Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Soul's Travelling lyrics

I dwell amid the city ever
The great humanity which beats
Its life along the stony streets
Like a strong and unsunned river
In a self made course
I sit and hearken while it rolls
Very sad and very hoarse
Certes is the flow of souls
Infinitest tendencies
By the finite prest and pent
In the finite, turbulent:
How we tremble in surprise
When sometimes, with an awful sound
God's great plummet strikes the ground!

The champ of the steeds on the silver bit
As they whirl the rich man's carriage by
The beggar's whine as he looks at it
But it goes too fast for charity
The trail on the street of
The poor man's broom


That the lady who walks to her palace-home
On her silken skirt may catch no dust
The tread of the business-men who must
Count their per-cents by the paces they take
The cry of the babe unheard of it's mother
Though it lie on her breast
While she thinks of the other
Laid yesterday where it will not wake
The flower-girl's prayer to buy
Roses and pinks
Held out in the smoke, like stars by day
The gin door's oath that hollowly chinks
Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate
The cabman's cry to get out of the way
The dustman's call down the area-grate
The young maid's jest, and
The old wife's scold
The haggling talk of the boys at a stall
The fight in the street which
Is backed for gold
The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall
The drop on the stones of
The blind man's staff
As he trades in his own grief's sacredness
The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh
The hum upon 'Change, and
The organ's grinding
(The grinder's face being nevertheless
Dry and vacant of even woe
While the children's hearts are leaping so
At the merry music's winding)
The black-plumed funeral's creeping train
Long and slow (and yet they will go
As fast as Life though it hurry and strain)
Creeping the populous houses through
And nodding their plumes at either side
At many a house, where an infant, new
To the sunshiny world, has
Just struggled and cried
At many a house where sitteth a bride
Trying to-morrow's coronals
With a scarlet blush to day:
 Slowly creep the funerals
As none should hear the noise and say
"The living, the living must go away
   To multiply the dead"
 Hark! an upward shout is sent
In grave strong joy from tower to steeple
   The bells ring out
The trumpets sound, the people shout
The young queen goes to her Parliament
She turneth round her large blue eyes
More bright with childish memories
Than royal hopes, upon the people
On either side she bows her head
 Lowly, with a queenly grace
And smile most trusting-innocent
As if she smiled upon her mother
The thousands press before each other
   To bless her to her face
And booms the deep majestic voice
Through trump and drum
"May the queen rejoice
   In the people's liberties!"

   I dwell amid the city
   And hear the flow of
Souls in act and speech
For pomp or trade, for merrymake or folly:
   I hear the confluence
And sum of each, and that is melancholy!
Thy voice is a complaint, O crownèd city
The blue sky covering thee
Like God's great pity

O blue sky! it mindeth me
Of places where I used to see
Its vast unbroken circle thrown
From the far pale-peakèd hill
Out to the last verge of ocean
As by God's arm it were done
Then for the first time, with the emotion
Of that first impulse on it still
Oh, we spirit's fly at will
Faster than the wingèd steed
Whereof in old book we read
With the sunlight foaming back
From his flanks to a misty wrack
And his nostril reddening proud
As he breasteth the steep thundercloud
Smoother than Sabrina's chair
Gliding up from wave to air
While she smileth debonair
Yet holy, coldly and yet brightly
Like her own mooned waters nightly
 Through her dripping hair

Very fast and smooth we fly
Spirit's, though the flesh be by
All looks feed not from the eye
Nor all hearings from the ear:
We can hearken and espy
Without either, we can journey
Bold and gay as knight to tourney
And, though we wear no visor down
To dark our countenance, the foe
Shall never chafe us as we go

I am gone from peopled town!
It passeth it's street-thunder round
My body which yet hears no sound
For now another sound, another
Vision, my soul's senses have
O'er a hundred valleys deep
Where the hills' green shadows sleep
Scarce known because the valley-trees
Cross those upland images
O'er a hundred hills each other
Watching to the western wave
I have travelled, I have found
The silent, lone, remembered ground

I have found a grassy niche
Hollowed in a seaside hill
As if the ocean-grandeur which
Is aspectable from the place
Had struck the hill as with a mace
Sudden and cleaving you might fill
That little nook with the little cloud
Which sometimes lieth by the moon
To beautify a night of June
A cavelike nook which, opening all
To the wide sea, is disallowed
From it's own earth's sweet pastoral:
Cavelike, but roofless overhead
And made of verdant banks instead
Of any rocks, with flowerets spread
Instead of spar and stalactite
Cowslips and daisies gold and white:
Such pretty flowers on such green sward
You think the sea they look toward
Doth serve them for another sky
As warm and blue as that on high

And in this hollow is a seat
And when you shall have crept to it
Slipping down the banks too steep
To be o'erbrowzèd by the sheep
Do not think though at your feet
The cliffs disrupt you shall behold
The line where earth and ocean meet
You sit too much above to view
The solemn confluence of the two:
You can hear them as they greet
You can hear that evermore
Distance-softened noise more old
Than Nereid's singing, the tide spent
Joining soft issues with the shore
In harmony of discontent
And when you hearken to the grave
Lamenting of the underwave
You must believe in earth's communion
Albeit you witness not the union

Except that sound, the place is full
Of silences, which when you cull
By any word, it thrills you so
That presently you let them grow
To meditation's fullest length
Across your soul with a soul's strength:
And as they touch your soul, they borrow
Both of it's grandeur and it's sorrow
That deathly odour which the clay
Leaves on it's deathlessness alwày

Alway! alway? must this be?
Rapid Soul from city gone
Dost thou carry inwardly
What doth make the city's moan?
Must this deep sigh of thine own
Haunt thee with humanity?
Green visioned banks that are too steep
To be o'erbrowzèd by the sheep
May all sad thoughts adown you creep
Without a shepherd? Mighty sea
Can we dwarf thy magnitude
And fit it to our straitest mood?
O fair, fair Nature, are we thus
Impotent and querulous
Among thy workings glorious
Wealth and sanctities, that still
Leave us vacant and defiled
And wailing like a soft-kissed child
Kissed soft against his will?

       God, God!
     With a child's voice I cry
     Weak, sad, confidingly
       God, God!
Thou knowest, eyelids, raised not always up
Unto Thy love (as none of ours are) droop
 As ours, o'er many a tear
Thou knowest, though Thy universe is broad
Two little tears suffice to cover all:
Thou knowest, Thou who art so prodigal
Of beauty, we are oft but stricken deer
Expiring in the woods, that care for none
Of those delightsome flowers they die upon

O blissful Mouth which breathed
The mournful breath we name our souls
Self-spoilt! by that strong passion
Which paled Thee once with sighs
By that strong death
Which made Thee once unbreathing
From the wrack
Themselves have called around them
Call them back
Back to Thee in continuous aspiration!
   For here, O Lord
For here they travel vainly, vainly pass
From city pavement to untrodden sward
Where the lark finds her deep
Nest in the grass
Cold with the earth's last dew yea, very vain
The greatest speed of all these souls of men
Unless they travel upward to the throne
Where sittest Thou the satisfying One
With help for sins and holy perfectings
For all requirements: while the archangel
Raising
Unto Thy face his full ecstatic gazing
Forgets the rush and rapture of his wings