever-varying ocean: what is best
Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deformd.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die.
O thou vast tablet of these awful truths,
That fillest all the space between the seas,
Spreading from Venices des...

Walter Savage Landor

Victor Hugo.

He set the trumpet to his lips, and lo!
The clash of waves, the roar of winds that blow,
The strife and stress of Nature's warring things,
Rose like a storm-cloud, upon angry wings.

He set the reed-pipe to his lips, and lo!
The wreck of landscape took a rosy glow,
And Life, and Love, and gladness that Love brings
Laughed in the music, like a child that sings.

Master of each, Arch-Master! We that still
Wait in the verge and outskirt of the Hill
Look upward lonely--lonely to the height
Where thou has climbed, for ever, out of sight!

Henry Austin Dobson

The Morrow Of Grandeur.

("Non, l'avenir n'est à personne!")

[V. ii., August, 1832.]


Sire, beware, the future's range
Is of God alone the power,
Naught below but augurs change,
E'en with ev'ry passing hour.
Future! mighty mystery!
All the earthly goods that be,
Fortune, glory, war's renown,
King or kaiser's sparkling crown,
Victory! with her burning wings,
Proud ambition's covetings, -
These may our grasp no more detain
Than the free bird who doth alight
Upon our roof, and takes its flight
High into air again.

Nor smile, nor tear, nor haughtiest lord's command,
Avails t' unclasp the cold and closèd hand.
Thy voice to disenthrall,
Dumb phantom, shadow ever at our side!
Veiled spectre, journeying with us stride for stride,
Whom men...

Victor-Marie Hugo

An Invocation.

Spirit, bright spirit! from thy narrow cell
    Answer me! answer me! oh, let me hear
    Thy voice, and know that thou indeed art near!
That from the bonds in which thou'rt forced to dwell
    Thou hast not broken free, thou art not fled,
    Thou hast not pined away, thou art not dead.
Speak to me through thy prison bars; my life
With all things round, is one eternal strife,
'Mid whose wild din I pause to hear thy voice;
    Speak to me, look on me, thou born of light!
That I may know thou'rt with me, and rejoice.
Shall not this weary warfare pass away?
Shall there not come a better, brighter day?
    Shall not thy chain and mine be broken quite,
        And thou to heaven spring,
        With thine immortal wing,
        And I, still following,
       ...

Frances Anne Kemble

Invocation

Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,
Formless and void the dead earth rolled;
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blind
To the great lights which o'er it shined;
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,
A dumb despair, a wandering death.

To that dark, weltering horror came
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame,
A breath of life electrical,
Awakening and transforming all,
Till beat and thrilled in every part
The pulses of a living heart.

Then knew their bounds the land and sea;
Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;
From flower to moth, from beast to man,
The quick creative impulse ran;
And earth, with life from thee renewed,
Was in thy holy eyesight good.

As lost and void, as dark and cold
And formless as that earth of old;
A w...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Angel Or Demon.

("Tu domines notre âge; ange ou démon, qu'importe!")

[I. vii.]


Angel or demon! thou, - whether of light
The minister, or darkness - still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stray,
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow thrown
Rests on all pictures of the living day,
And on the threshold of our time alone,
Dazzling, yet sombre, stands thy form, Napoleon!

Thus, when the admiring stranger's steps explore
The subject-lands that 'neath Vesuvius be,
Whether he wind along the enchanting shore
To Portici from fair Parthenope,
Or, lingering long in dreamy reverie,
O'er loveliest Ischia's od'rous isle he stray,
Wooed by whose breath...

Victor-Marie Hugo