LONDON:

printed by c. h. reynell, broad street, golden square.

PREFACE.

It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it appeared to me, that at this moment, a narration of the events of my husband’s life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to Mr. Leigh Hunt. The distinguished friendship that Mr. Shelley felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which Mr. Leigh Hunt clings to his friend’s memory, seemed to point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion.

The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived, was the occassion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause, which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he, to the endeavour of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendant powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him: to see him was to love him; and his presence, like Ithuriel’s spear, was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale, which his enemies whispered in the ear of the ignorant world.

His life was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysician: without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and habits of every production of the earth; he could interpret without a fault each appearance in the sky, and the varied phœnomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study and reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake and the waterfall. Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers, and the solitude in which we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although congenial to his feelings, must frequently have weighed upon his spirits; those beautiful and affecting “Lines, written in dejection at Naples,” were composed at such an interval; but when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary degree.

Such was his love for nature, that every page of his poetry is associated in the minds of his friends with the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of Switzerland became his inspirers. “Prometheus Unbound” was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome, and when he made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he composed “The Witch of Atlas,” “Adonais” and “Hellas.” In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezia, the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and sitting beneath their shelter wrote “The Triumph of Life,” the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest he had ever known: his health even rapidly improved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy. I was to have accompanied him, but illness confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of that sea which was about to engulph him.

He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices towards his friend, and enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we would not learn:—but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. The real anguish of these moments transcended all the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever pourtrayed: our seclusion, the savage nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to embue with strange horror our days of uncertainty. The truth was at last known,—a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we had lost,—not, I fondly hope, for ever: his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and “the world’s sole monument” is enriched by his remains.

I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. “Julian and Maddalo,” “The Witch of Atlas,” and most of the Translations, were written some years ago, and, with the exception of “The Cyclops,” and the Scenes from the “Magico Prodigioso,” may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate corrections. “The Triumph of Life” was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state, that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have added a reprint of “Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude:”—the difficulty with which a copy can be obtained, is the cause of its republication. Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his manuscript books, and have carefully copied: I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.

I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among these; but I frankly own, that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me, than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the Lovers of Shelley’s Poetry (who know how more than any other poet of the present day every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them.

The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose pieces. They will hereafter appear in a separate publication.

Mary W. Shelley.

London, June 1st, 1824.

JULIAN AND MADDALO;

A CONVERSATION.

• The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,
• The goats with the green leaves of budding spring,
• Are saturated not—nor Love with tears.

Virgil’sGallus.

JULIAN AND MADDALO.

Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius; and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men, and instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionntely attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible, the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious.

Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems by his own account to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.

• • I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
  • Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
  • Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
  • Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
  • Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
  • Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,
  • Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
  • Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
  • Abandons; and no other object breaks
  • The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
  • Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
  • A narrow space of level sand thereon,
  • Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down.
  • This ride was my delight. I love all waste
  • And solitary places; where we taste
  • The pleasure of believing what we see
  • Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
  • And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
  • More barren than its billows; and yet more
  • Than all, with a remembered friend I love
  • To ride as then I rode;—for the winds drove
  • The living spray along the sunny air
  • Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
  • Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
  • And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
  • Harmonising with solitude, and sent
  • Into our hearts aërial merriment.
  • So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
  • Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
  • But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours,
  • Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
  • None slow enough for sadness: till we came
  • Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
  • This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
  • The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
  • Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
  • Talk interrupted with such raillery
  • As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
  • The thoughts it would extinguish:—’twas forlorn,
  • Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell,
  • The devils held within the dales of hell,
  • Concerning God, freewill, and destiny.
  • Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be;
  • All that vain men imagine or believe,
  • Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve,
  • We descanted; and I (for ever still
  • Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
  • Argued against despondency; but pride
  • Made my companion take the darker side.
  • The sense that he was greater than his kind
  • Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
  • By gazing on its own exceeding light.
  • Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight
  • Over the horizon of the mountains—Oh!
  • How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
  • Of heaven descends upon a land like thee,
  • Thou paradise of exiles, Italy!
  • Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
  • Of cities they encircle!—It was ours
  • To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,
  • Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men
  • Were waiting for us with the gondola.
  • As those who pause on some delightful way,
  • Tho’ bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood,
  • Looking upon the evening and the flood,
  • Which lay between the city and the shore,
  • Paved with the image of the sky: the hoar
  • And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared,
  • Thro’ mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared
  • Between the east and west; and half the sky
  • Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
  • Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
  • Down the steep west into a wondrous hue
  • Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
  • Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
  • Among the many folded hills—they were
  • Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
  • As seen from Lido thro’ the harbour piles,
  • The likeness of a clump of peaked isles—
  • And then, as if the earth and sea had been
  • Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
  • Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame,
  • Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
  • The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
  • Their very peaks transparent. “Ere it fade,”
  • Said my companion, “I will show you soon
  • A better station.” So, o’er the lagune
  • We glided; and from that funereal bark
  • I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
  • How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam,
  • Its temples and its palaces did seem
  • Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heav’n.
  • I was about to speak, when—“We are even
  • Now at the point I meant,” said Maddalo,
  • And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
  • “Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
  • If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.”
  • I looked, and saw between us and the sun
  • A building on an island, such an one
  • As age to age might add, for uses vile,—
  • A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;
  • And on the top an open tower, where hung
  • A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,
  • We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:
  • The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled
  • In strong and black relief.—“What we behold
  • Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower;”—
  • Said Maddalo, “and even at this hour,
  • Those who may cross the water hear that bell,
  • Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
  • To vespers.”—“As much skill as need to pray,
  • In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they,
  • To their stern maker,” I replied.—“O, ho!
  • You talk as in years past,” said Maddalo.
  • “ ’Tis strange men change not. You were ever still
  • Among Christ’s flock a perilous infidel,
  • A wolf for the meek lambs: if you can’t swim,
  • Beware of providence.” I looked on him,
  • But the gay smile had faded from his eye.
  • “And such,” he cried, “is our mortality;
  • And this must be the emblem and the sign
  • Of what should be eternal and divine;
  • And like that black and dreary bell the soul,
  • Hung in an heav’n-illumined tower, must toll
  • Our thoughts and our desires to meet below
  • Round the rent heart, and pray—as madmen do;
  • For what? they know not, till the night of death,
  • As sunset that strange vision, severeth
  • Our memory from itself, and us from all
  • We sought, and yet were baffled.” I recall
  • The sense of what he said, although I mar
  • The force of his expressions. The broad star
  • Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill;
  • And the black bell became invisible;
  • And the red tower looked grey; and all between,
  • The churches, ships, and palaces, were seen
  • Huddled in gloom; into the purple sea
  • The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
  • We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
  • Conveyed me to my lodging by the way.
• • The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:
  • Ere Maddalo arose I called on him,
  • And whilst I waited, with his child I played;
  • A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;
  • A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being;
  • Graceful without design, and unforeseeing;
  • With eyes—Oh! speak not of her eyes! which seem
  • Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
  • With such deep meaning as we never see
  • But in the human countenance. With me
  • She was a special favourite: I had nursed
  • Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first
  • To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know
  • On second sight, her ancient playfellow,
  • Less changed than she was by six months or so.
  • For, after her first shyness was worn out,
  • We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
  • When the Count entered. Salutations past:
  • “The words you spoke last night might well have cast
  • A darkness on my spirit:—if man be
  • The passive thing you say, I should not see
  • Much harm in the religions and old saws,
  • (Though I may never own such leaden laws)
  • Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:
  • Mine is another faith.”—Thus much I spoke,
  • And, noting he replied not, added—“See
  • This lovely child; blithe, innocent and free;
  • She spends a happy time, with little care;
  • While we to such sick thoughts subjected are,
  • As came on you last night. It is our will
  • Which thus enchains us to permitted ill.
  • We might be otherwise; we might be all
  • We dream of, happy, high, majestical.
  • Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek,
  • But in our minds? And, if we were not weak,
  • Should we be less in deed than in desire?”—
  • —“Aye, if we were not weak,—and we aspire,
  • How vainly! to be strong,” said Maddalo:
  • “You talk Utopia”—
• • “It remains to know,”
  • I then rejoined, “and those who try, may find
  • How strong the chains are which our spirit bind:
  • Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured
  • Much may be conquered, much may be endured,
  • Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
  • That we have power over ourselves to do
  • And suffer—what, we know not till we try;
  • But something nobler than to live and die:
  • So taught the kings of old philosophy,
  • Who reigned before religion made men blind;
  • And those who suffer with their suffering kind,
  • Yet feel this faith, religion.”
• • “My dear friend,”
  • Said Maddalo, “my judgment will not bend
  • To your opinion, though I think you might
  • Make such a system refutation-tight,
  • As far as words go. I knew one like you,
  • Who to this city came some months ago,
  • With whom I argued in this sort,—and he
  • Is now gone mad—and so he answered me,
  • Poor fellow!—But if you would like to go,
  • We’ll visit him, and his wild talk will shew
  • How vain are such aspiring theories.”—
• • “I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
  • And that a want of that true theory still,
  • Which seeks a soul of goodness in things ill,
  • Or in himself or others, has thus bow’d
  • His being:—there are some by nature proud,
  • Who, patient in all else, demand but this—
  • To love and be beloved with gentleness:—
  • And being scorned, what wonder if they die
  • Some living death? This is not destiny,
  • But man’s own wilful ill.”—
• • As thus I spoke,
  • Servants announced the gondola, and we
  • Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
  • Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands.
  • We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands,
  • Fierce yells, and howlings, and lamentings keen,
  • And laughter where complaint had merrier been,
  • Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs
  • Into an old court-yard. I heard on high,
  • Then, fragments of most touching melody,
  • But looking up saw not the singer there.—
  • Thro’ the black bars in the tempestuous air
  • I saw, like weeds on a wreck’d palace growing,
  • Long tangled locks flung wildly forth and flowing,
  • Of those who on a sudden were beguiled
  • Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled,
  • Hearing sweet sounds. Then I:—
  • “Methinks there were
  • A cure of these with patience and kind care,
  • If music can thus move. But what is he,
  • Whom we seek here?”
• • “Of his sad history
  • I know but this,” said Maddalo: “he came
  • To Venice a dejected man, and fame
  • Said he was wealthy, or he had been so.
  • Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;
  • But he was ever talking in such sort
  • As you do,—but more sadly;—he seem’d hurt,
  • Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
  • To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
  • Or those absurd deceits (I think with you
  • In some respects, you know) which carry thro’
  • The excellent impostors of this earth
  • When they outface detection. He had worth,
  • Poor fellow! but a humourist in his way.”—
• • —“Alas, what drove him mad!”
• • “I cannot say:
  • A lady came with him from France, and when
  • She left him and returned, he wander’d then
  • About yon lonely isles of desart sand,
  • Till he grew wild. He had no cash or land
  • Remaining:—the police had brought him here—
  • Some fancy took him, and he would not bear
  • Removal, so I fitted up for him
  • Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim;
  • And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers,
  • Which had adorned his life in happier hours,
  • And instruments of music. You may guess
  • A stranger could do little more or less
  • For oneso gentle and unfortunate—
  • And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight
  • From madmen’s chains, and make this hell appear
  • A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.”
• • “Nay, this was kind of you,—he had no claim,
  • As the world says.”
• • “None but the very same
  • Which I on all mankind, were I, as he,
  • Fall’n to such deep reverse. His melody
  • Is interrupted now; we hear the din
  • Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin:
  • Let us now visit him: after this strain,
  • He ever communes with himself again,
  • And sees and hears not any.”
• • Having said
  • These words, we called the keeper, and he led
  • To an apartment opening on the sea.—
  • There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
  • Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
  • One with the other; and the ooze and wind
  • Rushed thro’ an open casement, and did sway
  • His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
  • His head was leaning on a music book,
  • And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook;
  • His lips were pressed against a folded leaf
  • In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
  • Smiled in their motions as they lay apart,
  • As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
  • The eloquence of passion: soon he raised
  • His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,
  • And spoke,—sometimes as one who wrote, and thought
  • His words might move some heart that heeded not,
  • If sent to distant lands;—and then as one
  • Reproaching deeds never to be undone,
  • With wondering self-compassion;—then his speech
  • Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
  • Unmodulated and expressionless,—
  • But that from one jarred accent you might guess
  • It was despair made them so uniform:
  • And all the while the loud and gusty storm
  • Hissed thro’ the window, and we stood behind,
  • Stealing his accents from the envious wind,
  • Unseen. I yet remember what he said
  • Distinctly, such impression his words made.
• • “Month after month,” he cried, “to bear this load,
  • And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad,
  • To drag life on—which like a heavy chain
  • Lengthens behind with many a link of pain,
  • And not to speak my grief—O, not to dare
  • To give a human voice to my despair;
  • But live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on,
  • As if I never went aside to groan,
  • And wear this mask of falsehood even to those
  • Who are most dear—not for my own repose—
  • Alas! no scorn, or pain, or hate, could be
  • So heavy as that falsehood is to me—
  • But that I cannot bear more altered faces
  • Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,
  • More misery, disappointment, and mistrust
  • To own me for their father. Would the dust
  • Were covered in upon my body now!
  • That the life ceased to toil within my brow!
  • And then these thoughts would at the last be fled:
  • Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.
• • “What Power delights to torture us? I know
  • That to myself I do not wholly owe
  • What now I suffer, though in part I may.
  • Alas! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way
  • Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain,
  • My shadow, which will leave me not again.
  • If I have erred, there was no joy in error,
  • But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror;
  • I have not, as some do, bought penitence
  • With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence;
  • For then if love, and tenderness, and truth
  • Had overlived Hope’s momentary youth,
  • My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;
  • But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting
  • Met love excited by far other seeming
  • Until the end was gained:—as one from dreaming
  • Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state
  • Such as it is.—
• • “O, thou, my spirit’s mate!
  • Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,
  • Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes
  • If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see,
  • My secret groans must be unheard by thee;
  • Thou wouldst weep tears, bitter as blood, to know
  • Thy lost friend’s incommunicable woe.
  • Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed
  • In friendship, let me not that name degrade,
  • By placing on your hearts the secret load
  • Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road
  • To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye!
  • Love sometimes leads astray to misery.
  • Yet think not, tho’ subdued (and I may well
  • Say that I am subdued)—that the full hell
  • Within me would infect the untainted breast
  • Of sacred nature with its own unrest;
  • As some perverted beings think to find
  • In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind
  • Which scorn or hate hath wounded.—O, how vain!
  • The dagger heals not, but may rend again.
  • Believe that I am ever still the same
  • In creed as in resolve; and what may tame
  • My heart, must leave the understanding free,
  • Or all would sink under this agony.—
  • Nor dream that I will join the vulgar eye,
  • Or with my silence sanction tyranny,
  • Or seek a moment’s shelter from my pain
  • In any madness which the world calls gain;
  • Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern
  • As those which make me what I am, or turn
  • To avarice or misanthrophy or lust.
  • Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!
  • Till then the dungeon may demand its prey;
  • And Poverty and Shame may meet and say,
  • Halting beside me in the public way,—
  • ‘That love-devoted youth is ours: let’s sit
  • Beside him: he may live some six months yet.’—
  • Or the red scaffold, as our country bends,
  • May ask some willing victim; or ye, friends!
  • May fall under some sorrow, which this heart
  • Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert;
  • I am prepared, in truth, with no proud joy,
  • To do or suffer aught, as when a boy
  • I did devote to justice, and to love,
  • My nature, worthless now.
• • “I must remove
  • A veil from my pent mind. ’Tis torn aside!
  • O! pallid as Death’s dedicated bride,
  • Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,
  • Am I not wan like thee? At the grave’s call
  • I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball,
  • To meet the ghastly paramour, for whom
  • Thou hast deserted me,—and made the tomb
  • Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet
  • Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet
  • Thus—wide awake tho’ dead—Yet stay, O, stay!
  • Go not so soon—I know not what I say—
  • Hear but my reasons—I am mad, I fear,
  • My fancy is o’erwrought—thou art not here.
  • Pale art thou, ’tis most true—but thou art gone—
  • Thy work is finished; I am left alone.
  • * * * * * * *
  • “Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast,
  • Which like a serpent thou envenomest
  • As in repayment of the warmth it lent?
  • Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?
  • Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
  • That thou wert she who said ‘You kiss me not
  • Ever; I fear you do not love me now.’
  • In truth I loved even to my overthrow
  • Her, who would fain forget these words; but they
  • Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
  • * * * * * * *
  • “You say that I am proud; that when I speak,
  • My lip is tortured with the wrongs, which break
  • The spirit it expresses.—Never one
  • Humbled himself before, as I have done!
  • Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
  • Turns, tho’ it wound not—then, with prostrate head,
  • Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me—and dies:
  • —No:—wears a living death of agonies!
  • As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
  • Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass,
  • Slow, ever-moving, making moments be
  • As mine seem,—each an immortality!
  • * * * * * * *
  • “That you had never seen me! never heard
  • My voice! and, more than all, had ne’er endured
  • The deep pollution of my loathed embrace!
  • That your eyes ne’er had lied love in my face!
  • That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
  • The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
  • With mine own quivering fingers! so that ne’er
  • Our hearts had for a moment mingled there,
  • To disunite in horror! These were not
  • With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought,
  • Which flits athwart our musings, but can find
  • No rest within a pure and gentle mind—
  • Thou sealed’st them with many a bare broad word,
  • And seard’st my memory o’er them,—for I heard
  • And can forget not—they were ministered,
  • One after one, those curses. Mix them up
  • Like self-destroying poisons in one cup;
  • And they will make one blessing, which thou ne’er
  • Didst imprecate for on me—death!
• • “It were
  • A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
  • If such can love, to make that love the fuel
  • Of the mind’s hell—hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
  • But me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear,
  • As water-drops the sandy fountain stone;
  • Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
  • For woes which others hear not, and could see
  • The absent with the glass of phantasy,
  • And near the poor and trampled sit and weep,
  • Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
  • Me, who am as a nerve o’er which do creep
  • The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth,
  • And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
  • When all beside was cold:—that thou on me
  • Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony—
  • Such curses are from lips once eloquent
  • With love’s too partial praise! Let none relent
  • Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
  • Henceforth, if an example for the same
  • They seek:—for thou on me lookedst so and so,
  • And didst speak thus and thus. I live to shew
  • How much men bear and die not.
  • * * * * * * *
• • “Thou wilt tell,
  • With the grimace of hate, how horrible
  • It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
  • Thou wilt admire how I could e’er address
  • Such features to love’s work. . . . This taunt, tho’ true,
  • (For indeed nature nor in form nor hue
  • Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
  • Shall not be thy defence: for since thy life
  • Met mine first, years long past,—since thine eye kindled
  • With soft fire under mine,—I have not dwindled,
  • Nor changed in mind, or body, or in aught
  • But as love changes what it loveth not
  • After long years and many trials.
  • * * * * * * *
• • “How vain
  • Are words! I thought never to speak again,
  • Not even in secret, not to my own heart—
  • But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
  • And from my pen the words flow as I write,
  • Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears—my sight
  • Is dim to see that charactered in vain,
  • On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain
  • And eats into it, blotting all things fair,
  • And wise and good, which time had written there.
  • Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
  • The work of their own hearts, and that must be
  • Our chastisement or recompense.—O, child!
  • I would that thine were like to be more mild
  • For both our wretched sakes,—for thine the most,
  • Who feel’st already all that thou hast lost,
  • Without the power to wish it thine again.
  • And, as slow years pass, a funereal train,
  • Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend
  • Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
  • No thought on my dead memory?
  • * * * * * * *
• • “Alas, love!
  • Fear me not: against thee I’d not move
  • A finger in despite. Do I not live
  • That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
  • I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate;
  • And, that thy lot may be less desolate
  • Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
  • From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
  • Then—when thou speakest of me—never say,
  • ‘He could forgive not’—Here I cast away
  • All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
  • I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
  • Under these words, like embers, every spark
  • Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark
  • The grave is yawning:—as its roof shall cover
  • My limbs with dust and worms, under and over;
  • So let oblivion hide this grief—The air
  • Closes upon my accents, as despair
  • Upon my heart—let death upon despair!”
• • He ceased, and overcome, leant back awhile;
  • Then rising, with a melancholy smile,
  • Went to a sopha, and lay down, and slept
  • A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept,
  • And muttered some familiar name, and we
  • Wept without shame in his society.
  • I think I never was impress’d so much;
  • The man who were not, must have lack’d a touch
  • Of human nature.—Then we linger’d not,
  • Although our argument was quite forgot;
  • But, calling the attendants, went to dine
  • At Maddalo’s:—yet neither cheer nor wine
  • Could give us spirits, for we talked of him,
  • And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim.
  • And we agreed it was some dreadful ill
  • Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
  • By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
  • Of one vow’d deeply which he dreamed not of;
  • For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot
  • Of falsehood in his mind, which flourish’d not
  • But in the light of all-beholding truth;
  • And having stamped this canker on his youth,
  • She had abandoned him:—and how much more
  • Might be his woe, we guessed not:—he had store
  • Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess
  • From his nice habits and his gentleness:
  • These now were lost—it were a grief indeed
  • If he had changed one unsustaining reed
  • For all that such a man might else adorn.
  • The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;
  • For the wild language of his grief was high—
  • Such as in measure were called poetry.
  • And I remember one remark, which then
  • Maddalo made: he said—“Most wretched men
  • Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
  • They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
• • If I had been an unconnected man,
  • I, from this moment, should have form’d some plan
  • Never to leave sweet Venice: for to me
  • It was delight to ride by the lone sea:
  • And then the town is silent—one may write,
  • Or read in gondolas by day or night,
  • Having the little brazen lamp alight,
  • Unseen, uninterrupted:—books are there,
  • Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
  • Which were twin-born with poetry—and all
  • We seek in towns, with little to recal
  • Regret for the green country:—I might sit
  • In Maddalo’s great palace, and his wit
  • And subtle talk would cheer the winter night,
  • And make me know myself:—and the fire light
  • Would flash upon our faces, till the day
  • Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay.
  • But I had friends in London too. The chief
  • Attraction here was that I sought relief
  • From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
  • Within me—’twas perhaps an idle thought,
  • But I imagined that if, day by day,
  • I watched him, and seldom went away,
  • And studied all the beatings of his heart
  • With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
  • For their own good, and could by patience find
  • An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
  • I might reclaim him from his dark estate.
  • In friendships I had been most fortunate,
  • Yet never saw I one whom I would call
  • More willingly my friend;—and this was all
  • Accomplish’d not;—such dreams of baseless good
  • Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude,
  • And leave no trace!—but what I now design’d,
  • Made, for long years, impression on my mind.
  • —The following morning, urged by my affairs,
  • I left bright Venice.—
• • After many years,
  • And many changes, I returned; the name
  • Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same;
  • But Maddalo was travelling, far away,
  • Among the mountains of Armenia.
  • His dog was dead: his child had now become
  • A woman, such as it has been my doom
  • To meet with few; a wonder of this earth,
  • Where there is little of transcendent worth,—
  • Like one of Shakspeare’s women. Kindly she,
  • And with a manner beyond courtesy,
  • Receiv’d her father’s friend; and, when I ask’d
  • Of the lorn maniac, she her memory task’d,
  • And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale:
  • “That the poor sufferer’s health began to fail,
  • Two years from my departure; but that then
  • The lady, who had left him, came again.
  • Her mien had been imperious, but she now
  • Look’d meek; perhaps remorse had brought her low.
  • Her coming made him better; and they stayed
  • Together at my father’s,—for I played,
  • As I remember, with the lady’s shawl;
  • I might be six years old:—But, after all,
  • She left him.”—
• • “Why, her heart must have been tough;
  • How did it end?”
• • “And was not this enough?
  • They met, they parted.”
• • “Child, is there no more?”
• • “Something within that interval, which bore
  • The stamp of why they parted, how they met;—
  • Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
  • Those wrinkled cheeks with youth’s remember’d tears,
  • Ask me no more; but let the silent years
  • Be clos’d and cered over their memory,
  • As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.”
  • I urged and questioned still: she told me how
  • All happen’d—but the cold world shall not know.

Rome, May, 1819.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

• • I.

  • Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
  • Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
  • Error and Truth, bad hunted from the earth
  • All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
  • And left us nothing to believe in, worth
  • The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
  • A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain
  • Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

• • II.

  • Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
  • The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden
  • In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas
  • So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
  • In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—
  • He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
  • The chamber of grey rock in which she lay—
  • She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

• • III.

  • ’Tis said, she was first changed into a vapour,
  • And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
  • 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
  • On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit;
  • Then, into one of those mysterious stars
  • Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

• • IV.

  • Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
  • Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
  • With that bright sign the billows to indent
  • The sea-deserted sand: like children chidden,
  • At her command they ever came and went:—
  • Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden,
  • Took shape and motion: with the living form
  • Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.

• • V.

  • A lovely lady garmented in light
  • From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are
  • Two openings of unfathomable night
  • Seen through a tempest’s cloven roof—her hair
  • Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
  • Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
  • And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
  • All living things towards this wonder new.

• • VI.

  • And first the spotted cameleopard came,
  • And then the wise and fearless elephant;
  • Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
  • Of his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt
  • And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
  • They drank before her at her sacred fount;
  • And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
  • Such gentleness and power even to behold.

• • VII.

  • The brinded lioness led forth her young,
  • That she might teach them how they should forego
  • Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
  • His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
  • With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
  • How he might be as gentle as the doe.
  • The magic circle of her voice and eyes
  • All savage natures did imparadise.

• • VIII.

  • And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
  • Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
  • Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
  • Cicadæ are, drunk with the noonday dew:
  • And Driope and Faunus followed quick,
  • Teazing the God to sing them something new,
  • Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
  • Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.

• • IX.

  • And Universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,
  • And though none saw him,—through the adamant
  • Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
  • And through those living spirits, like a want
  • He past out of his everlasting lair
  • Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
  • And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—
  • And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.

• • X.

  • 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 grey locks,
  • And quaint Priapus with his company
  • All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
  • Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—
  • Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

• • XI.

  • The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
  • And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
  • These spirits shook within them, as a flame
  • Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
  • Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
  • Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
  • Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,
  • Dog-headed, bosom-eyed and bird-footed.

• • XII.

  • For she was beautiful: her beauty made
  • The bright world dim, and every thing beside
  • Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
  • No thought of living spirit could abide,
  • Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
  • On any object in the world so wide,
  • On any hope within the circling skies,
  • But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

• • XIII.

  • Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
  • And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
  • 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
  • In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
  • And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—
  • A shadow for the splendour of her love.

• • XIV.

  • The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
  • Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,
  • Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
  • Folded in cells of chrystal silence there;
  • 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 the regret they leave remains alone.

• • XV.

  • 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;
  • It is its work to bear to many a saint
  • Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
  • Even Love’s—and others white, green, grey and black,
  • And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.

• • XVI.

  • And odours in a kind of aviary
  • Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
  • Clipt in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
  • 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,
  • When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
  • To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

• • XVII.

  • And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
  • Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
  • And change eternal death into a night
  • Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,
  • Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
  • She in her chrystal vials did closely keep:
  • If men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said
  • The living were not envied of the dead.

• • XVIII.

  • Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
  • The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
  • Which taught the expiations at whose price
  • Men from the Gods might win that happy age
  • Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
  • And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
  • Of gold and blood—till men should live and move
  • Harmonious as the sacred stars above.

• • XIX.

  • And how all things that seem untameable,
  • Not to be checked and not to be confined,
  • Obey the spells of wisdom’s wizard skill;
  • Time, Earth and Fire—the Ocean and the Wind,
  • And all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;
  • And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
  • The inmost lore of Love—let the prophane
  • Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

• • XX.

  • 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;
  • Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone
  • In their own golden beams—each like a flower,
  • Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
  • Under a cypress in a starless night.

• • XXI.

  • At first she lived alone in this wild home,
  • And her own thoughts were each a minister,
  • Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam,
  • Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
  • To work whatever purposes might come
  • Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
  • Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
  • Through all the regions which he shines upon.

• • XXII.

  • The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
  • Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks,
  • Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
  • Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
  • And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
  • And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,
  • So they might live forever in the light
  • Of her sweet presence—each a satellite.

• • XXIII.

  • “This may not be,” the wizard maid replied;
  • “The fountains where the Naiades bedew
  • Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
  • The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
  • Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
  • The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew
  • Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must
  • Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.

• • XXIV.

  • “And ye with them will perish one by one:
  • If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
  • If I must weep when the surviving Sun
  • Shall smile on your decay—Oh, ask not me
  • 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
  • Shall be my paths henceforth, and so, farewell!”

• • XXV.

  • 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
  • And intertangled lines of light:—a knell
  • Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
  • From those departing Forms, o’er the serene
  • Of the white streams and of the forest green.

• • XXVI.

  • All day the wizard lady sat aloof
  • Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity
  • Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;
  • Or broidering the pictured poesy
  • Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
  • Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
  • In hues outshining heaven—and ever she
  • Added some grace to the wrought poesy.

• • XXVII.

  • While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
  • Of sandal wood, rare gums and cinnamon;
  • Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is,
  • Each flame of it is as a precious stone
  • Dissolved in ever moving light, and this
  • 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.

• • XXVIII.

  • This lady never slept, but lay in trance
  • All night within the fountain—as in sleep.
  • Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance:
  • Through the green splendour of the water deep
  • She saw the constellations reel and dance
  • Like fire-flies—and withal did ever keep
  • The tenour of her contemplations calm,
  • With open eyes, closed feet and folded palm.

• • XXIX.

  • And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
  • From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
  • She past at dewfall to a space extended,
  • Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
  • Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
  • There yawned an inextinguishable well
  • Of crimson fire, full even to the brim
  • And overflowing all the margin trim.

• • XXX.

  • 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
  • In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar—
  • And when the windless snow descended thicker
  • Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
  • Melt on the surface of the level flame.

• • XXXI.

  • She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought
  • For Venus, as the chariot of her star;
  • But it was found too feeble to be fraught
  • 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
  • Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat
  • Which ever upon mortal stream did float.

• • XXXII.

  • And others say, that when but three hours old,
  • The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt,
  • And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
  • And like an horticultural adept,
  • Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in mould,
  • 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.

• • XXXIII.

  • The plant grew strong and green—the snowy flower
  • Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
  • 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
  • The solid rind, like a leaf’s veined fan,
  • Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft motion
  • Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.

• • XXXIV.

  • This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
  • A living spirit within all its frame,
  • Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
  • Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
  • 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,—
  • In joyous expectation lay the boat.

• • XXXV.

  • 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;
  • And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow
  • A living Image, which did far surpass
  • In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
  • Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.

• • XXXVI.

  • A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
  • It seemed to have developed no defect
  • Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,—
  • In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
  • The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
  • The countenance was such as might select
  • Some artist that his skill should never die,
  • Imaging forth such perfect purity.

• • XXXVII.

  • From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
  • Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
  • Tipt with the speed of liquid lightnings,
  • Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere:
  • She led her creature to the boiling springs
  • 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.

• • XXXVIII.

  • And down the streams which clove those mountains vast
  • Around their inland islets, and amid
  • The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
  • Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
  • In melancholy gloom, the pinnace past;
  • By many a star-surrounded pyramid
  • Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
  • And caverns yawning round unfathomably.

• • XXXIX.

  • The silver noon into that winding dell,
  • With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
  • Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
  • A green and glowing light, like that which drops
  • From folded lilies in which glowworms dwell,
  • When earth over her face night’s mantle wraps;
  • Between the severed mountains lay on high
  • Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.

• • XL.

  • 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,
  • Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
  • And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
  • Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
  • They had aroused from that full heart and brain.

• • XLI.

  • And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
  • Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
  • Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
  • 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
  • With sand and polished pebbles:—mortal boat
  • In such a shallow rapid could not float.

• • XLII.

  • And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
  • Their snow-like waters into golden air,
  • Or under chasms unfathomable ever
  • Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear
  • A subterranean portal for the river,
  • It fled—the circling sunbows did upbear
  • Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
  • Lighting it far upon its lampless way.

• • XLIII.

  • And when the wizard lady would ascend
  • The labyrinths of some many winding vale,
  • Which to the inmost mountain upward tend—
  • She called “Hermaphroditus!” and the pale
  • And heavy hue which slumber could extend
  • Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
  • A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
  • Into the darkness of the stream did pass.

• • XLIV.

  • And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
  • With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
  • And from above into the Sun’s dominions
  • Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
  • In which spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
  • All interwoven with fine feathery snow
  • And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
  • With which frost paints the pines in winter time.

• • XLV.

  • And then it winnowed the Elysian air
  • Which ever hung about that lady bright,
  • With its ethereal vans—and speeding there,
  • Like a star up the torrent of the night,
  • Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
  • Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight;
  • The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
  • Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.

• • XLVI.

  • The water flashed like sunlight, by the prow
  • Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
  • The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
  • In tempest down the mountains,—loosely driven
  • The lady’s radiant hair streamed to and fro:
  • Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
  • Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
  • The swift and steady motion of the keel.

• • XLVII.

  • Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
  • Or in the noon of interlunar night,
  • The lady-witch in visions could not chain
  • Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
  • Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
  • His storm-outspeeding wings, th’ Hermaphrodite;
  • She to the Austral waters took her way,
  • Beyond the fabulous Thamondocona.

• • XLVIII.

  • Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
  • Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake
  • With the Antarctic constellations haven,
  • Canopus and his crew, lay th’ Austral lake—
  • There she would build herself a windless haven
  • Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
  • The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
  • The spirits of the tempest thundered by.

• • XLIX.

  • A haven, beneath whose translucent floor
  • The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
  • And around which, the solid vapours hoar,
  • Based on the level waters, to the sky
  • Lifted their dreadful crags; and like a shore
  • Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
  • Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey,
  • And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

• • L.

  • And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
  • Of the winds’ scourge, foamed like a wounded thing;
  • And the incessant hail with stony clash
  • Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
  • Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
  • Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
  • Fragment of inky thundersmoke—this haven
  • Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven.

• • LI.

  • On which that lady played her many pranks,
  • Circling the image of a shooting star,
  • Even as a tyger on Hydaspes’ banks
  • Outspeeds the Antelopes which speediest are,
  • In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
  • She played upon the water; till the car
  • Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
  • To journey from the misty east began.

• • LII.

  • And then she called out of the hollow turrets
  • Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
  • The armies of her ministering spirits—
  • In mighty legions million after million
  • They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
  • On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion,
  • Of the intertexture of the atmosphere,
  • They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.

• • LIII.

  • They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
  • Of woven exhalations, underlaid
  • With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
  • A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
  • With crimson silk—cressets from the serene
  • Hung there, and on the water for her tread,
  • A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
  • Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.

• • LIV.

  • And on a throne o’erlaid with starlight, caught
  • Upon those wandering isles of aëry dew,
  • Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,
  • She sate, and heard all that had happened new
  • 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—
  • And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.

• • LV.

  • 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
  • Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft time
  • Following the serpent lightning’s winding track,
  • She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
  • And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.

• • LVI.

  • And sometimes to those streams of upper air,
  • Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,
  • She would ascend, and win the spirits there
  • To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
  • That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
  • And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
  • Wandered upon the earth where’er she past,
  • And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.

• • LVII.

  • But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
  • To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads
  • Egypt and Æthiopia, from the steep
  • Of utmost Axumè, until he spreads,
  • Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
  • His waters on the plain: and crested heads
  • Of cities and proud temples gleam amid
  • And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

• • LVIII.

  • By Mæris and the Mareotid lakes,
  • Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors;
  • Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
  • Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
  • Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
  • Of those huge forms:—within the brazen doors
  • Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
  • Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

• • LIX.

  • And where within the surface of the river
  • The shadows of the massy temples lie,
  • And never are erased—but tremble ever
  • Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
  • Through lotus-pav’n canals, and wheresoever
  • The works of man pierced that serenest sky
  • With tombs, and towers, and fanes, ’twas her delight
  • To wander in the shadow of the night.

• • LX.

  • With motion like the spirit of that wind
  • Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
  • Past through the peopled haunts of human kind,
  • Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
  • Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined
  • With many a dark and subterranean street
  • Under the Nile; through chambers high and deep
  • She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

• • LXI.

  • A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
  • Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
  • Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;
  • There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
  • Within, two lovers linked innocently
  • In their loose locks which over both did creep
  • Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm,
  • Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

• • LXII.

  • But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
  • Not to be mirrored in a holy song,
  • Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
  • And pale imaginings of visioned wrong,
  • And all the code of custom’s lawless law
  • 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.”

• • LXIII.

  • And little did the sight disturb her soul—
  • We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
  • Where’er its shores extend or billows roll,
  • Our course unpiloted and starless make
  • O’er its wild surface to an unknown goal—
  • But she in the calm depths her way could take,
  • Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide,
  • Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

• • LXIV.

  • And she saw princes couched under the glow
  • Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
  • In dormitories ranged, row after row,
  • She saw the priests asleep,—all of one sort,
  • 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 the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

• • LXV.

  • 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
  • Only their scorn of all concealment: they
  • Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
  • But these, and all now lay with sleep upon them,
  • And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

• • LXVI.

  • She all those human figures breathing there
  • Beheld as living spirits—to her eyes
  • The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
  • 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,
  • Which murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
  • Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

• • LXVII.

  • Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given
  • For such a charm, when Tithon became grey?
  • Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heaven
  • Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
  • Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
  • 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.

• • LXVIII.

  • ’Tis said in after times her spirit free
  • Knew what love was, and felt itself alone—
  • But holy Dian could not chaster be
  • Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
  • Than now this lady—like a sexless bee
  • Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none—
  • Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
  • Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

• • LXIX.

  • To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
  • Strange panacea in a chrystal bowl.
  • They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
  • And lived thenceforth as if some controul
  • Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
  • Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
  • Was as a green and overarching bower
  • Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

• • LXX.

  • For on the night that 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;
  • And she unwound the woven imagery
  • Of second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took
  • The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
  • And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

• • LXXI.

  • And there the body lay, age after age,
  • Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying
  • Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
  • With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing,
  • And living in its dreams beyond the rage
  • Of death or life; while they were still arraying
  • In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind
  • And fleeting generations of mankind.

• • LXXII.

  • And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
  • Of those who were less beautiful, and make
  • All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
  • Than in the desart is the serpent’s wake
  • Which the sand covers,—all his evil gain
  • 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.

• • LXXIII.

  • The priests would write an explanation full,
  • Translating hieroglyphies into Greek,
  • How the god Apis, really was a bull,
  • And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
  • The same against the temple doors, and pull
  • The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
  • Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
  • By pastoral letters to each diocese.

• • LXXIV.

  • The king would dress an ape up in his crown
  • And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
  • And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
  • Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
  • The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one
  • Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
  • Of their great Emperor when the morning came;
  • And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!

• • LXXV.

  • 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,
  • Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band
  • The jailors sent those of the liberal schism
  • Free through the streets of Memphis; much, I wis,
  • To the annoyance of king Amasis.

• • LXXVI.

  • And timid lovers who had been so coy,
  • They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
  • Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
  • To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
  • And when next day the maiden and the boy
  • Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
  • Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
  • Only in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;

• • LXXVII.

  • 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
  • Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
  • Friends who by practice of some envious skill,
  • Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!
  • She did unite again with visions clear
  • Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

• • LXXVIII.

  • These were the pranks she played among the cities
  • Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites
  • And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
  • To do her will, and shew their subtle slights,
  • I will declare another time; for it is
  • A tale more fit for the weïrd winter nights—
  • Than for these garish summer days, when we
  • Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

LETTER TO —

Leghorn, July 1, 1820.

• • The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
  • In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
  • The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves
  • His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
  • So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
  • Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
  • From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—
  • No net of words in garish colours wrought
  • To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
  • But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
  • Memory may clothe in wings my living name
  • And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
  • Which in those hearts which most remember me
  • Grow, making love an immortality.
• • Whoever should behold me now, I wist,
  • Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
  • Bent with sublime Archimedean art
  • To breathe a soul into the iron lieart
  • Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
  • Which by the force of figured spells might win
  • Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
  • For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
  • As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
  • Ixion or the Titan:—or the quick
  • Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,
  • To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic;
  • Or those in philosophic councils met,
  • Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
  • They owed * * * * * *
  • By giving a faint foretaste of damnation
  • To Shakespear, Sidney, Spenser and the rest
  • Who made our land an island of the blest,
  • When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
  • On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Empire:—
  • With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
  • Which fishes found under the utmost crag
  • Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
  • Where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles
  • Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
  • When the exulting elements in scorn
  • Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
  • Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
  • As panthers sleep:—and other strange and dread
  • Magical forms the brick floor overspread—
  • Proteus transformed to metal did not make
  • More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
  • Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
  • Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
  • Of tin and iron not to be understood,
  • And forms of unimaginable wood,
  • To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
  • Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
  • The elements of what will stand the shocks
  • Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table
  • More knacks and quips there be than I am able
  • To catalogize in this verse of mine:—
  • A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
  • But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
  • When at their subterranean toil they swink,
  • Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who
  • Reply to them in lava-cry, halloo!
  • And call out to the cities o’er their head,—
  • Roofs, towns and shrines,—the dying and the dead
  • Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff
  • Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
  • This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within
  • The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
  • In colour like the wake of light that stains
  • The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
  • The inmost shower of it’s white fire—the breeze
  • Is still—blue heaven smiles over the pale seas.
  • And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I
  • Yield to the impulse of an infancy
  • Outlasting manhood—I have made to float
  • A rude idealism of a paper boat—
  • A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know
  • The thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so
  • He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next
  • Lie bills and calculations much perplext,
  • With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint
  • Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
  • Then comes a range of mathematical
  • Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
  • A heap of rosin, a green broken glass
  • With ink in it;—a china cup that was
  • What it will never be again, I think,
  • A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
  • The liquor doctors rail at—and which I
  • Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die
  • We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
  • And cry out,—heads or tails? where’er we be.
  • Near that a dusty paint box, some old hooks,
  • An half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
  • Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
  • To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
  • Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
  • Of figures,—disentangle them who may.
  • Baron de Tott’s memoirs beside them lie,
  • And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
  • Near them a most inexplicable thing,
  • With least in the middle—I’m conjecturing
  • How to make Henry understand;—but—no,
  • I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
  • This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
  • Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.
• • And here like some weïrd Archimage sit I,
  • Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
  • The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
  • Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
  • The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
  • Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
  • Ruffling the ocean of their self content;—
  • I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,
  • But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
  • With an inconstant and an idle sound,
  • I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
  • Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
  • Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
  • The ripe corn under the undulating air
  • Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines
  • Are trembling wide in all their trelliced lines—
  • The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
  • The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill
  • Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
  • And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
  • The interrupted thunder howls; above
  • One chasm of heaven smiles, like the age of love
  • On the unquiet world;—while such things are,
  • How could one worth your friendship heed the war
  • Of worms? The shriek of the world’s carrion jays,
  • Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
• • You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees
  • In vacant chairs, your absent images,
  • And points where once you sat, and now should be
  • But are not.—I demand if ever we
  • Shall meet as then we met;—and she replies,
  • Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
  • “I know the past alone—but summon home
  • My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come.”
  • But I, an old diviner, who know well
  • Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
  • Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
  • And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
  • In acting every passage o’er and o’er
  • Of our communion.—How on the sea shore
  • We watched the ocean and the sky together,
  • Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
  • How I ran home through last year’s thunder-storm,
  • And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
  • Upon my cheek:—and how we often made
  • Treats for each other, where good will outweighed
  • The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
  • As it well might, were it less firm and clear
  • Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun
  • A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
  • Of this familiar life, which seems to be
  • But is not,—or is but quaint mockery
  • Of all we would believe; or sadly blame
  • The jarring and inexplicable frame
  • Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize
  • The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
  • Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess
  • The issue of the earth’s great business,
  • When we shall be as we no longer are;
  • Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
  • Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; or how
  • You listened to some interrupted flow
  • Of visionary rhyme;—in joy and pain
  • Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
  • With little skill perhaps;—or how we sought
  • Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
  • Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
  • Staining the sacred waters with our tears;
  • Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
  • Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
  • The language of a land which now is free,
  • And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
  • Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud,
  • And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
  • “My name is Legion!”—that majestic tongue
  • Which Calderon over the desart flung
  • Of ages and of nations; and which found
  • An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
  • Startled oblivion;—thou wert then to me
  • As is a nurse—when inarticulately
  • A child would talk as its grown parents do.
  • If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
  • If hawks chase doves through the aerial way,
  • Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
  • Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast
  • Out of the forest of the pathless past
  • These recollected pleasures?
• • You are now
  • In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
  • At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
  • Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
  • Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
  • * * * * * * *
  • You will see C—; he who sits obscure
  • In the exceeding lustre and the pure
  • Intense irradiation of a mind,
  • Which, with its own internal lustre blind,
  • Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
  • A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
  • A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
  • You will see H—t; one of those happy souls
  • Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
  • This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
  • Who is, what others seem;—his room no doubt
  • Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
  • With graceful flowers, tastefully placed about;
  • And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
  • And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,
  • The gifts of the most learn’d among some dozens
  • Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
  • And there is he with his eternal puns,
  • Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
  • Thundering for money at a poet’s door;
  • Alas! it is no use to say, “I’m poor!”
  • Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
  • Things wiser than were ever said in book,
  • Except in Shakespear’s wisest tenderness.
  • You will see H—, and I cannot express
  • His virtues, though I know that they are great,
  • Because he locks, then barricades, the gate
  • Within which they inhabit;—of his wit
  • And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.
  • He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
  • One of the richest of the deep. And there
  • Is English P— with his mountain Fair
  • Turned into a Flamingo,—that shy bird
  • That gleams i’the Indian air. Have you not heard
  • When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
  • His best friends hear no more of him? but you
  • Will see him and will like him too, I hope,
  • With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
  • Matched with this cameleopard; his fine wit
  • Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
  • A strain too learned for a shallow age,
  • Too wise for selfish bigots;—let his page
  • Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,
  • Fold itself up for a serener clime
  • Of years to come, and find its recompense
  • In that just expectation. Wit and sense,
  • Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
  • Make this dull world a business of delight,
  • Are all combined in H. S.—And these,
  • With some exceptions, which I need not teaze
  • Your patience by descanting on, are all
  • You and I know in London.
• • I recal
  • My thoughts and bid you look upon the night.
  • As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
  • Fills the void, hollow, universal air.
  • What see you?—Unpavilioned heaven is fair,
  • Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
  • Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
  • Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;
  • Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep,
  • Piloted by the many wandering blast,
  • And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast.
  • All this is beautiful in every land.
  • But what see you beside? A shabby stand
  • Of hackney-coaches—a brick house or wall,
  • Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
  • Of our unhappy politics;—or worse—
  • A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
  • Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade,
  • You must accept in place of serenade—
• • I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
  • Built round dark caverns, even to the root
  • Of the living stems who feed them; in whose bowers
  • There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
  • Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
  • Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
  • In circles quaint, and ever changing dance,
  • Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance
  • Pale in the open moonshine; but each one
  • Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
  • A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
  • From the silver regions of the milky way.
  • Afar the Contadino’s song is heard,
  • Rude, but made sweet by distance;—and a bird
  • Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet
  • I know none else that sings so sweet as it
  • At this late hour;—and then all is still:—
  • Now Italy or London, which you will!
• • Next winter you must pass with me; I’ll have
  • My house by that time turned into a grave
  • Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
  • And all the dreams which our tormentors are,
  • Oh that H— — and — were there,
  • With every thing belonging to them fair!—
  • We will have books; Spanish, Italian, Greek,
  • * * * * * * *
  • * * * * * * *
  • * * * * * * *
  • Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
  • Yet let’s be merry: we’ll have tea and toast;
  • Custards for supper, and an endless host
  • Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
  • And other such lady-like luxuries,—
  • Feasting on which we will philosophise.
  • And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood,
  • To thaw the six weeks winter in our blood.
  • And then we’ll talk;—what shall we talk about?
  • Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
  • Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves
  • With cones and parallelograms and curves,
  • I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare
  • To bother me,—when you are with me there.
  • And they shall never more sip laudanum
  • From Helicon or Himeros; —we’ll come
  • And in despite of * * * and of the devil,
  • Will make our friendly philosophic revel
  • Outlast the leafless time;—till buds and flowers
  • Warn the obscure, inevitable hours
  • Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;—
  • “To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.

• • Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
  • Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
  • Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
• • Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth—
  • The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
  • Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
• • Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose,
  • To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
  • All flowers in field or forest which unclose
• • Their trembling cyelids to the kiss of day,
  • Swinging their censers in the element,
  • With orient incense lit by the new ray
• • Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
  • Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
  • And, in succession due, did continent,
• • Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
  • The form and character of mortal mould,
  • Rise as the sun their father rose, to bear
• • Their portion of the toil, which he of old
  • Took as his own and then imposed on them:
  • But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
• • Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
  • The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
  • Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
• • Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
  • Of a green Apennine: before me fled
  • The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
• • Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,
  • When a strange trance over my fancy grew
  • Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
• • Was so transparent, that the scene came through
  • As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
  • O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
• • That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
  • Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
  • And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
• • Under the self same bough, and heard as there
  • The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
  • Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
  • And then a vision on my brain was rolled.
• • As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
  • This was the tenour of my waking dream:—
  • Methought I sate beside a public way
• • Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
  • Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
  • Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
• • All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
  • Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
  • He made one of the multitude, and so
• • Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
  • One of the million leaves of summer’s bier;
  • Old age and youth, manhood and infancy
• • Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
  • Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
  • Seeking the object of another’s fear;
• • And others as with steps towards the tomb,
  • Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
  • And others mournfully within the gloom
• • Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
  • And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
  • Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
• • But more with motions, which each other crost,
  • Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,
  • Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,
• • Upon that path where flowers never grew,
  • And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
  • Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
• • Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
  • Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
  • Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,
• • With over-arching elms and caverns cold,
  • And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
  • Pursued their serious folly as of old.
• • And as I gazed, methought that in the way
  • The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
  • When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
• • And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,
  • But icy cold, obscured with [blinding] light
  • The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon
• • When on the sunlit limits of the night
  • Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
  • And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,
• • Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
  • The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim frown
  • Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,—
• • So came a chariot on the silent storm
  • Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
  • So sate within, as one whom years deform,
• • Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
  • Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
  • And o’er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
• • Was bent, a dun and faint etherial gloom
  • Tempering the light upon the chariot beam;
  • A Janus-visaged shadow did assume
• • The guidance of that wonder-winged team;
  • The shapes which drew in thick lightnings
  • Were lost:—I heard alone on the air’s soft stream
• • The music of their ever-moving wings.
  • All the four faces of that charioteer
  • Had their eyes banded; little profit brings
• • Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
  • Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun
  • Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
• • Of all that is, has been or will be done;
  • So ill was the car guided—but it past
  • With solemn speed majestically on.
• • The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
  • Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
  • And saw, like clouds upon the thunders blast,
• • The million with fierce song and maniac dance
  • Raging around—such seemed the jubilee
  • As when to meet some conqueror’s advance
• • Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
  • From senate house, and forum, and theatre,
  • When [] upon the free
• • Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
  • Nor wanted here the just similitude
  • Of a triumphal pageant, for where’er
• • The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
  • Was driven;—all those who had grown old in power
  • Or misery,—all who had their age subdued
• • By action or by suffering, and whose hour
  • Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
  • So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;—
• • All those whose fame or infamy must grow
  • Till the great winter lay the form and name
  • Of this green earth with them for ever low;—
• • All but the sacred few who could not tame
  • Their spirits to the conquerors—but as soon
  • As they had touched the world with living flame,
• • Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
  • Or those who put aside the diadem
  • Of earthly thrones or gems []
• • Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem,
  • Were neither mid the mighty captives seen,
  • Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
• • Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
  • The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
  • Who lead it—fleet as shadows on the green,
• • Outspeed the chariot, and without repose
  • Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
  • To savage music, wilder as it grows,
• • They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
  • Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
  • Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
• • Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
  • Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;
  • And in their dance round her who dims the sun,
• • Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
  • As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
  • Bending within each other’s atmosphere
• • Kindle invisibly—and as they glow,
  • Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
  • Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
• • Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
  • That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
  • And die in rain—the fiery band which held
• • Their natures, snaps—the shock still may tingle;
  • One falls and then another in the path
  • Senseless—nor is the desolation single,
• • Yet ere I can say where—the chariot hath
  • Past over them—nor other trace I find
  • But as of foam after the ocean’s wrath
• • Is spent upon the desart shore;—behind,
  • Old men and women foully disarrayed,
  • Shake their grey hairs in the insulting wind,
• • To seek, to [[         ]], to strain with limbs decayed,
  • Limping to reach the light which leaves them still
  • Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
• • But not the less with impotence of will
  • They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
  • Round them and round each other, and fulfil
• • Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose
  • Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,
  • And past in these performs what [] in those.
• • Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
  • Half to myself I said—And what is this?
  • Whose shape is that within the car? And why—
• • I would have added—is all here amiss?—
  • But a voice answered—“Life!”—I turned, and knew
  • (Oh Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness!)
• • That what I thought was an old root which grew
  • To strange distortion out of the hill side,
  • Was indeed one of those deluded crew,
• • And that the grass, which methought hung so wide
  • And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
  • And that the holes it vainly sought to hide,
• • Were or had been eyes:—“If thou canst, forbear
  • To join the dance, which I had well foreborne!”
  • Said the grim Feature of my thought: “Aware,
• • “I will unfold that which to this deep scorn
  • Led me and my companions, and relate
  • The progress of the pageant since the morn;
• • “If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,
  • Follow it thou even to the night, but I
  • Am weary.”—Then like one who with the weight
• • Of his own words is staggered, wearily
  • He paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:
  • “First, who art thou?”—“Before thy memory,
• • “I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died,
  • And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
  • Had been with purer sentiment supplied,
• • “Corruption would not now thus much inherit
  • Of what was once Rousseau,—nor this disguise
  • Stained that which ought to have disdained to wear it;
• • “If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
  • A thousand beacons from the spark I bore”—
  • “And who are those chained to the car?”—“The wise,
• • “The great, the unforgotten,—they who wore
  • Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,
  • Signs of thought’s empire over thought—their lore
• • “Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
  • Could not repress the mystery within,
  • And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
• • “Caught them ere evening.”—“Who is he with chin
  • Upon his breast, and hands crost on his chain?”—
  • “The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
• • “The world, and lost all that it did contain
  • Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
  • Of fame and peace than virtue’s self can gain
• • “Without the opportunity which bore
  • Him on its eagle pinions to the peak
  • From which a thousand climbers have before
• • “Fall’n, as Napoleon fell.”—I felt my cheek
  • Alter, to see the shadow pass away
  • Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak,
• • That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
  • And much I grieved to think how power and will
  • In opposition rule our mortal day,
• • And why God made irreconcilable
  • Good and the means of good; and for despair
  • I half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill
• • With the spent vision of the times that were
  • And scarce have ceased to be.—“Dost thou behold,”
  • Said my guide, “those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
• • “Frederic, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,
  • And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage—
  • — name the world thinks always old,
• • “For in the battle, life and they did wage,
  • She remained conqueror. I was overcome
  • By my own heart alone, which neither age,
• • “Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb
  • Could temper to its object.”—“Let them pass,”
  • I cried, “the world and its mysterious doom
• • “Is not so much more glorious than it was,
  • That I desire to worship those who drew
  • New figures on its false and fragile glass
• • “As the old faded.”—“Figures ever new
  • Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;
  • We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
• • “Our shadows on it as it past away.
  • But mark how chained to the triumphal chair
  • The mighty phantoms of an elder day;
• • “All that is mortal of great Plato there
  • Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not;
  • The star that ruled his doom was far too fair,
• • “And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
  • Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
  • Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.
• • “And near walk the [] twain,
  • The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
  • Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
• • “The world was darkened beneath either pinion
  • Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
  • Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion;
• • “The other long outlived both woes and wars,
  • Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept
  • The jealous key of truth’s eternal doors,
• • “If Bacon’s eagle spirit had not leapt
  • Like lightning out of darkness—he compelled
  • The Proteus shape of Nature as it slept
• • “To wake, and lead him to the caves that held
  • The treasure of the secrets of its reign.
  • See the great bards of elder time, who quelled
• • “The passions which they sung, as by their strain
  • May well be known: their living melody
  • Tempers its own contagion to the vein
• • “Of those who are infected with it—I
  • Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!
  • And so my words have seeds of misery”—

[There is a chasm here in the MS. which it is impossible to fill up. It appears from the context, that other shapes pass, and that Rousseau still stood beside the dreamer, as]—

• • — he pointed to a company,
  • Midst whom I quickly recognised the heirs
  • Of Cæsar’s crime, from him to Constantine;
  • The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares
• • Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line,
  • And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:
  • And Gregory and John, and men divine,
• • Who rose like shadows between man and God;
  • Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven,
  • Was worshipped by the world o’er which they strode,
• • For the true sun it quenched—“Their power was given
  • But to destroy,” replied the leader:—“I
  • Am one of those who have created, even
• • “If it be but a world of agony.”—
  • “Whence comest thou? and whither goest thou?
  • How did thy course begin?” I said, “and why?
• • “Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
  • Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought—
  • Speak!”—“Whence I am, I partly seem to know,
• • “And how and by what paths I have been brought
  • To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;—
  • Why this should be, my mind can compass not;
• • “Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less;—
  • But follow thou, and from spectator turn
  • Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
• • “And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
  • From thee. Now listen:—In the April prime,
  • When all the forest tips began to burn
• • “With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
  • Of the young year’s dawn, I was laid asleep
  • Under a mountain, which from unknown time
• • “Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;
  • And from it came a gentle rivulet,
  • Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep
• • “Bent the soft grass, and kept forever wet
  • The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
  • With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget
• • “All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,
  • Which they had known before that hour of rest;
  • A sleeping mother then would dream not of
• • “Her only child who died upon her breast
  • At eventide—a king would mourn no more
  • The crown of which his brows were dispossest
• • “When the sun lingered o’er his ocean floor,
  • To gild his rival’s new prosperity.
  • Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
• • “Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee,
  • The thought of which no other sleep will quell,
  • Nor other music blot from memory,
• • “So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell;
  • And whether life had been before that sleep
  • The heaven which I imagine, or a hell
• • “Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
  • I know not. I arose, and for a space
  • The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,
• • “Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
  • Of light diviner than the common sun
  • Sheds on the common earth, and all the place
• • “Was filled with magic sounds woven into one
  • Oblivious melody, confusing sense
  • Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun;
• • “And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence
  • Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
  • And the sun’s image radiantly intense
• • “Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
  • Like gold, and threaded all the forest’s maze
  • With winding paths of emerald fire; there stood
• • “Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
  • Of his own glory, on the vibrating
  • Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
• • “A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling
  • Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,
  • And the invisible rain did ever sing
• • “A silver music on the mossy lawn;
  • And still before me on the dusky grass,
  • Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn:
• • “In her right hand she bore a crystal glass,
  • Mantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendour
  • Fell from her as she moved under the mass
• • “Out of the deep cavern, with palms so tender,
  • Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow;
  • She glided along the river, and did bend her
• • “Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow,
  • Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
  • That whispered with delight to be its pillow.
• • “As one enamoured is upborne in dream
  • O’er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist,
  • To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
• • “Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed
  • The dancing foam; partly to glide along
  • The air which roughened the moist amethyst,
• • “Or the faint morning beams that fell among
  • The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
  • And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song
• • “Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and bees,
  • And falling drops, moved to a measure new
  • Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,
• • “Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
  • Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
  • Dances i’ the wind, where never eagle flew;
• • “And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
  • To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
  • The thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon
• • “All that was, seemed as if it had been not;
  • And all the gazer’s mind was strewn beneath
  • Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,
• • “Trampled its sparks into the dust of death;
  • As day upon the threshold of the east
  • Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
• • “Of darkness re-illumine even the least
  • Of heaven’s living eyes—like day she came,
  • Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
• • “To move, as one between desire and shame
  • Suspended, I said—If, as it doth seem,
  • Thou comest from the realm without a name,
• • “Into this valley of perpetual dream,
  • Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why—
  • Pass not away upon the passing stream.
• • “Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply.
  • And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
  • Of dewy morning’s vital alchemy,
• • “I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
  • Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
  • And suddenly my brain became as sand
• • “Where the first wave had more than half erased
  • The track of deer on desart Labrador;
  • Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,
• • “Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,
  • Until the second bursts;—so on my sight
  • Burst a new vision, never seen before,
• • “And the fair shape waned in the coming light,
  • As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
  • From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
• • “Of sun-rise, ere it tinge the mountain tops;
  • And as the presence of that fairest planet,
  • Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes
• • “That his day’s path may end as he began it,
  • In that star’s smile, whose light is like the scent
  • Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
• • “Or the soft note in which his dear lament
  • The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
  • That turned his weary slumber to content;
• • “So knew I in that light’s severe excess
  • The presence of that shape which on the stream
  • Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
• • “More dimly than a day-appearing dream,
  • The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep;
  • A light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam
• • “Through the sick day in which we wake to weep,
  • Glimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost;
  • So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
• • “Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
  • But the new Vision, and the cold bright car,
  • With solemn speed and stunning music, crost
• • “The forest, and as if from some dread war
  • Triumphantly returning, the loud million
  • Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
• • “A moving arch of victory, the vermilion
  • And green and azure plumes of Iris had
  • Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
• • “And underneath etherial glory clad
  • The wilderness, and far before her flew
  • The tempest of the splendour, which forbade
• • “Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew
  • Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance
  • Within a sunbeam;—some upon the new
• • “Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance
  • The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
  • Forgetful of the chariot’s swift advance;
• • “Others stood gazing, till within the shade
  • Of the great mountain its light left them dim;
  • Others outspeeded it; and others made
• • “Circles around it, like the clouds that swim
  • Round the high moon in a bright sea of air;
  • And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
• • “The chariot and the captives fettered there:—
  • But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
  • Fell into the same track at last, and were
• • “Borne onward.—I among the multitude
  • Was swept—me, sweetest flowers delayed not long;
  • Me, not the shadow nor the solitude;
• • “Me, not that falling stream’s Lethean song;
  • Me, not the phantom of that early form,
  • Which moved upon its motion—but among
• • “The thickest billows of that living storm
  • I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
  • Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
• • “Before the chariot had begun to climb
  • The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
  • Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
• • “Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,
  • Through every paradise and through all glory,
  • Love led serene, and who returned to tell
• • “The words of hate and care; the wondrous story
  • How all things are transfigured except Love;
  • For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,
• • “The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
  • The sphere whose light is melody to lovers—
  • A wonder worthy of his rhyme—the grove
• • “Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
  • The earth was grey with phantoms, and the air
  • Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
• • “A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
  • Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening,
  • Strange night upon some Indian vale;—thus were
• • “Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling
  • Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
  • Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing
• • “Were lost in the white day; others like elves
  • Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
  • Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;
• • “And others sate chattering like restless apes
  • On vulgar hands, * * * * *
  • Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
• • “Of kingly mantles; some across the tire
  • Of pontiffs rode, like demons; others played
  • Under the crown which girt with empire
• • “A baby’s or an ideot’s brow, and made
  • Their nests in it. The old anatomies
  • Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade
• • “Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
  • To reassume the delegated power,
  • Array’d in which those worms did monarchize,
• • “Who make this earth their charnel. Others more
  • Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist
  • Of common men, and round their heads did soar;
• • “Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist
  • On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
  • Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist:—
• • “And others, like discoloured flakes of snow
  • On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,
  • Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
• • “Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were
  • A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
  • In drops of sorrow. I became aware
• • “Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
  • The track in which we moved. After brief space,
  • From every form the beauty slowly waned;
• • “From every firmest limb and fairest face
  • The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
  • The action and the shape without the grace
• • “Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft
  • With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,
  • Desire, like a lioness bereft
• • “Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one
  • Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
  • These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
• • “In autumn evening from a poplar tree.
  • Each like himself and like each other were
  • At first; but some distorted seemed to be
• • “Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;
  • And of this stuff the car’s creative ray
  • Wrapt all the busy phantoms that were there,
• • “As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way
  • Mask after mask fell from the countenance
  • And form of all; and long before the day
• • “Was old, the joy which waked like heaven’s glance
  • The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;
  • And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,
• • “And fell, as I have fallen, by the way side;—
  • Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past,
  • And least of strength and beauty did abide.
• • “Then, what is life? I cried.”—

FRAGMENTS FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

• • He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
  • He fled like a shadow before its noon;
  • He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
  • And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
  • O sweet Echo wake,
  • And for my sake
  • Make answer the while my heart shall break!
• • But heart has a music which Echo’s lips,
  • Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
  • And the shadow that moves in the soul’s eclipse
  • Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
  • Sweet lips! he who hath
  • On my desolate path
  • Cast the darkness of absence worse than death!

Indian.

• And if my grief should still be dearer to me
• Than all the pleasure in the world beside,
• Why would you lighten it?—

Lady.

• I offer only
• That which I seek, some human sympathy
• In this mysterious island.

The Indian.

• Oh! my friend,
• My sister, my beloved! What do I say?
• My brain is dizzy and I scarce know whether
• I speak to thee or her. Peace, perturbed heart!
• I am to thee only as thou to mine,
• The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,
• And may strike cold into the breast at night,
• Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,
• Or long soothe could it linger. But you said
• You also loved?

Lady.

• Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks
• This word of love is fit for all the world,
• And that for gentle hearts another name
• Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.
• I have loved.

The Indian.

• And thou lovest not? if so
• Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.

Lady.

• Oh! would that I could claim exemption
• From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
• I loved, I love, and when I love no more
• Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair
• To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
• The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
• Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
• The shadow of his presence made my world
• A paradise. All familiar things he touched,
• All common words he spoke, became to me
• Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
• He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
• As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
• He came, and went, and left me what I am.
• Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
• Have sate together near the river springs,
• Under the green pavilion which the willow
• Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
• Strewn by the nurslings that linger there,
• Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
• While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
• Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
• Sad prophetess of sorrows not our own.

Indian.

• Your breath is like soft music, your words are
• The echoes of a voice which on my heart
• Sleeps like a melody of early days.
• But as you said—

Lady.

• He was so awful, yet
• So beautiful in mystery and terror,
• Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
• Soothes the unquiet sea:—and yet not so,
• For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
• A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
• For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
• But he was not of them, nor they of him,
• But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
• Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
• And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
• More need was there I should be innocent,
• More need that I should be most true and kind,
• And much more need that there should be found one
• To share remorse, and scorn and solitude,
• And all the ills that wait on those who do
• The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
• He fled and I have followed him.

February, 1822.

PRINCE ATHANASE:

A FRAGMENT.

• • There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
  • Had grown quite weak and grey before his time;
  • Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
• • Which burned within him, withering up his prime
  • And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
  • Not his the load of any secret crime,
• • For nought of ill his heart could understand,
  • But pity and wild sorrow for the same;—
  • Not his the thirst for glory or command
• • Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;
  • Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast
  • And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
• • Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
  • Nor what religion fables of the grave
  • Feared he,—Philosophy’s accepted guest.
• • For none than he a purer heart could have,
  • Or that loved good more for itself alone;
  • Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
• • What sorrow deep, and shadowy, and unknown,
  • Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?—
  • If with a human sadness he did groan,
• • He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
  • Just, innocent, with varied learning fed,
  • And such a glorious consolation find
• • In others’ joy, when all their own is dead:
  • He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
  • And yet, unlike all others, it is said,
• • That from such toil he never found relief;
  • Although a child of fortune and of power,
  • Of an ancestral name the orphan chief.
• • His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower
  • Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
  • Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
• • Pitying the tumult of their dark estate—
  • Yet even in youth did he not e’er abuse
  • The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
• • Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
  • To blind the world they famish for their pride;
  • Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
• • But like a steward in honest dealings tried,
  • With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise
  • His riches and his cares he did divide.
• • Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
  • What he dared do or think, though men might start,
  • He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;
• • Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
  • And to his many friends—all loved him well—
  • Whate’er he knew or felt he would impart,
• • If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
  • If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes
  • He neither spurned nor hated, though with fell
• • And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
  • They past like aimless arrows from his ear—
  • Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
• • To those, or them, or any whom life’s sphere
  • May comprehend within its wide array.
  • What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?
• • He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
  • Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
  • Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,
• • Through which his soul, like Vespers’ serene beam
  • Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
  • Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
• • Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
  • And through his sleep, and o’er each waking hour,
  • Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
• • Were driven within him, by some secret power,
  • Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
  • Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
• • O’er castled mountains borne, when tempest’s war
  • Is levied by the night-contending winds,
  • And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;—
• • Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
  • Which wake and feed on everliving woe,—
  • What was this grief, which ne’er in other minds
• • A mirror found,—he knew not—none could know;
  • But on whoe’er might question him he turned
  • The light of his frank eyes, as if to show,
• • He knew not of the grief within that burned,
  • But asked forbearance with a mournful look;
  • Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
• • The cause of his disquietude; or shook
  • With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
  • So that his friends soon rarely undertook
• • To stir his secret pain without avail;—
  • For all who knew and loved him then perceived
  • That there was drawn an adamantine veil
• • Between his heart and mind,—both unrelieved
  • Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
  • Some said that he was mad, others believed
• • That memories of an antenatal life
  • Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
  • And others said that such mysterious grief
• • From God’s displeasure, like a darkness, fell
  • On souls like his which owned no higher law
  • Than love; love calm, stedfast, invincible
• • By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
  • And others,—“ ’Tis the shadow of a dream
  • Which the veiled eye of memory never saw
• • “But through the soul’s abyss, like some dark stream
  • Through shattered mines and caverns underground
  • Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
• • “Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
  • In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure,
  • Soon its exhausted waters will have found
• • “A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
  • O Athanase!—in one so good and great,
  • Evil or tumult cannot long endure.”
• • So spake they: idly of another’s state
  • Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;
  • This was their consolation; such debate
• • Men held with one another; nor did he
  • Like one who labours with a human woe
  • Decline this talk; as if its theme might be
• • Another, not himself, he to and fro
  • Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit,
  • And none but those who loved him best could know
• • That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
  • His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
  • For like an eyeless night-mare grief did sit
• • Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
  • Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
  • Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;—
  • And so his grief remained—let it remain—untold.

December, 1817.

ODE TO NAPLES.

• EPODE I. α.
• I stood within the city disinterred;
• And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
• Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
• The Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals
• Thrill through those roofless halls;
• The oracular thunder penetrating shook
• The listening soul in my suspended blood;
• I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke—
• I felt, but heard not:—through white columns glowed
• The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood,
• A plane of light between two Heavens of azure:
• Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
• Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
• Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
• But every living lineament was clear
• As in the sculptor’s thought; and there
• The wreathes of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
• Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,
• Seemed only not to move and grow
• Because the crystal silence of the air
• Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
• Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

• EPODE II. α.
• Then gentle winds arose
• With many a mingled close
• Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen;
• And where the Baian ocean
• Welters with airlike motion,
• Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
• Moving the sea flowers in those purple caves
• Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
• Floats o’er the Elysian realm,
• It bore me like an Angel, o’er the waves
• Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
• No storm can overwhelm;
• I sailed, where ever flows
• Under the calm Serene
• A spirit of deep emotion
• From the unknown graves
• Of the dead kings of Melody.
• Shadowy Aornos darkened o’er the helm
• The horizontal æther; heaven stript bare
• Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
• Made the invisible water white as snow;
• From that Typhæan mount, Inarime
• There streamed a sunlike vapour, like the standard
• Of some ethereal host;
• Whilst from all the coast,
• Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
• Over the oracular woods and divine sea
• Prophesyings which grew articulate—
• They seize me—I must speak them—be they fate!

• STROPHE α. I.
• Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
• Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
• Elysian City which to calm enchantest
• The mutinous air and sea: they round thee, even
• As sleep round Love, are driven!
• Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
• Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
• Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,
• Which armed Victory offers up unstained
• To Love, the flower-enchained!
• Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
• Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
• If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
• Hail, hail, all hail!

• STROPHE β. 2.
• Thou youngest giant birth
• Which from the groaning earth
• Leap’st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!
• Last, of the Intercessors!
• Who ’gainst the Crowned Transgressors
• Pleadest before God’s love! Arrayed in Wisdom’s mail,
• Wave thy lightning lance in mirth
• Nor let thy high heart fail,
• Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors,
• With hurried legions move!
• Hail, hail, all hail!

• ANTISTROPHE α.
• What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
• Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
• To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
• To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer,
• A new Acteon’s error
• Shall their’s have been—devoured by their own hounds!
• Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
• Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
• Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk
• Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk,
• Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow,
• And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;
• If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
• Thou shalt be great—All hail!

• ANTISTROPHE β. 2.
• From Freedom’s form divine,
• From Nature’s inmost shrine,
• Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil:
• O’er Ruin desolate,
• O’er Falsehood’s fallen state
• Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
• And equal laws be thine,
• And winged words let sail,
• Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:
• That wealth, surviving fate,
• Be thine.—All hail!

• ANTISTROPHE α. γ.
• Didst thou not start to hear Spain’s thrilling pæan
• From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
• Till silence became music? From the Æean
• To the cold Alps, eternal Italy
• Starts to hear thine! The Sea
• Which paves the desart streets of Venice laughs
• In light and music; widowed Genoa wan
• By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
• Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan,
• Within whose veins long ran
• The vipers palsying venom, lifts her heel
• To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
• (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
• Art Thou of all these hopes.—O hail!

• ANTISTROPHE β. γ.
• Florence! beneath the sun,
• Of cities fairest one,
• Blushes within her bower for Freedom’s expectation:
• From eyes of quenchless hope
• Rome tears the priestly cope,
• As fuling once by power, so now by admiration,
• An athlete stript to run
• From a remoter station
• For the high prize lost on Philippi’s shore:—
• As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,
• So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

• EPODE I. β.
• Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
• Arrayed against the everliving Gods?
• The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
• Bursting their inaccessible abodes
• Of crags and thunder-clouds?
• See ye the banners blazoned to the day,
• Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?
• Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,
• The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide
• With iron light is dyed,
• The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions
• Like Chaos o’er creation, uncreating;
• An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
• And lawless slaveries,—down the aerial regions
• Of the white Alps, desolating,
• Famished wolves that bide no waiting,
• Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory,
• Trampling our columned cities into dust,
• Their dull and savage lust
• On Beauty’s corse to sickness satiating—
• They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary
• With fire—from their red feet the streams run gory!

• EPODE II. β.
• Great Spirit, deepest Love!
• Which rulest and dost move
• All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
• Who spreadest heaven around it,
• Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;
• Who sittest in thy star, o’er Ocean’s western floor,
• Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command
• The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison
• From the Earth’s bosom chill;
• O bid those beams be each a blinding brand
• Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!
• Bid the Earth’s plenty kill!
• Bid thy bright Heaven above,
• Whilst light and darkness bound it,
• Be their tomb who planned
• To make it ours and thine!
• Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill
• And raise thy sons, as o’er the prone horizon
• Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire—
• Be man’s high hope and unextinct desire,
• The instrument to work thy will divine!
• Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards,
• And frowns and fears from Thee,
• Would not more swiftly flee
• Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.—
• Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
• Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be
• This city of thy worship ever free!

September, 1820.

MARIANNE’S DREAM.

• • A pale dream came to a Lady fair,
  • And said, a boon, a boon, I pray!
  • I know the secrets of the air,
  • And things are lost in the glare of day,
  • Which I can make the sleeping see,
  • If they will put their trust in me.
• • And thou shalt know of things unknown,
  • If thou wilt let me rest between
  • The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
  • Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:
  • And half in hope, and half in fright,
  • The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
• • At first all deadly shapes were driven
  • Tumultuously across her sleep,
  • And o’er the vast cope of bending heaven
  • All ghastly visaged clouds did sweep;
  • And the Lady ever looked to spy
  • If the gold sun shone forth on high.
• • And as towards the east she turned,
  • She saw aloft in the morning air,
  • Which now with hues of sunrise burned
  • A great black Anchor rising there;
  • And wherever the Lady turned her eyes,
  • It hung before her in the skies.
• • The sky was blue as the summer sea,
  • The depths were cloudless over head,
  • The air was calm as it could be,
  • There was no sight or sound of dread,
  • But that black Anchor floating still
  • Over the piny eastern hill.
• • The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear,
  • To see that Anchor ever hanging,
  • And veiled her eyes; she then did hear
  • The sound as of a dim low clanging,
  • And looked abroad if she might know
  • Was it aught else, or but the flow
  • Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.
• • There was a mist in the sunless air,
  • Which shook as it were with an earthquake’s shock,
  • But the very weeds that blossomed there
  • Were moveless, and each mighty rock
  • Stood on its basis stedfastly;
  • The Anchor was seen no more on high.
• • But piled around, with summits hid
  • In lines of cloud at intervals,
  • Stood many a mountain pyramid
  • Among whose everlasting walls
  • Two mighty cities shone, and ever
  • Through the red mist their domes did quiver
• • On two dread mountains, from whose crest,
  • Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
  • Would ne’er have hung her dizzy nest,
  • Those tower-encircled cities stood.
  • A vision strange such towers to see,
  • Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously,
  • Where human art could never be.
• • And columns framed of marble white,
  • And giant fanes, dome over dome
  • Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
  • With workmanship, which could not come
  • From touch of mortal instrument,
  • Shot o’er the vales, or lustre lent
  • From its own shapes magnificent.
• • But still the Lady heard that clang
  • Filling the wide air far away;
  • And still the mist whose light did hang
  • Among the mountains shook alway,
  • So that the Lady’s heart beat fast,
  • As half in joy, and half aghast,
  • On those high domes her look she cast.
• • Sudden, from out that city sprung
  • A light that made the earth grow red;
  • Two flames that each with quivering tongu
  • Licked its high domes, and over head
  • Among those mighty towers and fanes
  • Dropped fire, as a volcano rains
  • Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.
• • And hark! a rush as if the deep
  • Had burst its bonds; she looked behind
  • And saw over the western steep
  • A raging flood descend, and wind
  • Through that wide vale; she felt no fear,
  • But said within herself, ’tis clear
  • These towers are Nature’s own, and she
  • To save them has sent forth the sea.
• • And now those raging billows came
  • Where that fair Lady sate, and she
  • Was borne towards the showering flame
  • By the wild waves heaped tumultuously,
  • And on a little plank, the flow
  • Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.
• • The waves were fiercely vomited
  • From every tower and every dome,
  • And dreary light did widely shed
  • O’er that vast flood’s suspended foam,
  • Beneath the smoke which hung its night
  • On the stained cope of heaven’s light.
• • The plank whereon that Lady sate
  • Was driven through the chasms, about and about,
  • Between the peaks so desolate
  • Of the drowning mountain, in and out,
  • As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails—
  • While the flood was filling those hollow vales.
• • At last her plank an eddy crost,
  • And bore her to the city’s wall,
  • Which now the flood had reached almost;
  • It might the stoutest heart appal
  • To hear the fire roar and hiss
  • Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
• • The eddy whirled her round and round
  • Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
  • Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound
  • Its aery arch with light like blood;
  • She looked on that gate of marble clear,
  • With wonder that extinguished fear.
• • For it was filled with sculptures rarest,
  • Of forms most beautiful and strange,
  • Like nothing human, but the fairest
  • Of winged shapes, whose legions range
  • Throughout the sleep of those that are,
  • Like this same Lady, good and fair.
• • And as she looked, still lovelier grew
  • Those marble forms;—the sculptor sure
  • Was a strong spirit, and the hue
  • Of his own mind did there endure
  • After the touch, whose power had braided
  • Such grace, was in some sad change faded.
• • She looked, the flames were dim, the flood
  • Grew tranquil as a woodland river
  • Winding through hills in solitude;
  • Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,
  • And their fair limbs to float in motion,
  • Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.
• • And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,
  • When suddenly the mountain crackt,
  • And through the chasm the flood did break
  • With an earth-uplifting cataract:
  • The statues gave a joyous scream,
  • And on its wings the pale thin dream
  • Lifted the Lady from the stream.
• • The dizzy flight of that phantom pale
  • Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,
  • And she arose, while from the veil
  • Of her dark eyes the dream did creep,
  • And she walked about as one who knew
  • That sleep has sights as clear and true
  • As any waking eyes can view.

Marlow, 1817.

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

• • I.

  • The everlasting universe of things
  • Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
  • Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
  • Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
  • The source of human thought its tribute brings
  • Of waters,—with a sound but half its own,
  • Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
  • In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
  • Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
  • Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
  • Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

• • II.

  • Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—
  • Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
  • Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
  • Fast cloud, shadows, and sunbeams: awful scene,
  • Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
  • From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne,
  • Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
  • Of lightning thro’ the tempest;—thou dost lie,
  • Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
  • Children of elder time, in whose devotion
  • The chainless winds still come and ever came
  • To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
  • To hear—an old and solemn harmony:
  • Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
  • Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
  • Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
  • Which, when the voices of the desart fail,
  • Wraps all in its own deep eternity;—
  • Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion
  • A loud, lone sound, no other sound can tame;
  • Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
  • Thou art the path of that unresting sound—
  • Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
  • I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
  • To muse on my own separate phantasy,
  • My own, my human mind, which passively
  • Now renders and receives fast influencings,
  • Holding an unremitting interchange
  • With the clear universe of things around;
  • One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
  • Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
  • Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
  • In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
  • Seeking among the shadows that pass by
  • Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
  • Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
  • From which they fled recals them, thou art there!

• • III.

  • Some say that gleams of a remoter world
  • Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,
  • And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
  • Of those who wake and live.—I look on high;
  • Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
  • The veil of life and death? or do I lie
  • In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
  • Spread far around and inaccessibly
  • Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
  • Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
  • That vanishes among the viewless gales!
  • Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
  • Mont Blanc appears,—still, snowy, and serene—
  • Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
  • Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
  • Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
  • Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
  • And wind among the accumulated steeps;
  • A desart peopled by the storms alone,
  • Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,
  • And the wolf tracts her there—how hideously
  • Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
  • Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene
  • Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young
  • Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
  • Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
  • None can reply—all seems eternal now.
  • The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
  • Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
  • So solemn, so serene, that man may be
  • But for such faith with nature reconciled;
  • Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
  • Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
  • By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
  • Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

• • IV.

  • The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
  • Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
  • Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,
  • Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
  • The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
  • Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
  • Holds every future leaf and flower;—the bound
  • With which from that detested trance they leap;
  • The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
  • And that of him and all that his may be;
  • All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
  • Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell.
  • Power dwells apart in its tranquillity
  • Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
  • And this, the naked countenance of earth,
  • On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains,
  • Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
  • Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
  • Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice
  • Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
  • Have piled—dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
  • A city of death, distinct with many a tower
  • And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
  • Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
  • Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
  • Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
  • Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
  • Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
  • From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
  • The limits of the dead and living world,
  • Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
  • Of insects, beasts, and birds becomes its spoil;
  • Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
  • So much of life and joy is lost. The race
  • Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
  • Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,
  • And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
  • Shine in the rushing torrent’s restless gleam,
  • Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
  • Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
  • The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
  • Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
  • Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

• • V.

  • Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
  • The still and solemn power of many sights
  • And many sounds, and much of life and death.
  • In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
  • In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
  • Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
  • Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
  • Or the star-beams dart through them:—Winds contend
  • Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
  • Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
  • The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
  • Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
  • Over the snow. The secret strength of things
  • Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
  • Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
  • And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
  • If to the human mind’s imaginings
  • Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Switzerland, June 23, 1816.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

FRAGMENTS.

ALASTOR; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE.

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem amans amare.

—Confess. St. August.

• • Earth, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!
  • If our great Mother has imbued my soul
  • With aught of natural piety to feel
  • Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
  • If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
  • With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
  • And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;
  • If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,
  • And winter robing with pure snow and crowns
  • Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
  • If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes
  • Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
  • If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
  • I consciously have injured, but still loved
  • And cherished these my kindred;—then forgive
  • This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw
  • No portion of your wonted favour now!
  • Mother of this unfathomable world!
  • Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
  • Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
  • Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps
  • And my heart ever gazes on the depth
  • Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
  • In charnels and on coffins, where black death
  • Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
  • Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
  • Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
  • Thy messenger, to render up the tale
  • Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,
  • When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
  • Like an inspired and desperate alchymist
  • Staking his very life on some dark hope,
  • Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
  • With my most innocent love, until strange tears
  • Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
  • Such magic as compels the charmed night
  • To render up thy charge: . . . . and, though ne’er yet
  • Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
  • Enough from incommunicable dream,
  • And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought
  • Has shone within me, that serenely now,
  • And moveless as a long-forgotten lyre,
  • Suspended in the solitary dome
  • Of some mysterious and deserted fane,
  • I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain
  • May modulate with murmurs of the air,
  • And motions of the forests and the sea,
  • And voice of living beings, and woven hymns
  • Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.
  • There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
  • No human hands with pious reverence reared,
  • But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds
  • Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid
  • Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:
  • A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked
  • With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,
  • The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:
  • Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard
  • Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:
  • He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.
  • Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
  • And virgins, as unknown he past, have sighed
  • And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
  • The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
  • And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
  • Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
• • By solemn vision and bright silver dream,
  • His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
  • And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,
  • Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
  • The fountains of divine philosophy
  • Fled not his thirsting lips; and all of great,
  • Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
  • In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
  • And knew. When early youth had past, he left
  • His cold fireside and alienated home
  • To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
  • Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
  • Has lured his fearless steps; and as he bought
  • With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,
  • His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps
  • He like her shadow, has pursued, where’er
  • The red volcano overcanopies
  • Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
  • With burning smoke; or where bitumen lakes,
  • On black bare pointed islets ever beat
  • With sluggish surge; or where the secret caves
  • Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
  • Of fire and poison, inaccessible
  • To avarice or pride, their starry domes
  • Of diamond and of gold expand above
  • Numberless and immeasurable halls,
  • Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines
  • Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
  • Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
  • Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven
  • And the green earth lost in his heart its claims
  • To love and wonder; he would linger long
  • In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
  • Until the doves and squirrels would partake
  • From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,
  • Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
  • And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er
  • The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
  • Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form
  • More graceful than her own.
• • His wandering step,
  • Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
  • The awful ruins of the days of old:
  • Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
  • Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
  • Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
  • Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange
  • Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,
  • Or jaspar tomb, or mutilated sphinx,
  • Dark Ethiopia on her desart hills
  • Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
  • Stupendous columns, and wild images
  • Of more than man, where marble demons watch
  • The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men
  • Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
  • He lingered, poring on memorials
  • Of the world’s youth, through the long burning day
  • Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon
  • Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades
  • Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
  • And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
  • Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
  • The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
• • Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
  • Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,
  • And spread her matting for his couch, and stole
  • From duties and repose to tend his steps:—
  • Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
  • To speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,
  • Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips
  • Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
  • Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn
  • Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home,
  • Wildered and wan and panting, she returned.
• • The Poet wandering on, through Arabie
  • And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
  • And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down
  • Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,
  • In joy and exultation held his way;
  • Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within
  • Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
  • Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,
  • Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched
  • His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep
  • There came, a dream of hopes that never yet
  • Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid
  • Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
  • Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
  • Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
  • Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
  • His inmost sense suspended in its web
  • Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.
  • Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
  • And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
  • Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
  • Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
  • Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
  • A permeating fire: wild numbers then
  • She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
  • Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
  • Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
  • Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
  • The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
  • The beating of her heart was heard to fill
  • The pauses of her music, and her breath
  • Tumultuously accorded with those fits
  • Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
  • As if her heart impatiently endured
  • Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
  • And saw by the warm light of their own life
  • Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
  • Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
  • Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
  • Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
  • Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
  • His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
  • Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled
  • His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
  • Her panting bosom:—she drew back awhile,
  • Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
  • With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
  • Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
  • Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
  • Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
  • Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
  • Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
• • Roused by the shock, he started from his trance—
  • The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
  • Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
  • The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
  • Spread round where he stood.—Whither have fled
  • The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
  • Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
  • The mystery and the majesty of earth,
  • The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
  • Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
  • As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.
  • The spirit of sweet human love has sent
  • A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
  • Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
  • Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
  • He overleaps the bound. Alas! Alas!
  • Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
  • Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,
  • In the wide pathless desart of dim sleep,
  • That beautiful shape! does the dark gate of death
  • Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
  • O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,
  • And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
  • Lead only to a black and watery depth,
  • While death’s blue vault with loathliest vapours hung,
  • Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
  • Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
  • Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
  • This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,
  • The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung
  • His brain even like despair.
• • While day-light held
  • The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
  • With his still soul. At night the passion came,
  • Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
  • And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
  • Into the darkness.—As an eagle grasped
  • In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
  • Burn with the poison, and precipitates
  • Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
  • Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
  • O’er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven
  • By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,
  • Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
  • Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
  • Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,
  • He fled.—Red morning dawned upon his flight,
  • Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
  • Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
  • Till vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep
  • Hung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;
  • Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
  • Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
  • Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
  • Day after day, a weary waste of hours,
  • Bearing within his life the brooding care
  • That ever fed on its decaying flame.
  • And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,
  • Sered by the autumn of strange suffering,
  • Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
  • Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
  • Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
  • As in a furnace burning secretly
  • From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
  • Who ministered with human charity
  • His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
  • Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
  • Encountering on some dizzy precipice
  • That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind
  • With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
  • Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
  • In his career. The infant would conceal
  • His troubled visage in his mother’s robe
  • In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
  • To remember their strange light in many a dream
  • Of after-times: but youthful maidens taught
  • By nature, would interpret half the woe
  • That wasted him, would call him with false names
  • Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
  • At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
  • Of his departure from their father’s door.
• • At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
  • He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
  • Of putrid marshes—a strong impulse urged
  • His steps to the sea shore. A swan was there
  • Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
  • It rose as he approached, and with strong wings
  • Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
  • High over the immeasurable main.
  • His eyes pursued its flight.—“Thou hast a home,
  • Beautiful bird, thou voyagest to thine home,
  • Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
  • With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
  • Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
  • And what am I that I should linger here
  • With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
  • Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
  • To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
  • In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
  • That echoes not my thoughts?” A gloomy smile
  • Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
  • For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
  • Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
  • Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
  • With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
• • Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.
  • There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
  • Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
  • A little shallop floating near the shore
  • Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
  • It had been long abandoned, for its sides
  • Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
  • Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
  • A restless impulse urged him to embark,
  • And meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;
  • For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
  • The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
• • The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky
  • Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
  • Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.
  • Following his eager soul, the wanderer
  • Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft
  • On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
  • And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea
  • Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.
• • As one that in a silver vision floats
  • Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds
  • Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
  • Along the dark and ruffled waters fled
  • The straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on,
  • With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
  • Through the white ridges of the chafed sea.
  • The waves arose. Higher and higher still
  • Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge
  • Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.
  • Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
  • Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
  • Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
  • With dark obliterating course, he sate:
  • As if their genii were the ministers
  • Appointed to conduct him to the light
  • Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate
  • Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,
  • The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
  • High ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
  • That canopied his path o’er the waste deep;
  • Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
  • Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
  • O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;
  • Night followed, clad with stars. On every side
  • More horribly the multitudinous streams
  • Of ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war
  • Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
  • The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
  • Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
  • Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
  • Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
  • Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
  • That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled—
  • As if that frail and wasted human form,
  • Had been an elemental god.
• • At midnight
  • The moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffs
  • Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
  • Among the stars like sunlight, and around
  • Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves
  • Bursting and eddying irresistibly
  • Rage and resound for ever.—Who shall save?
  • The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—
  • The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
  • The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
  • And faster still, beyond all human speed,
  • Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
  • The little boat was driven. A cavern there
  • Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
  • Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on
  • With unrelaxing speed. “Vision and Love!”
  • The Poet cried aloud, “I have beheld
  • The path of thy departure. Sleep and death
  • Shall not divide us long.”
• • The boat pursued
  • The windings of the cavern.—Day-light shone
  • At length upon that gloomy river’s flow;
  • Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
  • Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
  • The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain riven
  • Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
  • Ere yet the flood’s enormous volume fell
  • Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound
  • That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass
  • Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;
  • Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,
  • Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
  • With alternating dash the gnarled roots
  • Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
  • In darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,
  • Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,
  • A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
  • Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
  • With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,
  • Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
  • Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
  • Where through an opening of the rocky bank,
  • The waters overflow, and a smooth spot
  • Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides
  • Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink
  • Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress
  • Of that resistless gulph embosom it?
  • Now shall it fall? A wandering stream of wind,
  • Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
  • And, lo! with gentle motion between banks
  • Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
  • Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark!
  • The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar
  • With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
  • Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
  • A little space of green expanse, the cove
  • Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
  • Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
  • Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave
  • Of the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,
  • Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,
  • Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay
  • Had e’er disturbed before. The Poet longed
  • To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,
  • But on his heart its solitude returned,
  • And he forebore. Not the strong impulse hid
  • In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame,
  • Had yet performed its ministry: it hung
  • Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
  • Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods
  • Of night close over it.
• • The noonday sun
  • Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
  • Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
  • A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,
  • Scooped in the dark base of those aëry rocks
  • Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
  • The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
  • Wove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as led
  • By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
  • He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt, some bank,
  • Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark
  • And dark the shades accumulate—the oak,
  • Expanding its immeasurable arms,
  • Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
  • Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
  • Most solemn domes within, and far below,
  • Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
  • The ash and the acacia floating hang
  • Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
  • In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
  • Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
  • The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants’ eyes,
  • With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
  • Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
  • These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs,
  • Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
  • Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
  • And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable
  • As shapes in the wierd clouds. Soft mossy lawns
  • Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
  • Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
  • Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
  • Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,
  • A soul-dissolving odour, to invite
  • To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,
  • Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
  • Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades
  • Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well,
  • Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
  • Images all the woven boughs above,
  • And each depending leaf, and every speck
  • Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
  • Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
  • Its portraiture, but some inconstant star
  • Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
  • Or, painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
  • Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
  • Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
  • Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.
• • Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
  • Their own wan light through the reflected lines
  • Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
  • Of that still fountain; as the human heart,
  • Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
  • Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
  • The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung
  • Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
  • An unaccustomed presence, and the sound
  • Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
  • Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
  • To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes
  • Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
  • Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
  • Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;—
  • But, undulating woods, and silent well,
  • And reaping rivulet, and evening gloom
  • Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming
  • Held commune with him, as if he and it
  • Were all that was,—only . . . when his regard
  • Was raised by intense pensiveness . . . two eyes,
  • Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
  • And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
  • To beckon him.
• • Obedient to the light
  • That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
  • The windings of the dell.—The rivulet
  • Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine
  • Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
  • Among the moss with hollow harmony
  • Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
  • It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:
  • Then through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
  • Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
  • That overhung its quietness.—“O stream!
  • Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
  • Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
  • Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
  • Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs,
  • Thy searchless fountain and invisible course
  • Have each their type in me: And the wide sky,
  • And measureless ocean may declare as soon
  • What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
  • Contains thy waters, as the universe
  • Tell where these livingthoughts reside, when stretched
  • Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
  • I’ the passing wind!”
• • Beside the grassy shore
  • Of the small stream he went; he did impress
  • On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
  • Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
  • Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
  • Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,
  • Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
  • Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
  • He must descend. With rapid steps he went
  • Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
  • Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
  • The forest’s solemn canopies were changed
  • For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
  • Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
  • The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae
  • Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
  • And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines,
  • Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
  • The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,
  • Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
  • The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
  • And white; and where irradiate dewy eyes
  • Had shone, gleam stony orbs: so from his steps
  • Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
  • Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
  • And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
  • The stream, that with a larger volume now
  • Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
  • Fretted a path through its descending curves
  • With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
  • Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
  • Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
  • In the light of evening, and its precipice
  • Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
  • ’Mid toppling stones, black gulphs, and yawning caves,
  • Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
  • To the loud stream. Lo! Where the pass expands
  • Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
  • And seems, with its accumulated crags,
  • To overhang the world: for wide expand
  • Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
  • Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
  • Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
  • Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
  • Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
  • Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
  • In naked and severe simplicity,
  • Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
  • Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
  • Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
  • Yielding one only response at each pause,
  • In most familiar cadence, with the howl
  • The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
  • Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,
  • Foaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,
  • Fell into that immeasurable void
  • Scattering its waters to the passing winds.
  • Yet the gray precipice, and solemn pine
  • And torrent, were not all;—one silent nook
  • Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
  • Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
  • It overlooked in its serenity
  • The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
  • It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
  • Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
  • The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
  • And did embower with leaves for ever green,
  • And berries dark, the smooth and even space
  • Of its inviolated floor; and here
  • The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
  • In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
  • Red, yellow, or etherially pale,
  • Rival the pride of summer. ’Tis the haunt
  • Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
  • The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
  • One human step alone, has ever broken
  • The stillness of its solitude:—one voice
  • Alone inspired its echoes;—even that voice
  • Which hither came, floating among the winds,
  • And led the loveliest among human forms
  • To make their wild haunts the depository
  • Of all the grace and beauty that endued
  • Its motions, render up its majesty,
  • Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
  • And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
  • Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
  • Commit the colours of that varying cheek,
  • That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
  • The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured
  • A sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge
  • That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
  • Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
  • Wan moonlight even to fullness: not a star
  • Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
  • Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipice
  • Slept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!
  • Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
  • And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
  • Guiding its irresistible career
  • In thy devastating omnipotence,
  • Art king of this frail world, from the red field
  • Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
  • The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed
  • Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
  • A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
  • His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
  • He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
  • Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
  • Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
  • Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
  • The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
• • When on the threshold of the green recess
  • The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death
  • Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
  • Did he resign his high and holy soul
  • To images of the majestic past,
  • That paused within his passive being now,
  • Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
  • Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
  • His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
  • Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
  • Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,
  • Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
  • Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
  • Surrendering to their final impulses
  • The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,
  • The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
  • Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
  • And his own being unalloyed by pain,
  • Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
  • The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
  • At peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight
  • Was the great moon, which o’er the western line
  • Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
  • With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
  • To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
  • It rests, and still as the divided frame
  • Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,
  • That ever beat in mystic sympathy
  • With nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
  • And when two lessening points of light alone
  • Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
  • Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
  • The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray
  • Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
  • It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained
  • Utterly black, the murky shades involved
  • An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
  • As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
  • Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
  • That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
  • Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—
  • No sense, no motion, no divinity—
  • A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
  • The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream
  • Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream
  • Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,
  • Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
• • O, for Medea’s wondrous alchymy,
  • Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam
  • With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
  • From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
  • Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
  • Which but one living man has drained, who now,
  • Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
  • No proud exemption in the blighting curse
  • He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
  • Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
  • Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
  • Raking the cinders of a crucible
  • For life and power, even when his feeble hand
  • Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
  • Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
  • Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn
  • Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!
  • The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
  • The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
  • Are done and said i’the world, and many worms
  • And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
  • From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
  • In vesper low or joyous orison,
  • Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—
  • Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
  • Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
  • Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
  • Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
  • So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
  • That image sleep in death, upon that form
  • Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear
  • Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
  • Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
  • Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
  • In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
  • Let not high verse, mourning the memory
  • Of that which is no more, or painting’s woe
  • Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
  • Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
  • And all the shows o’the world are frail and vain
  • To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
  • It is a woe too ‘deep for tears,’ when all
  • Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
  • Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
  • Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans,
  • The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
  • But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
  • Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,
  • Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.