human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of John Lothrop Motley?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of John Lothrop Motley:
  How, my dear Mary,--are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way--
And that is dead.--O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
Can shrive you of that sin,--if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty--deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof--her hair
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
Of his own volumes intervolved;--all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,--through the adamant
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,--
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;--
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
For she was beautiful--her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air,
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die--yet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss.
Even Love's:--and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapes--and each was at her beck.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
And all their shapes--and man's imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Love--let the profane
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence--each a satellite.
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
'And ye with them will perish, one by one;--
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must--over me
Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell
She spoke and wept:--the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is--
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson fire--full even to the brim,
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star
O'er woods and lawns;--the serpent heard it flicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.
She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
And others say, that, when but three hours old,
The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought,--
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love--all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here!'
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.
The panther-peopled forests whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
It fled--the circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend--
She called 'Hermaphroditus!'--and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aethereal vans--and speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,--
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake--
There she would build herself a windless haven
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits--
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk--cressets from the serene
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of aery dew,
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence--and now she grew
Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind.
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.'
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
For all were educated to be so.--
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady--like a sexless bee
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
And there the body lay, age after age.
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;--the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
The chatterings of the monkey.--Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill
Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind!--
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.