Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem.
To Harriet *****
   

WHOSE is the love that, gleaming through the world,
   Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?
       Whose is the warm and partial praise,
       Virtue's most sweet reward?

   Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul
   Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?
       Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,
       And loved mankind the more?

   Harriet! on thine:--thou wert my purer mind;
   Thou wert the inspiration of my song;
        Thine are these early wilding flowers,
        Though garlanded by me.

   Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;
   And know, though time may change and years may roll,
        Each floweret gathered in my heart
        It consecrates to thine.

Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem. With Notes.

     
              I
       HOW wonderful is Death,
       Death, and his brother Sleep!
     One, pale as yonder waning moon
       With lips of lurid blue;
       The other, rosy as the morn
     When throned on ocean's wave
           It blushes o'er the world;
     Yet both so passing wonderful!

       Hath then the gloomy Power
   Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres                           10
       Seized on her sinless soul?
       Must then that peerless form
   Which love and admiration cannot view
   Without a beating heart, those azure veins
   Which steal like streams along a field of snow,
     That lovely outline which is fair
       As breathing marble, perish?
       Must putrefaction's breath
     Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
       But loathsomeness and ruin?                                    20
     Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
   On which the lightest heart might moralize?
       Or is it only a sweet slumber
       Stealing o'er sensation,
     Which the breath of roseate morning
           Chaseth into darkness?
           Will Ianthe wake again,
       And give that faithful bosom joy
     Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
     Light, life and rapture, from her smile?                         30

           Yes! she will wake again,
   Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
           And silent those sweet lips,
           Once breathing eloquence
     That might have soothed a tiger's rage
   Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.
           Her dewy eyes are closed,
     And on their lids, whose texture fine
     Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,
           The baby Sleep is pillowed;                                40
           Her golden tresses shade
           The bosom's stainless pride,
       Curling like tendrils of the parasite
           Around a marble column.

       Hark! whence that rushing sound?
           'T is like the wondrous strain
       That round a lonely ruin swells,
       Which, wandering on the echoing shore,
           The enthusiast hears at evening;
       'T is softer than the west wind's sigh;                        50
       'T is wilder than the unmeasured notes
       Of that strange lyre whose strings
       The genii of the breezes sweep;
           Those lines of rainbow light
       Are like the moonbeams when they fall
   Through some cathedral window, but the tints
           Are such as may not find
           Comparison on earth.

   Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!
   Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;                         60
   Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
   And stop obedient to the reins of light;
     These the Queen of Spells drew in;
     She spread a charm around the spot,
   And, leaning graceful from the ethereal car,
     Long did she gaze, and silently,
           Upon the slumbering maid.

   Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,
   When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain,
   When every sight of lovely, wild and grand                         70
     Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,
       When fancy at a glance combines
       The wondrous and the beautiful,--
     So bright, so fair, so wild a shape
           Hath ever yet beheld,
   As that which reined the coursers of the air
     And poured the magic of her gaze
           Upon the maiden's sleep.

       The broad and yellow moon
       Shone dimly through her form--                                 80
     That form of faultless symmetry;
     The pearly and pellucid car
       Moved not the moonlight's line.
       'T was not an earthly pageant.
     Those, who had looked upon the sight
       Passing all human glory,
       Saw not the yellow moon,
       Saw not the mortal scene,
       Heard not the night-wind's rush,
       Heard not an earthly sound,                                    90
       Saw but the fairy pageant,
       Heard but the heavenly strains
       That filled the lonely dwelling.

   The Fairy's frame was slight--yon fibrous cloud,
   That catches but the palest tinge of even,
   And which the straining eye can hardly seize
   When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
   Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
   That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
   Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,                           100
   As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
   Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
       Yet with an undulating motion,
       Swayed to her outline gracefully.

       From her celestial car
       The Fairy Queen descended,
       And thrice she waved her wand
     Circled with wreaths of amaranth;
       Her thin and misty form
       Moved with the moving air,                                    110
       And the clear silver tones,
       As thus she spoke, were such
     As are unheard by all but gifted ear.

FAIRY
    'Stars! your balmiest influence shed!
     Elements! your wrath suspend!
     Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds
       That circle thy domain!
     Let not a breath be seen to stir
     Around yon grass-grown ruin's height!
       Let even the restless gossamer                                120
       Sleep on the moveless air!
       Soul of Ianthe! thou,
   Judged alone worthy of the envied boon
   That waits the good and the sincere; that waits
   Those who have struggled, and with resolute will
   Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains,
   The icy chains of custom, and have shone
   The day-stars of their age;--Soul of
         Ianthe!
           Awake! arise!'

           Sudden arose                                              130
       Ianthe's Soul; it stood
     All beautiful in naked purity,
   The perfect semblance of its bodily frame;
   Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace--
         Each stain of earthliness
       Had passed away--it reassumed
       Its native dignity and stood
         Immortal amid ruin.

       Upon the couch the body lay,
       Wrapt in the depth of slumber;                                140
   Its features were fixed and meaningless,
       Yet animal life was there,
       And every organ yet performed
       Its natural functions; 'twas a sight
   Of wonder to behold the body and the soul.
       The self-same lineaments, the same
       Marks of identity were there;
   Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,
   Pants for its sempiternal heritage,
   And, ever changing, ever rising still,                            150
       Wantons in endless being:
   The other, for a time the unwilling sport
   Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;
   Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
   Then like an useless and worn-out machine,
       Rots, perishes, and passes.

FAIRY
      'Spirit! who hast dived so deep;
       Spirit! who hast soared so high;
       Thou the fearless, thou the mild,
     Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,                          160
       Ascend the car with me!'

SPIRIT
      'Do I dream? Is this new feeling
       But a visioned ghost of slumber?
           If indeed I am a soul,
       A free, a disembodied soul,
           Speak again to me.'

FAIRY
    'I am the Fairy MAB: to me 'tis given
     The wonders of the human world to keep;
     The secrets of the immeasurable past,
     In the unfailing consciences of men,                            170
     Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find;
     The future, from the causes which arise
     In each event, I gather; not the sting
     Which retributive memory implants
     In the hard bosom of the selfish man,
     Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb
     Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
     The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
     Are unforeseen, unregistered by me;
     And it is yet permitted me to rend                              180
     The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,
     Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
     How soonest to accomplish the great end
     For which it hath its being, and may taste
     That peace which in the end all life will share.
     This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,
        Ascend the car with me!'

     The chains of earth's immurement
       Fell from Ianthe's spirit;
   They shrank and brake like bandages of straw                      190
     Beneath a wakened giant's strength.
       She knew her glorious change,
     And felt in apprehension uncontrolled
       New raptures opening round;
     Each day-dream of her mortal life,
     Each frenzied vision of the slumbers
       That closed each well-spent day,
       Seemed now to meet reality.
     The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;
       The silver clouds disparted;                                  200
     And as the car of magic they ascended,
       Again the speechless music swelled,
       Again the coursers of the air
   Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen,
       Shaking the beamy reins,
       Bade them pursue their way.

       The magic car moved on.
     The night was fair, and countless stars
     Studded heaven's dark blue vault;
       Just o'er the eastern wave 210
     Peeped the first faint smile of morn.
       The magic car moved on--
       From the celestial hoofs
     The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,
       And where the burning wheels
     Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak,
       Was traced a line of lightning.
       Now it flew far above a rock,
       The utmost verge of earth,
     The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow                         220
       Lowered o'er the silver sea.

       Far, far below the chariot's path,
         Calm as a slumbering babe,
         Tremendous Ocean lay.
       The mirror of its stillness showed
         The pale and waning stars,
         The chariot's fiery track,
         And the gray light of morn
         Tinging those fleecy clouds
         That canopied the dawn.                                     230

     Seemed it that the chariot's way
   Lay through the midst of an immense concave
   Radiant with million constellations, tinged
       With shades of infinite color,
       And semicircled with a belt
       Flashing incessant meteors.

       The magic car moved on.
       As they approached their goal,
     The coursers seemed to gather speed;
   The sea no longer was distinguished; earth                        240
     Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere;
       The sun's unclouded orb
       Rolled through the black concave;
       Its rays of rapid light
   Parted around the chariot's swifter course,
     And fell, like ocean's feathery spray
       Dashed from the boiling surge
       Before a vessel's prow.

       The magic car moved on.
       Earth's distant orb appeared                                  250
   The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;
       Whilst round the chariot's way
       Innumerable systems rolled
       And countless spheres diffused
       An ever-varying glory.
     It was a sight of wonder: some
     Were hornèd like the crescent moon;
     Some shed a mild and silver beam
     Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;
     Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,                       260
     Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
   Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed,
       Eclipsed all other light.

           Spirit of Nature! here--
       In this interminable wilderness
       Of worlds, at whose immensity
           Even soaring fancy staggers,
           Here is thy fitting temple!
             Yet not the lightest leaf
         That quivers to the passing breeze                          270
           Is less instinct with thee;
           Yet not the meanest worm
     That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
       Less shares thy eternal breath!
         Spirit of Nature! thou,
       Imperishable as this scene--
         Here is thy fitting temple!

                    II
     If solitude hath ever led thy steps
       To the wild ocean's echoing shore,
       And thou hast lingered there,
       Until the sun's broad orb
     Seemed resting on the burnished wave,
       Thou must have marked the lines
     Of purple gold that motionless
       Hung o'er the sinking sphere;
     Thou must have marked the billowy clouds,
     Edged with intolerable radiancy,                                 10
       Towering like rocks of jet
       Crowned with a diamond wreath;
       And yet there is a moment,
       When the sun's highest point
   Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
   When those far clouds of feathery gold,
     Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
     Like islands on a dark blue sea;
   Then has thy fancy soared above the earth
       And furled its wearied wing                                    20
       Within the Fairy's fane.

       Yet not the golden islands
       Gleaming in yon flood of light,
           Nor the feathery curtains
       Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,
       Nor the burnished ocean-waves
           Paving that gorgeous dome,
     So fair, so wonderful a sight
   As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.
   Yet likest evening's vault, that faëry Hall!                  30
   As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
           Its floors of flashing light,
           Its vast and azure dome,
           Its fertile golden islands
           Floating on a silver sea;
   Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
   Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
     And pearly battlements around
     Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

     The magic car no longer moved.                                   40
       The Fairy and the Spirit
       Entered the Hall of Spells.
         Those golden clouds
       That rolled in glittering billows
       Beneath the azure canopy,
   With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;
           The light and crimson mists,
   Floating to strains of thrilling melody
       Through that unearthly dwelling,
   Yielded to every movement of the will;                             50
   Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,
   And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,
     Used not the glorious privilege
       Of virtue and of wisdom.

      'Spirit!' the Fairy said,
     And pointed to the gorgeous dome,
      'This is a wondrous sight
       And mocks all human grandeur;
   But, were it virtue's only meed to dwell
   In a celestial palace, all resigned                                60
   To pleasurable impulses, immured
   Within the prison of itself, the will
   Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.
   Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!
   This is thine high reward:--the past shall rise;
   Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach
           The secrets of the future.'

           The Fairy and the Spirit
   Approached the overhanging battlement.
       Below lay stretched the universe!                              70
       There, far as the remotest line
       That bounds imagination's flight,
         Countless and unending orbs
       In mazy motion intermingled,
       Yet still fulfilled immutably
           Eternal Nature's law.
           Above, below, around,
           The circling systems formed
           A wilderness of harmony;
       Each with undeviating aim,                                     80
   In eloquent silence, through the depths of space
           Pursued its wondrous way.

           There was a little light
   That twinkled in the misty distance.
           None but a spirit's eye
           Might ken that rolling orb.
           None but a spirit's eye,
           And in no other place
   But that celestial dwelling, might behold
   Each action of this earth's inhabitants.                           90
           But matter, space, and time,
   In those aërial mansions cease to act;
   And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps
   The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds
   Those obstacles of which an earthly soul
       Fears to attempt the conquest.

       The Fairy pointed to the earth.
       The Spirit's intellectual eye
       Its kindred beings recognized.
   The thronging thousands, to a passing view,                       100
       Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.
           How wonderful! that even
     The passions, prejudices, interests,
   That sway the meanest being--the weak touch
           That moves the finest nerve
           And in one human brain
   Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link
       In the great chain of Nature!

      'Behold,' the Fairy cried,
      'Palmyra's ruined palaces!                                     110
       Behold where grandeur frowned!
       Behold where pleasure smiled!
     What now remains?--the memory
       Of senselessness and shame.
       What is immortal there?
       Nothing--it stands to tell
       A melancholy tale, to give
       An awful warning; soon
     Oblivion will steal silently
       The remnant of its fame.                                      120
       Monarchs and conquerors there
     Proud o'er prostrate millions trod--
     The earthquakes of the human race;
     Like them, forgotten when the ruin
       That marks their shock is past.

      'Beside the eternal Nile
       The Pyramids have risen.
     Nile shall pursue his changeless way;
         Those Pyramids shall fall.
     Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell                            130
         The spot whereon they stood;
     Their very site shall be forgotten,
         As is their builder's name!

        'Behold yon sterile spot,
     Where now the wandering Arab's tent
         Flaps in the desert blast!
     There once old Salem's haughty fane
   Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,
     And in the blushing face of day
       Exposed its shameful glory.                                   140
   Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
   The building of that fane; and many a father,
   Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
   The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth
   And spare his children the detested task
   Of piling stone on stone and poisoning
         The choicest days of life
         To soothe a dotard's vanity.
   There an inhuman and uncultured race
   Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;                        150
   They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb
   The unborn child--old age and infancy
   Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
   Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends!
   But what was he who taught them that the God
   Of Nature and benevolence had given
   A special sanction to the trade of blood?
   His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
   Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
   Recites till terror credits, are pursuing                         160
     Itself into forgetfulness.

    'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
     There is a moral desert now.
     The mean and miserable huts,
     The yet more wretched palaces,
     Contrasted with those ancient fanes
     Now crumbling to oblivion,--
     The long and lonely colonnades
     Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,--
       Seem like a well-known tune,                                  170
   Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
       Remembered now in sadness.
       But, oh! how much more changed,
       How gloomier is the contrast
       Of human nature there!
   Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,
   A coward and a fool, spreads death around--
       Then, shuddering, meets his own.
     Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
     A cowled and hypocritical monk                                  180
         Prays, curses and deceives.

      'Spirit! ten thousand years
       Have scarcely passed away,
   Since in the waste, where now the savage drinks
   His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons,
       Wakes the unholy song of war,
           Arose a stately city,
   Metropolis of the western continent.
     There, now, the mossy column-stone,
   Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,                              190
       Which once appeared to brave
       All, save its country's ruin,--
       There the wide forest scene,
   Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
       Of gardens long run wild,--
   Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps
     Chance in that desert has delayed,
   Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
     Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
   Whither, as to a common centre, flocked                           200
     Strangers, and ships, and merchandise;
       Once peace and freedom blest
       The cultivated plain;
       But wealth, that curse of man,
   Blighted the bud of its prosperity;
   Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
   Fled, to return not, until man shall know
     That they alone can give the bliss
       Worthy a soul that claims
       Its kindred with eternity.                                    210

    'There 's not one atom of yon earth
       But once was living man;
     Nor the minutest drop of rain,
     That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
       But flowed in human veins;
       And from the burning plains
       Where Libyan monsters yell,
       From the most gloomy glens
       Of Greenland's sunless clime,
       To where the golden fields                                    220
       Of fertile England spread
       Their harvest to the day,
       Thou canst not find one spot
       Whereon no city stood.

      'How strange is human pride!
     I tell thee that those living things,
     To whom the fragile blade of grass
       That springeth in the morn
       And perisheth ere noon,
       Is an unbounded world;                                        230
     I tell thee that those viewless beings,
     Whose mansion is the smallest particle
       Of the impassive atmosphere,
       Think, feel and live like man;
     That their affections and antipathies,
       Like his, produce the laws
       Ruling their moral state;
       And the minutest throb
     That through their frame diffuses
       The slightest, faintest motion,                               240
       Is fixed and indispensable
       As the majestic laws
       That rule yon rolling orbs.'

       The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
   In ecstasy of admiration, felt
   All knowledge of the past revived; the events
       Of old and wondrous times,
   Which dim tradition interruptedly
   Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded
     In just perspective to the view;                                250
     Yet dim from their infinitude.
       The Spirit seemed to stand
   High on an isolated pinnacle;
   The flood of ages combating below,
   The depth of the unbounded universe
       Above, and all around
     Nature's unchanging harmony.

                    III
      'Fairy!' the Spirit said,
       And on the Queen of Spells
       Fixed her ethereal eyes,
      'I thank thee. Thou hast given
   A boon which I will not resign, and taught
   A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
   The past, and thence I will essay to glean
   A warning for the future, so that man
   May profit by his errors and derive
       Experience from his folly;                                     10
   For, when the power of imparting joy
   Is equal to the will, the human soul
       Requires no other heaven.'

MAB
      'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
       Much yet remains unscanned.
       Thou knowest how great is man,
       Thou knowest his imbecility;
       Yet learn thou what he is;
       Yet learn the lofty destiny
       Which restless Time prepares                                   20
       For every living soul.

   'Behold a gorgeous palace that amid
   Yon populous city rears its thousand towers
   And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
   Of sentinels in stern and silent ranks
   Encompass it around; the dweller there
   Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not
   The curses of the fatherless, the groans
   Of those who have no friend? He passes on--
   The King, the wearer of a gilded chain                             30
   That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
   Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
   Even to the basest appetites--that man
   Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
   At the deep curses which the destitute
   Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
   Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
   But for those morsels which his wantonness
   Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
   All that they love from famine; when he hears                      40
   The tale of horror, to some ready-made face
   Of hypocritical assent he turns,
   Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,
   Flushes his bloated cheek.

                               Now to the meal
   Of silence, grandeur and excess he drags
   His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
   Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
   From every clime could force the loathing sense
   To overcome satiety,--if wealth
   The spring it draws from poisons not,--or vice,                    50
   Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not
   Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
   Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils
   His unforced task, when he returns at even
   And by the blazing fagot meets again
   Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
   Tastes not a sweeter meal.

                               Behold him now
   Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain
   Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon
   The slumber of intemperance subsides,                              60
   And conscience, that undying serpent, calls
   Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
   Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye--
   Oh! mark that deadly visage!'

KING
                                  'No cessation!
   Oh! must this last forever! Awful death,
   I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!--Not one moment
   Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessèd Peace,
   Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
   In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest
   With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st                      70
   The palace I have built thee? Sacred Peace!
   Oh, visit me but once,--but pitying shed
   One drop of balm upon my withered soul!'

THE FAIRY
   'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
   And Peace defileth not her snowy robes
   In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
   His slumbers are but varied agonies;
   They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
   There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
   To punish those who err; earth in itself                           80
   Contains at once the evil and the cure;
   And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
   Those who transgress her law; she only knows
   How justly to proportion to the fault
   The punishment it merits.

                              Is it strange
   That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?
   Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug
   The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange
   That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,
   Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured                              90
   Within a splendid prison whose stern bounds
   Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,
   His soul asserts not its humanity?
   That man's mild nature rises not in war
   Against a king's employ? No--'tis not strange.
   He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives
   Just as his father did; the unconquered powers
   Of precedent and custom interpose
   Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,
   To those who know not Nature nor deduce                           100
   The future from the present, it may seem,
   That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
   Of this unnatural being, not one wretch,
   Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed
   Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm
   To dash him from his throne!

                                 Those gilded flies
   That, basking in the sunshine of a court,
   Fatten on its corruption! what are they?--
   The drones of the community; they feed
   On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind                         110
   For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
   Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
   Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
   A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
   Drags out in labor a protracted death
   To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil
   That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

   Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
   Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap
   Toil and unvanquishable penury                                    120
   On those who build their palaces and bring
   Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice;
   From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
   From all that genders misery, and makes
   Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
   Revenge, and murder.--And when reason's voice,
   Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
   The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
   Is discord, war and misery; that virtue
   Is peace and happiness and harmony;                               130
   When man's maturer nature shall disdain
   The playthings of its childhood;--kingly glare
   Will lose its power to dazzle, its authority
   Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
   Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
   Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade
   Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
   As that of truth is now.

                             Where is the fame
   Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
   Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound                          140
   From time's light footfall, the minutest wave
   That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
   The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! to-day
   Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze
   That flashes desolation, strong the arm
   That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
   That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
   In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
   On which the midnight closed; and on that arm
   The worm has made his meal.

                                The virtuous man,                    150
   Who, great in his humility as kings
   Are little in their grandeur; he who leads
   Invincibly a life of resolute good
   And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths
   More free and fearless than the trembling judge
   Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove
   To bind the impassive spirit;--when he falls,
   His mild eye beams benevolence no more;
   Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;
   Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled                        160
   But to appall the guilty. Yes! the grave
   Hath quenched that eye and death's relentless frost
   Withered that arm; but the unfading fame
   Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb,
   The deathless memory of that man whom kings
   Call to their minds and tremble, the remembrance
   With which the happy spirit contemplates
   Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
   Shall never pass away.

   'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;                         170
   The subject, not the citizen; for kings
   And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
   A losing game into each other's hands,
   Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
   Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
   Power, like a desolating pestilence,
   Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
   Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
   Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
   A mechanized automaton.

                            When Nero                                180
   High over flaming Rome with savage joy
   Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
   The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
   The frightful desolation spread, and felt
   A new-created sense within his soul
   Thrill to the sight and vibrate to the sound,--
   Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome
   The force of human kindness? And when Rome
   With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,
   Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood,                   190
   Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
   Nature's suggestions?

                          Look on yonder earth:
   The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
   Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
   Arise in due succession; all things speak
   Peace, harmony and love. The universe,
   In Nature's silent eloquence, declares
   That all fulfil the works of love and joy,--
   All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
   The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth                    200
   The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
   The tyrant whose delight is in his woe,
   Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,
   Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,
   Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch
   Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth
   A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn
   Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;
   A mother only to those puling babes
   Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men                          210
   The playthings of their babyhood and mar
   In self-important childishness that peace
   Which men alone appreciate?

      'Spirit of Nature, no!
   The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs
     Alike in every human heart.
       Thou aye erectest there
     Thy throne of power unappealable;
     Thou art the judge beneath whose nod
     Man's brief and frail authority                                 220
       Is powerless as the wind
       That passeth idly by;
     Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
       The show of human justice
       As God surpasses man!

      'Spirit of Nature! thou
   Life of interminable multitudes;
     Soul of those mighty spheres
   Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie;
     Soul of that smallest being,                                    230
       The dwelling of whose life
     Is one faint April sun-gleam;--
       Man, like these passive things,
   Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth;
     Like theirs, his age of endless peace,
       Which time is fast maturing,
       Will swiftly, surely, come;
   And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest,
       Will be without a flaw
     Marring its perfect symmetry!                                   240

                    IV
   'How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
   Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
   Were discord to the speaking quietude
   That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
   Studded with stars unutterably bright,
   Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
   Seems like a canopy which love had spread
   To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills.
   Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
   Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend                          10
   So stainless that their white and glittering spires
   Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep
   Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
   So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it
   A metaphor of peace;--all form a scene
   Where musing solitude might love to lift
   Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
   Where silence undisturbed might watch alone--
   So cold, so bright, so still.

                                  The orb of day
   In southern climes o'er ocean's waveless field                     20
   Sinks sweetly smiling; not the faintest breath
   Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve
   Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;
   And Vesper's image on the western main
   Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:
   Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,
   Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar
   Of distant thunder mutters awfully;
   Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom
   That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,                30
   With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
   The torn deep yawns,--the vessel finds a grave
   Beneath its jagged gulf.

                             Ah! whence yon glare
   That fires the arch of heaven? that dark red smoke
   Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched
   In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
   Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round.
   Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals
   In countless echoes through the mountains ring,
   Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne!                      40
   Now swells the intermingling din; the jar
   Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;
   The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,
   The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
   Inebriate with rage:--loud and more loud
   The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene
   And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
   His cold and bloody shroud.--Of all the men
   Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there
   In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts                    50
   That beat with anxious life at sunset there;
   How few survive, how few are beating now!
   All is deep silence, like the fearful calm
   That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;
   Save when the frantic wail of widowed love
   Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan
   With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay
   Wrapt round its struggling powers.

                                       The gray morn
   Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke
   Before the icy wind slow rolls away,                               60
   And the bright beams of frosty morning dance
   Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood
   Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,
   And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
   Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path
   Of the outsallying victors; far behind
   Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
   Within yon forest is a gloomy glen--
   Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
   Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

                                 I see thee shrink,                   70
   Surpassing Spirit!--wert thou human else?
   I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet
   Across thy stainless features; yet fear not;
   This is no unconnected misery,
   Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable.
   Man's evil nature, that apology
   Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up
   For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood
   Which desolates the discord-wasted land.
   From kings and priests and statesmen war arose,                    80
   Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,
   Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe
   Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
   And where its venomed exhalations spread
   Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay
   Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones
   Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
   A garden shall arise, in loveliness
   Surpassing fabled Eden.

                            Hath Nature's soul,--
   That formed this world so beautiful, that spread                   90
   Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord
   Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
   The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,
   That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
   The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,
   And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
   With spirit, thought and love,--on Man alone,
   Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
   Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul
   Blasted with withering curses; placed afar                        100
   The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,
   But serving on the frightful gulf to glare
   Rent wide beneath his footsteps?

                                     Nature!--no!
   Kings, priests and statesmen blast the human flower
   Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
   Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
   Of desolate society. The child,
   Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,
   Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
   His baby-sword even in a hero's mood.                             110
   This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge
   Of devastated earth; whilst specious names,
   Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,
   Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims
   Bright reason's ray and sanctifies the sword
   Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.
   Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man
   Inherits vice and misery, when force
   And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,
   Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.                      120

   'Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps
   From its new tenement and looks abroad
   For happiness and sympathy, how stern
   And desolate a tract is this wide world!
   How withered all the buds of natural good!
   No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms
   Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame
   Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe
   Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung
   By morals, law and custom, the pure winds                         130
   Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,
   May breathe not. The untainting light of day
   May visit not its longings. It is bound
   Ere it has life; yea, all the chains are forged
   Long ere its being; all liberty and love
   And peace is torn from its defencelessness;
   Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed
   To abjectness and bondage!

   'Throughout this varied and eternal world
   Soul is the only element, the block                               140
   That for uncounted ages has remained.
   The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight
   Is active living spirit. Every grain
   Is sentient both in unity and part,
   And the minutest atom comprehends
   A world of loves and hatreds; these beget
   Evil and good; hence truth and falsehood spring;
   Hence will and thought and action, all the germs
   Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,
   That variegate the eternal universe.                              150
   Soul is not more polluted than the beams
   Of heaven's pure orb ere round their rapid lines
   The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.

   'Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
   Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing
   To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn
   The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste
   The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield;
   Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,
   To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,                           160<

To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame
   Of natural love in sensualism, to know
   That hour as blest when on his worthless days
   The frozen hand of death shall set its seal,
   Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.
   The one is man that shall hereafter be;
   The other, man as vice has made him now.

   'War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
   The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,
   And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones                   170
   Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
   The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
   Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
   Their palaces, participate the crimes
   That force defends and from a nation's rage
   Secures the crown, which all the curses reach
   That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.
   These are the hired bravos who defend
   The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear;
   These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,                   180
   The refuse of society, the dregs
   Of all that is most vile; their cold hearts blend
   Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,
   All that is mean and villainous with rage
   Which hopelessness of good and self-contempt
   Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,
   Honor and power, then are sent abroad
   To do their work. The pestilence that stalks
   In gloomy triumph through some eastern land
   Is less destroying. They cajole with gold                         190
   And promises of fame the thoughtless youth
   Already crushed with servitude; he knows
   His wretchedness too late, and cherishes
   Repentance for his ruin, when his doom
   Is sealed in gold and blood!
   Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare
   The feet of justice in the toils of law,
   Stand ready to oppress the weaker still,
   And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,
   Sneering at public virtue, which beneath                          200
   Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled where
   Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth.

   'Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,
   Without a hope, a passion or a love,
   Who through a life of luxury and lies
   Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,
   Support the system whence their honors flow.
   They have three words--well tyrants know their use,
   Well pay them for the loan with usury
   Torn from a bleeding world!--God, Hell and Heaven:                210
   A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,
   Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage
   Of tameless tigers hungering for blood;
   Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,
   Where poisonous and undying worms prolong
   Eternal misery to those hapless slaves
   Whose life has been a penance for its crimes;
   And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie
   Their human nature, quake, believe and cringe
   Before the mockeries of earthly power.                            220

   'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,
   Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,
   Omnipotent in wickedness; the while
   Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does
   His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend
   Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.
   They rise, they fall; one generation comes
   Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.
   It fades, another blossoms; yet behold!
   Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom,                   230
   Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.
   He has invented lying words and modes,
   Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;
   Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,
   To lure the heedless victim to the toils
   Spread round the valley of its paradise.

   'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror or prince!
   Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts
   Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,
   With whom thy master was; or thou delight'st                      240
   In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,
   All misery weighing nothing in the scale
   Against thy short-lived fame; or thou dost load
   With cowardice and crime the groaning land,
   A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!
   Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er
   Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days
   Days of unsatisfying listlessness?
   Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er,
   "When will the morning come?" Is not thy youth                    250
   A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?
   Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?
   Are not thy views of unregretted death
   Drear, comfortless and horrible? Thy mind,
   Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,
   Incapable of judgment, hope or love?
   And dost thou wish the errors to survive,
   That bar thee from all sympathies of good,
   After the miserable interest
   Thou hold'st in their protraction? When the grave                 260
   Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,
   Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth
   To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,
   Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,
   That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?

                    V
   'Thus do the generations of the earth
   Go to the grave and issue from the womb,
   Surviving still the imperishable change
   That renovates the world; even as the leaves
   Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
   Has scattered on the forest-soil and heaped
   For many seasons there--though long they choke,
   Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,
   All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees
   From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,                10
   Lie level with the earth to moulder there,
   They fertilize the land they long deformed;
   Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs
   Of youth, integrity and loveliness,
   Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.
   Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
   The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
   Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
   Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
   And judgment cease to wage unnatural war                           20
   With passion's unsubduable array.
   Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
   Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
   The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
   Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
   Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
   Compelled by its deformity to screen
   With flimsy veil of justice and of right
   Its unattractive lineaments that scare
   All save the brood of ignorance; at once                           30
   The cause and the effect of tyranny;
   Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile;
   Dead to all love but of its abjectness;
   With heart impassive by more noble powers
   Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
   Despising its own miserable being,
   Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

   'Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
   Of all that human art or Nature yield;
   Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,                 40
   And natural kindness hasten to supply
   From the full fountain of its boundless love,
   Forever stifled, drained and tainted now.
   Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
   No solitary virtue dares to spring,
   But poverty and wealth with equal hand
   Scatter their withering curses, and unfold
   The doors of premature and violent death
   To pining famine and full-fed disease,
   To all that shares the lot of human life,                          50
   Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain
   That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

   'Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
   The signet of its all-enslaving power,
   Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;
   Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
   The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
   The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,
   And with blind feelings reverence the power
   That grinds them to the dust of misery.                            60
   But in the temple of their hireling hearts
   Gold is a living god and rules in scorn
   All earthly things but virtue.

   'Since tyrants by the sale of human life
   Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame
   To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
   Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
   The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.
   His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes
   The despot numbers; from his cabinet                               70
   These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,
   Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,
   Beneath a vulgar master, to perform
   A task of cold and brutal drudgery;--
   Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,
   Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
   Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
   That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

   'The harmony and happiness of man
   Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts                  80
   His nature to the heaven of its pride,
   Is bartered for the poison of his soul;
   The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,
   Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,
   Withering all passion but of slavish fear,
   Extinguishing all free and generous love
   Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse
   That fancy kindles in the beating heart
   To mingle with sensation, it destroys,--
   Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,                        90
   The grovelling hope of interest and gold,
   Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed
   Even by hypocrisy.

                       And statesmen boast
   Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives
   After the ruin of their hearts, can gild
   The bitter poison of a nation's woe;
   Can turn the worship of the servile mob
   To their corrupt and glaring idol, fame,
   From virtue, trampled by its iron tread,--
   Although its dazzling pedestal be raised                          100
   Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,
   With desolated dwellings smoking round.
   The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,
   To deeds of charitable intercourse
   And bare fulfilment of the common laws
   Of decency and prejudice confines
   The struggling nature of his human heart,
   Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds
   A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
   Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door                   110
   The frightful waves are driven,--when his son
   Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion
   Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man
   Whose life is misery, and fear and care;
   Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;
   Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream;
   Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze
   Forever meets, and the proud rich man's eye
   Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene
   Of thousands like himself;--he little heeds                       120
   The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate
   Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn
   The vain and bitter mockery of words,
   Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds,
   And unrestrained but by the arm of power,
   That knows and dreads his enmity.

   'The iron rod of penury still compels
   Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,
   And poison, with unprofitable toil,
   A life too void of solace to confirm                              130
   The very chains that bind him to his doom.
   Nature, impartial in munificence,
   Has gifted man with all-subduing will.
   Matter, with all its transitory shapes,
   Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,
   That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.
   How many a rustic Milton has passed by,
   Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
   In unremitting drudgery and care!
   How many a vulgar Cato has compelled                              140
   His energies, no longer tameless then,
   To mould a pin or fabricate a nail!
   How many a Newton, to whose passive ken
   Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
   Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven
   To light the midnights of his native town!

   'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ.
   The wisest of the sages of the earth,
   That ever from the stores of reason drew
   Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone,                   150
   Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,
   Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued
   With pure desire and universal love,
   Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,
   Untainted passion, elevated will,
   Which death (who even would linger long in awe
   Within his noble presence and beneath
   His changeless eye-beam) might alone subdue.
   Him, every slave now dragging through the filth
   Of some corrupted city his sad life,                              160
   Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,
   Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense
   With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,
   Or madly rushing through all violent crime
   To move the deep stagnation of his soul,--
   Might imitate and equal.

                             But mean lust
   Has bound its chains so tight about the earth
   That all within it but the virtuous man
   Is venal; gold or fame will surely reach
   The price prefixed by Selfishness to all                          170
   But him of resolute and unchanging will;
   Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,
   Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,
   Can bribe to yield his elevated soul
   To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield
   With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

   'All things are sold: the very light of heaven
   Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,
   The smallest and most despicable things
   That lurk in the abysses of the deep,                             180
   All objects of our life, even life itself,
   And the poor pittance which the laws allow
   Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
   Those duties which his heart of human love
   Should urge him to perform instinctively,
   Are bought and sold as in a public mart
   Of undisguising Selfishness, that sets
   On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.
   Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
   Is turned to deadliest agony, old age                             190
   Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,
   And youth's corrupted impulses prepare
   A life of horror from the blighting bane
   Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs
   From unenjoying sensualism, has filled
   All human life with hydra-headed woes.

   'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs
   Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest
   Sets no great value on his hireling faith;
   A little passing pomp, some servile souls,                        200
   Whom cowardice itself might safely chain
   Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe
   To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,
   Can make him minister to tyranny.
   More daring crime requires a loftier meed.
   Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends
   His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,
   When the dread eloquence of dying men,
   Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,
   Assails that nature whose applause he sells                       210
   For the gross blessings of the patriot mob,
   For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,
   And for a cold world's good word,--viler still!

   'There is a nobler glory which survives
   Until our being fades, and, solacing
   All human care, accompanies its change;
   Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,
   And in the precincts of the palace guides
   Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;
   Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,                         220
   Even when from power's avenging hand he takes
   Its sweetest, last and noblest title--death;
   --The consciousness of good, which neither gold,
   Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,
   Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,
   Unalterable will, quenchless desire
   Of universal happiness, the heart
   That beats with it in unison, the brain
   Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change
   Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.                        230

   'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs
   No meditative signs of selfishness,
   No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
   No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
   In just and equal measure all is weighed,
   One scale contains the sum of human weal,
   And one, the good man's heart.

                                   How vainly seek
   The selfish for that happiness denied
   To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,
   Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,                       240
   Who covet power they know not how to use,
   And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,--
   Madly they frustrate still their own designs;
   And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy
   Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,
   Pining regrets, and vain repentances,
   Disease, disgust and lassitude pervade
   Their valueless and miserable lives.

   'But hoary-headed selfishness has felt
   Its death-blow and is tottering to the grave;                     250
   A brighter morn awaits the human day,
   When every transfer of earth's natural gifts
   Shall be a commerce of good words and works;
   When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
   The fear of infamy, disease and woe,
   War with its million horrors, and fierce hell,
   Shall live but in the memory of time,
   Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,
   Look back, and shudder at his younger years.'

                    VI
           All touch, all eye, all ear,
   The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.
       O'er the thin texture of its frame
   The varying periods painted changing glows,
           As on a summer even,
   When soul-enfolding music floats around,
       The stainless mirror of the lake
       Re-images the eastern gloom,
   Mingling convulsively its purple hues
           With sunset's burnished gold.                              10
           Then thus the Spirit spoke:
   'It is a wild and miserable world!
           Thorny, and full of care,
   Which every fiend can make his prey at will!
       O Fairy! in the lapse of years,
           Is there no hope in store?
           Will yon vast suns roll on
       Interminably, still illuming
       The night of so many wretched souls,
           And see no hope for them?                                  20
   Will not the universal Spirit e'er
   Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?'

           The Fairy calmly smiled
   In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope
   Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.
   'Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts
   Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul
   That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.
   Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,
           Falsehood, mistake and lust;                               30
           But the eternal world
   Contains at once the evil and the cure.
   Some eminent in virtue shall start up,
           Even in perversest time;
   The truths of their pure lips, that never die,
   Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath
           Of ever-living flame,
   Until the monster sting itself to death.

     'How sweet a scene will earth become!
   Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,                           40
   Symphonious with the planetary spheres;
   When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,
   Will undertake regeneration's work,
   When its ungenial poles no longer point
           To the red and baleful sun
           That faintly twinkles there!

          'Spirit, on yonder earth,
     Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power
   Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!
       Madness and misery are there!                                  50
   The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide
   Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy
   Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.
   Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,
   And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,
   Which Nature soon with recreating hand
   Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.
   How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,
   How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,
   How calm and sweet the victories of life,                          60
   How terrorless the triumph of the grave!
   How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,
   Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!
   How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!
   The weight of his exterminating curse
   How light! and his affected charity,
   To suit the pressure of the changing times,
   What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid,
   Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
   Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,                     70
   And heaven with slaves!

   'Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!--the stars,
   Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
   Were gods to the distempered playfulness
   Of thy untutored infancy; the trees,
   The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the sea,
   All living things that walk, swim, creep or fly,
   Were gods; the sun had homage, and the moon
   Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy,
   More daring in thy frenzies; every shape,                          80
   Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
   Which from sensation's relics fancy culls;
   The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
   The genii of the elements, the powers
   That give a shape to Nature's varied works,
   Had life and place in the corrupt belief
   Of thy blind heart; yet still thy youthful hands
   Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
   Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain;
   Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,                     90
   Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride;
   Their everlasting and unchanging laws
   Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st
   Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up
   The elements of all that thou didst know;
   The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,
   The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
   The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
   The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
   Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,                    100
   And all their causes, to an abstract point
   Converging thou didst bend, and called it God!
   The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
   The merciful, and the avenging God!
   Who, prototype of human misrule, sits
   High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,
   Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,
   Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves
   Of fate, whom he created in his sport
   To triumph in their torments when they fell!                      110
   Earth heard the name; earth trembled as the smoke
   Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,
   Blotting the constellations; and the cries
   Of millions butchered in sweet confidence
   And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
   Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
   Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
   Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
   And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek
   Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel                           120
   Felt cold in her torn entrails!

   'Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
   But age crept on; one God would not suffice
   For senile puerility; thou framedst
   A tale to suit thy dotage and to glut
   Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
   Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
   A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
   For murder, rapine, violence and crime,
   That still consumed thy being, even when                          130
   Thou heard'st the step of fate; that flames might light
   Thy funeral scene; and the shrill horrent shrieks
   Of parents dying on the pile that burned
   To light their children to thy paths, the roar
   Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
   Of thine apostles loud commingling there,
         Might sate thine hungry ear
         Even on the bed of death!

   'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
   Thou art descending to the darksome grave,                        140
   Unhonored and unpitied but by those
   Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
   Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
   Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
   That long has lowered above the ruined world.

   'Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light
   Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
   A Spirit of activity and life,
   That knows no term, cessation or decay;
   That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,                     150
   Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,
   Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
   In the dim newness of its being feels
   The impulses of sublunary things,
   And all is wonder to unpractised sense;
   But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
   Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
   Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
   Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
   And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly                      160
   Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes
   Its undecaying battlement, presides,
   Apportioning with irresistible law
   The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
   So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap
   Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
   Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords--
   Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,
   Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
   All seems unlinked contingency and chance--                       170
   No atom of this turbulence fulfils
   A vague and unnecessitated task
   Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
   Even the minutest molecule of light,
   That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
   Fulfils its destined though invisible work,
   The universal Spirit guides; nor less
   When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
   Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,
   That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves               180
   And call the sad work glory, does it rule
   All passions; not a thought, a will, an act,
   No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
   Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
   Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,
   Nor the events enchaining every will,
   That from the depths of unrecorded time
   Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
   Unrecognized or unforeseen by thee,
   Soul of the Universe! eternal spring                              190
   Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
   Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
   That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
   Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison
       Whose chains and massy walls
       We feel but cannot see.

   'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
   Necessity! thou mother of the world!
   Unlike the God of human error, thou
   Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice                      200
   Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
   Than do the changeful passions of his breast
   To thy unvarying harmony; the slave,
   Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
   And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
   His being in the sight of happiness
   That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
   Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,
   And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
   A temple where the vows of happy love                             210
   Are registered, are equal in thy sight;
   No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
   And favoritism, and worst desire of fame
   Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains
   Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
   Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
   Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
     Because thou hast not human sense,
     Because thou art not human mind.

    'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time                            220
   Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes
   And broken altars of the almighty fiend,
   Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood
   Through centuries clotted there has floated down
   The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
   Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,
     Which nor the tempest breath of time,
     Nor the interminable flood
     Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
         Availeth to destroy,--                                      230
   The sensitive extension of the world;
     That wondrous and eternal fane,
   Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
   To do the will of strong necessity,
     And life, in multitudinous shapes,
   Still pressing forward where no term can be,
     Like hungry and unresting flame
   Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.'

                    VII
SPIRIT
   'I was an infant when my mother went
   To see an atheist burned. She took me there.
   The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
   The multitude was gazing silently;
   And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
   Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
   Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;
   The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
   His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
   His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob                    10
   Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
   "Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man
   Has said, There is no God."'

FAIRY
                                'There is no God!
   Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.
   Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
   His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;
   Let every part depending on the chain
   That links it to the whole, point to the hand
   That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls
   In silent eloquence unfold its store                               20
   Of argument; infinity within,
   Infinity without, belie creation;
   The exterminable spirit it contains
   Is Nature's only God; but human pride
   Is skilful to invent most serious names
   To hide its ignorance.
                           'The name of God
   Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
   Himself the creature of his worshippers,
   Whose names and attributes and passions change,
   Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,                          30
   Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,
   Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
   For desolation's watchword; whether hosts
   Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
   Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise
   A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
   Or countless partners of his power divide
   His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
   Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
   Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,                           40
   Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
   In honor of his name; or, last and worst,
   Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
   And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
   Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
   Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
   Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
   Making the earth a slaughter-house!

          'O Spirit! through the sense
   By which thy inner nature was apprised                             50
     Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
     And varied reminiscences have waked
           Tablets that never fade;
     All things have been imprinted there,
     The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,
     Even the unshapeliest lineaments
       Of wild and fleeting visions
           Have left a record there
           To testify of earth.

   'These are my empire, for to me is given                           60
   The wonders of the human world to keep,
   And fancy's thin creations to endow
   With manner, being and reality;
   Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreams
   Of human error's dense and purblind faith
   I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.
           Ahasuerus, rise!'

           A strange and woe-worn wight
       Arose beside the battlement,
           And stood unmoving there.                                  70
   His inessential figure cast no shade
           Upon the golden floor;
   His port and mien bore mark of many years,
   And chronicles of untold ancientness
   Were legible within his beamless eye;
       Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;
   Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;
   The wisdom of old age was mingled there
       With youth's primeval dauntlessness;
           And inexpressible woe,                                     80
   Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
   An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

SPIRIT
          'Is there a God?'

AHASUERUS
   'Is there a God!--ay, an almighty God,
   And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice
   Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;
   The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
   Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned
   To swallow all the dauntless and the good
   That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,                         90
   Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
   Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
   Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls
   No honest indignation ever urged
   To elevated daring, to one deed
   Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
   These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
   Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smoked
   With human blood, and hideous pæans rung
   Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard               100
   His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
   Had raised him to his eminence in power,
   Accomplice of omnipotence in crime
   And confidant of the all-knowing one.
         These were Jehovah's words.

   '"From an eternity of idleness
   I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
   From nothing; rested, and created man;
   I placed him in a paradise, and there
   Planted the tree of evil, so that he                              110
   Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
   Wherewith to sate its malice and to turn,
   Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
   All misery to my fame. The race of men,
   Chosen to my honor, with impunity
   May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
   Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
   Until with hardened feet their conquering troops
   Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
   And make my name be dreaded through the land.                     120
   Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe
   Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
   With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
   Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all
   Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge
   (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God."

                          'The murderer's brow
   Quivered with horror.

                          '"God omnipotent,
   Is there no mercy? must our punishment
   Be endless? will long ages roll away,                             130
   And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made
   In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
   Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just!
   O God! repent and save!"

                          '"One way remains:
   I will beget a son and he shall bear
   The sins of all the world; he shall arise
   In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
   And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
   The universal crime; so that the few
   On whom my grace descends, those who are marked                   140
   As vessels to the honor of their God,
   May credit this strange sacrifice and save
   Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die,
   Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
   But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,
   Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
   Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;
   These in a gulf of anguish and of flame
   Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
   Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,                       150
   Even on their beds of torment where they howl,
   My honor and the justice of their doom.
   What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
   Of purity, with radiant genius bright
   Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?
   Many are called, but few will I elect.
   Do thou my bidding, Moses!"

                         'Even the murderer's cheek
   Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips
   Scarce faintly uttered--"O almighty one,
   I tremble and obey!"                                              160

   'O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
   On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
   Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,
   Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
   Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard
   Save by the rabble of his native town,
   Even as a parish demagogue. He led
   The crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,
   In semblance; but he lit within their souls
   The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword              170
   He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
   Of truth and freedom his malignant soul
   At length his mortal frame was led to death.
   I stood beside him; on the torturing cross
   No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;
   And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed
   The massacres and miseries which his name
   Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,
   "Go! go!" in mockery.
   A smile of godlike malice reillumined                             180
   His fading lineaments. "I go," he cried,
   "But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth
   Eternally." The dampness of the grave
   Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,
   And long lay tranced upon the charmèd soil.
   When I awoke hell burned within my brain
   Which staggered on its seat; for all around
   The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
   Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,
   And in their various attitudes of death                           190
   My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls
   Glared ghastily upon me.

                             But my soul,
   From sight and sense of the polluting woe
   Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
   Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.
   Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
   My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
   Resolved to wage unweariable war
   With my almighty tyrant and to hurl
   Defiance at his impotence to harm                                 200
   Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand,
   That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,
   Has crushed the earth to misery, and given
   Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.
   These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn
   Of weak, unstable and precarious power,
   Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;
   So, when they turned but from the massacre
   Of unoffending infidels to quench
   Their thirst for ruin in the very blood                           210
   That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal
   Froze every human feeling as the wife
   Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,
   Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;
   And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood
   Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
   Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,
   Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;
   Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
   Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,                       220
   No remnant of the exterminated faith
   Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,
   With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,
   That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.

   'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe
   The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,
   Confirming all unnatural impulses,
   To sanctify their desolating deeds;
   And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
   O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun                        230
   On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
   Of safe assassination, and all crime
   Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord,
   And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.

   'Spirit! no year of my eventful being
   Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
   Which flows from God's own faith. I 've marked his slaves
   With tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguile
   The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
   With murder, feign to stretch the other out                       240
   For brotherhood and peace; and that they now
   Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds
   Are marked with all the narrowness and crime
   That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,
   Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,
   Establishing the imperishable throne
   Of truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vain
   The unprevailing malice of my foe,
   Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,
   Adds impotent eternities to pain,                                 250
   Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast
   To see the smiles of peace around them play,
   To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.

   'Thus have I stood,--through a wild waste of years
   Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,
   Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
   Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse
   With stubborn and unalterable will,
   Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame
   Had scathèd in the wilderness, to stand                           260
   A monument of fadeless ruin there;
   Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
   The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
     As in the sunlight's calm it spreads
     Its worn and withered arms on high
   To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'

       The Fairy waved her wand;
       Ahasuerus fled
   Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
   That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,                       270
       Flee from the morning beam;--
       The matter of which dreams are made
       Not more endowed with actual life
       Than this phantasmal portraiture
       Of wandering human thought.

                    VIII
THE FAIRY
   'The present and the past thou hast beheld.
   It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn,
     The secrets of the future.--Time!
   Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,
   Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,
   And from the cradles of eternity,
   Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
   By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
   Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold
       Thy glorious destiny!'                                         10

       Joy to the Spirit came.
   Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil,
   Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear;
       Earth was no longer hell;
       Love, freedom, health had given
   Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,
       And all its pulses beat
   Symphonious to the planetary spheres;
       Then dulcet music swelled
   Concordant with the life-strings of the soul;                      20
   It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,
   Catching new life from transitory death;
   Like the vague sighings of a wind at even
   That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
   And dies on the creation of its breath,
   And sinks and rises, falls and swells by fits,
     Was the pure stream of feeling
     That sprung from these sweet notes,
   And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies
   With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.                         30

       Joy to the Spirit came,--
     Such joy as when a lover sees
   The chosen of his soul in happiness
       And witnesses her peace
   Whose woe to him were bitterer than death;
       Sees her unfaded cheek
   Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
       Thrills with her lovely eyes,
   Which like two stars amid the heaving main
       Sparkle through liquid bliss.                                  40

   Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:
   'I will not call the ghost of ages gone
   To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;
       The present now is past,
   And those events that desolate the earth
   Have faded from the memory of Time,
   Who dares not give reality to that
   Whose being I annul. To me is given
   The wonders of the human world to keep,
   Space, matter, time and mind. Futurity                             50
   Exposes now its treasure; let the sight
   Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
   O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal
   Where virtue fixes universal peace,
   And, 'midst the ebb and flow of human things,
   Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
   A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves.

    'The habitable earth is full of bliss;
   Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
   By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,                        60
   Where matter dared not vegetate or live,
   But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
   Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
   And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
   Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls
   Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
   Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
   To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves
   And melodize with man's blest nature there.

   'Those deserts of immeasurable sand,                               70
   Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed
   A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
   Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love
   Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
   Now teem with countless rills and shady woods,
   Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
   And where the startled wilderness beheld
   A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
   A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
   The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,                        80
   Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,--
   Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
   Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
   To see a babe before his mother's door,
       Sharing his morning's meal
     With the green and golden basilisk
       That comes to lick his feet.

   'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
   Has seen above the illimitable plain
   Morning on night and night on morning rise,                        90
   Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
   Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
   Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
   So long have mingled with the gusty wind
   In melancholy loneliness, and swept
   The desert of those ocean solitudes
   But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
   The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm;
   Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
   Of kindliest human impulses respon

Alastor: Or, the Spirit of Solitude
   


   EARTH, Ocean, Air, belovèd 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;                      10
   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, belovèd brethren, and withdraw
   No portion of your wonted favor now!

     Mother of this unfathomable world!
   Favor my solemn song, for I have loved
   Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched                           20
   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,               30
   Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
   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 charmèd 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,                  40
   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                             50
   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.                            60
   Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,
   And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined
   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.                           70
   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 passed, 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 he has bought
   With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,                    80
   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                            90
   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                       100
   From his innocuous band 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                          110
   Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
   Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,
   Sculptured on alabaster obelisk
   Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,
   Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills
   Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
   Stupendous columns, and wild images
   Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
   The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
   Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,                120
   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,                        130
   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,                         140
   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 Cashmire, 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                       150
   Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd 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-colored 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,                         160
   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                           170
   Tumultuously accorded with those fits
   Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
   As if her heart impatiently endured
   Its bursting burden; 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.                    180
   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,                        190
   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 him 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                             200
   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 bounds. Alas! alas!
   Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
   Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever lost
   In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,                         210
   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 vapors hung,
   Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
   Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
   Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
   This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;                  220
   The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
   His brain even like despair.

                                 While daylight 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,              230
   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                          240
   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                        250
   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                   260
   Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
   In its 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                270
   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,                  280
   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                      290
   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.                       300
   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.              310
   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,                      320
   With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
   Through the white ridges of the chafèd 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                              330
   Appointed to conduct him to the light
   Of those belovèd 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                    340
   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                            350
   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 forever.--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,                          360
   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
   Ingulfed 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. Daylight shone                        370
   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,                        380
   Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
   With alternating dash the gnarlèd 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,                         390
   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 gulf 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,                           400
   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 naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,                    410
   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 forbore. 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                          420
   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 their aëry rocks,
   Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever.
   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                           430
   And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
   Expanding its immense and knotty 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                   440
   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 network of the dark blue light of day
   And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
   As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
   Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
   Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms                450
   Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
   Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine
   A soul-dissolving odor 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                          460
   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                   470
   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                   480
   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 leaping 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,                    490
   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,             500
   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 gulfs,
   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                          510
   Contains thy waters, as the universe
   Tell where these living thoughts 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                     520
   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 gnarlèd roots of ancient pines                     530
   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                         540
   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 gulfs and yawning caves,
   Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
   To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands                    550
   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-colored even, and fiery hills
   Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
   Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
   In naked and severe simplicity,                                   560
   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.                       570

     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 forever green                         580
   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 ethereally pale,
   Rivals the pride of summer. 'T is 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                          590
   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 colors of that varying cheek,                          600
   That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

     The dim and hornèd 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 fulness; 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!                  610
   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;                      620
   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,                         630
   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                      640
   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                          650
   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                          660
   An image silent, cold, and motionless,
   As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
   Even as a vapor 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-voicèd waves--a dream
   Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever--            670
   Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

     Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
   Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
   With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
   From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, 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 forever,                         680
   Lone as incarnate death! Oh, 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                   690
   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                     700
   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,                         710
   And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
   To weep a loss that turns their lights 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, not sobs or 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.                   720

The Revolt of Islam

Author's Preface




The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever totally extinguish among mankind.

For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument. I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first Canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence and devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the senses; its impatience at 'all the oppressions which are done under the sun;' its tendency to awaken public hope and to enlighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their oppressors and the unveiling of the religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the tranquillity of successful patriotism and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots and the victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate despotism,--civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the advocates of liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong, such as belongs to no meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the business of the poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration and his reward.

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are past. Methinks those who now live have survived an age of despair.

The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized mankind, produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realize. If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues and the reëstablishment of successive tyrannies in France was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilized world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state, according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience teaches now. But on the first reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleapt the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the unexpectedness of their result. Thus many of the most ardent and tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics, and inquiries into moral and political science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus, calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have composed the following Poem.

I do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character, designing that even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar with Nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity.

There is an education peculiarly fitted for a poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education indeed can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been favorable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes, and the sea, and the solitude of forests; Danger which sports upon the brink of precipices has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered poetry in its most comprehensive sense, and have read the poets and the historians, and the metaphysicians whose writings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon; the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded;--all resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape.

I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful) not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left most inadvertently an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.

But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when poetry was not. Poetry and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations and become unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavor to extract from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the public. If certain critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favor of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which arising from the enslaved communities of the East then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions.

The Poem now presented to the public occupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardor and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labor and revision is said to bestow. But I found that if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to revenge, or envy, or prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.

In Laon and Cythna the following passage was added, in conclusion:

In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavored to strengthen the moral sense by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and toleration which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote. Nothing indeed can be more mischievous than many actions innocent in themselves which might bring down upon individuals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude.

The Revolt of Islam

Dedication
   There is no danger to a man that knows
   What life and death is: there's not any law
   Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
   That he should stoop to any other law.
                                             CHAPMAN.


To Mary ---- ----
                      I
     SO now my summer-task is ended, Mary,
     And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
     As to his Queen some victor knight of Faëry,
     Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;
     Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become
     A star among the stars of mortal night,
     If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,
     Its doubtful promise thus I would unite
   With thy belovèd name, thou Child of love and light.

                      II
     The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,
     Is ended,--and the fruit is at thy feet!
     No longer where the woods to frame a bower
     With interlacèd branches mix and meet,
     Or where, with sound like many voices sweet,
     Water-falls leap among wild islands green,
     Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
     Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;
   But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.

                      III
     Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
     The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
     I do remember well the hour which burst
     My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
     When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
     And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
     From the near school-room voices that, alas!
     Were but one echo from a world of woes--
   The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

                      IV
     And then I clasped my hands and looked around,
     But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
     Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground--
     So without shame I spake:--'I will be wise,
     And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
     Such power, for I grow weary to behold
     The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
     Without reproach or check.' I then controlled
   My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.

                      V
     And from that hour did I with earnest thought
     Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
     Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
     I cared to learn, but from that secret store
     Wrought linkèd armor for my soul, before
     It might walk forth to war among mankind;
     Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more
     Within me, till there came upon my mind
   A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.

                      VI
     Alas, that love should be a blight and snare
     To those who seek all sympathies in one!
     Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,
     The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
     Over the world in which I moved alone:--
     Yet never found I one not false to me,
     Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone
     Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be
   Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee.

                      VII
     Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart
     Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain;
     How beautiful and calm and free thou wert
     In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain
     Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,
     And walked as free as light the clouds among,
     Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain
     From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung
   To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long!

                      VIII
     No more alone through the world's wilderness,
     Although I trod the paths of high intent,
     I journeyed now; no more companionless,
     Where solitude is like despair, I went.
     There is the wisdom of a stern content
     When Poverty can blight the just and good,
     When Infamy dares mock the innocent,
     And cherished friends turn with the multitude
   To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!

                      IX
     Now has descended a serener hour,
     And with inconstant fortune, friends return;
     Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power
     Which says,--Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.
     And from thy side two gentle babes are born
     To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we
     Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn;
     And these delights, and thou, have been to me
   The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.

                      X
     Is it that now my inexperienced fingers
     But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?
     Or must the lyre on which my spirit lingers
     Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again,
     Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign,
     And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway,
     Holier than was Amphion's? I would fain
     Reply in hope--but I am worn away,
   And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

                      XI
     And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:
     Time may interpret to his silent years.
     Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,
     And in the light thine ample forehead wears,
     And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,
     And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy
     Is whispered to subdue my fondest fears;
     And, through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see
   A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

                      XII
     They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,
     Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child!
     I wonder not--for One then left this earth
     Whose life was like a setting planet mild,
     Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled
     Of its departing glory; still her fame
     Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild
     Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim
   The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.

                      XIII
     One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,
     Which was the echo of three thousand years;
     And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,
     As some lone man who in a desert hears
     The music of his home:--unwonted fears
     Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,
     And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,
     Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space
   Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.

                      XIV
     Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!
     If there must be no response to my cry--
     If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
     On his pure name who loves them,--thou and I,
     Sweet Friend! can look from our tranquillity
     Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,--
     Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by
     Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight,
   That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto First

                 I
     WHEN the last hope of trampled France had failed
     Like a brief dream of unremaining glory,
     From visions of despair I rose, and scaled
     The peak of an aërial promontory,
     Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary;
     And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken
     Each cloud and every wave:--but transitory
     The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,
   As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.

                 II
     So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder
     Burst in far peals along the waveless deep,
     When, gathering fast, around, above and under,
     Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep,
     Until their complicating lines did steep
     The orient sun in shadow:--not a sound
     Was heard; one horrible repose did keep
     The forests and the floods, and all around
   Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.

                 III
     Hark! 't is the rushing of a wind that sweeps
     Earth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn,
     Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps
     Glitter and boil beneath! it rages on,
     One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,
     Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by!
     There is a pause--the sea-birds, that were gone
     Into their caves to shriek, come forth to spy
   What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.

                 IV
     For, where the irresistible storm had cloven
     That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen,
     Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven
     Most delicately, and the ocean green,
     Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,
     Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread
     On all below; but far on high, between
     Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,
   Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.

                 V
     For ever as the war became more fierce
     Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,
     That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce
     The woof of those white clouds, which seemed to lie
     Far, deep and motionless; while through the sky
     The pallid semicircle of the moon
     Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;
     Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon,
   But slowly, fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.

                 VI
     I could not choose but gaze; a fascination
     Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew
     My fancy thither, and in expectation
     Of what I knew not, I remained. The hue
     Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue
     Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;
     A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,
     Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere
   Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.

                 VII
     Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,
     Dark, vast and overhanging, on a river
     Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,
     Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,
     Sails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavor;
     So, from that chasm of light a wingèd Form
     On all the winds of heaven approaching ever
     Floated, dilating as it came; the storm
   Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.

                 VIII
     A course precipitous, of dizzy speed,
     Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!
     For in the air do I behold indeed
     An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:--
     And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,
     Before the aërial rock on which I stood,
     The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,
     And hung with lingering wings over the flood,
   And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude.

                 IX
     A shaft of light upon its wings descended,
     And every golden feather gleamed therein--
     Feather and scale inextricably blended.
     The Serpent's mailed and many-colored skin
     Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within
     By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high
     And far, the neck receding lithe and thin,
     Sustained a crested head, which warily
   Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's steadfast eye.

                 X
     Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling
     With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed
     Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing
     Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,
     Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed,
     And casting back its eager head, with beak
     And talon unremittingly assailed
     The wreathèd Serpent, who did ever seek
   Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak.

                 XI
     What life, what power, was kindled and arose
     Within the sphere of that appalling fray!
     For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,
     A vapor like the sea's suspended spray
     Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,
     Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,
     Where'er the Eagle's talons made their way,
     Like sparks into the darkness;--as they sweep,
   Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.

                 XII
     Swift chances in that combat--many a check,
     And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil!
     Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck
     Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,
     Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,
     Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea
     Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil
     His adversary, who then reared on high
   His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.

                 XIII
     Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,
     Where they had sunk together, would the Snake
     Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge
     The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break
     That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake
     The strength of his unconquerable wings
     As in despair, and with his sinewy neck
     Dissolve in sudden shock those linkèd rings--
   Then soar, as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.

                 XIV
     Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,
     Thus long, but unprevailing. The event
     Of that portentous fight appeared at length.
     Until the lamp of day was almost spent
     It had endured, when lifeless, stark and rent,
     Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last
     Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent
     With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,
   Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.

                 XV
     And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean
     And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere;
     Only, 't was strange to see the red commotion
     Of waves like mountains o'er the sinking sphere
     Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear
     Amid the calm; down the steep path I wound
     To the sea-shore--the evening was most clear
     And beautiful, and there the sea I found
   Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

                 XVI
     There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,
     Sitting beneath the rocks upon the sand
     Of the waste sea--fair as one flower adorning
     An icy wilderness; each delicate hand
     Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band
     Of her dark hair had fall'n, and so she sate
     Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand
     Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,
   Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.

                 XVII
     It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon
     That unimaginable fight, and now
     That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,
     As brightly it illustrated her woe;
     For in the tears, which silently to flow
     Paused not, its lustre hung: she, watching aye
     The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below
     Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,
   And after every groan looked up over the sea.

                 XVIII
     And when she saw the wounded Serpent make
     His path between the waves, her lips grew pale,
     Parted and quivered; the tears ceased to break
     From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail
     Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale
     Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair,
     Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale
     That opened to the ocean, caught it there,
   And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.

                 XIX
     She spake in language whose strange melody
     Might not belong to earth. I heard alone
     What made its music more melodious be,
     The pity and the love of every tone;
     But to the Snake those accents sweet were known
     His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat
     The hoar spray idly then, but winding on
     Through the green shadows of the waves that meet
   Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.

                 XX
     Then on the sands the Woman sate again,
     And wept and clasped her hands, and, all between,
     Renewed the unintelligible strain
     Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien;
     And she unveiled her bosom, and the green
     And glancing shadows of the sea did play
     O'er its marmoreal depth--one moment seen,
     For ere the next, the Serpent did obey
   Her voice, and, coiled in rest, in her embrace it lay.

                 XXI
     Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes
     Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,
     While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies,
     Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,
     And said: 'To grieve is wise, but the despair
     Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep.
     This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare
     With me and with this Serpent, o'er the deep,
   A voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.'

                 XXII
     Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,
     Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.
     I wept. Shall this fair woman all alone
     Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go?
     His head is on her heart, and who can know
     How soon he may devour his feeble prey?--
     Such were my thoughts, when the tide 'gan to flow;
     And that strange boat like the moon's shade did sway
   Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay.

                 XXIII
     A boat of rare device, which had no sail
     But its own curvèd prow of thin moonstone,
     Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail,
     To catch those gentlest winds which are not known
     To breathe, but by the steady speed alone
     With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now
     We are embarked--the mountains hang and frown
     Over the starry deep that gleams below
   A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the waves we go.

                 XXIV
     And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale
     That Woman told, like such mysterious dream
     As makes the slumberer's cheek with wonder pale!
     'T was midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,
     Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme
     Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent
     Her looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam
     Of love divine into my spirit sent,
   And, ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.

                 XXV
     'Speak not to me, but hear! much shalt thou learn,
     Much must remain unthought, and more untold,
     In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn.
     Know then that from the depth of ages old
     Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold,
     Ruling the world with a divided lot,
     Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,
     Twin Genii, equal Gods--when life and thought
   Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.

                 XXVI
     'The earliest dweller of the world alone
     Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar
     O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,
     Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar--
     A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star
     Mingling their beams in combat. As he stood
     All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war
     In dreadful sympathy--when to the flood
   That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother's blood.

                 XXVII
     'Thus Evil triumphed, and the Spirit of Evil,
     One Power of many shapes which none may know,
     One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel
     In victory, reigning o'er a world of woe,
     For the new race of man went to and fro,
     Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,
     And hating good--for his immortal foe,
     He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,
   To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.

                 XXVIII
     'The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things
     Was Evil's breath and life; this made him strong
     To soar aloft with overshadowing wings;
     And the great Spirit of Good did creep among
     The nations of mankind, and every tongue
     Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none
     Knew good from evil, though their names were hung
     In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan,
   As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own.

                 XXIX
     'The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay,
     Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,
     Wingèd and wan diseases, an array
     Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;
     Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil
     Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head;
     And, without whom all these might nought avail,
     Fear, Hatred, Faith and Tyranny, who spread
   Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.

                 XXX
     'His spirit is their power, and they his slaves
     In air, and light, and thought, and language dwell;
     And keep their state from palaces to graves,
     In all resorts of men--invisible,
     But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell,
     To tyrant or impostor bids them rise,
     Black wingèd demon-forms--whom, from the hell,
     His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,
   He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.

                 XXXI
     'In the world's youth his empire was as firm
     As its foundations. Soon the Spirit of Good,
     Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,
     Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,
     Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood
     Renewed the doubtful war. Thrones then first shook,
     And earth's immense and trampled multitude
     In hope on their own powers began to look,
   And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.

                 XXXII
     'Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,
     In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,
     Even where they slept amid the night of ages,
     Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame
     Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!
     And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave
     New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame
     Upon the combat shone--a light to save,
   Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.

                 XXXIII
     'Such is this conflict--when mankind doth strive
     With its oppressors in a strife of blood,
     Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,
     And in each bosom of the multitude
     Justice and truth with custom's hydra brood
     Wage silent war; when priests and kings dissemble
     In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,
     When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,
   The Snake and Eagle meet--the world's foundations tremble!

                 XXXIV
     'Thou hast beheld that fight--when to thy home
     Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;
     Though thou mayst hear that earth is now become
     The tyrant's garbage, which to his compeers,
     The vile reward of their dishonored years,
     He will dividing give. The victor Fiend
     Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears
     His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend
   An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.

                 XXXV
     'List, stranger, list! mine is an human form
     Like that thou wearest--touch me--shrink not now!
     My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, but warm
     With human blood. 'T was many years ago,
     Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know
     The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep
     My heart was pierced with sympathy for woe
     Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep
   In dream unnatural watch beside an infant's sleep.

                 XXXVI
     'Woe could not be mine own, since far from men
     I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,
     By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;
     And near the waves and through the forests wild
     I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled;
     For I was calm while tempest shook the sky,
     But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,
     I wept sweet tears, yet too tumultuously
   For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.

                 XXXVII
     'These were forebodings of my fate. Before
     A woman's heart beat in my virgin breast,
     It had been nurtured in divinest lore;
     A dying poet gave me books, and blessed
     With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest
     In which I watched him as he died away;
     A youth with hoary hair, a fleeting guest
     Of our lone mountains; and this lore did sway
   My spirit like a storm, contending there alway.

                 XXXVIII
     'Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold
     I knew, but not, methinks, as others know,
     For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled
     The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe;
     To few can she that warning vision show;
     For I loved all things with intense devotion,
     So that when Hope's deep source in fullest flow,
     Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean
   Of human thoughts, mine shook beneath the wide emotion.

                 XXXIX
     'When first the living blood through all these veins
     Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,
     And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains
     Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.
     I saw, and started from my cottage hearth;
     And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness
     Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth,
     And laughed in light and music: soon sweet madness
   Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.

                 XL
     'Deep slumber fell on me:--my dreams were fire,
     Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover
     Like shadows o'er my brain; and strange desire,
     The tempest of a passion, raging over
     My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,
     Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,
     Came--then I loved; but not a human lover!
     For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star
   Shone through the woodbine wreaths which round my casement were.

                 XLI
     ''T was like an eye which seemed to smile on me.
     I watched, till by the sun made pale it sank
     Under the billows of the heaving sea;
     But from its beams deep love my spirit drank,
     And to my brain the boundless world now shrank
     Into one thought--one image--yes, forever!
     Even like the dayspring, poured on vapors dank,
     The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver
   Through my benighted mind--and were extinguished never.

                 XLII
     'The day passed thus. At night, methought, in dream
     A shape of speechless beauty did appear;
     It stood like light on a careering stream
     Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;
     A wingèd youth, his radiant brow did wear
     The Morning Star; a wild dissolving bliss
     Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,
     And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness
   Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,

                 XLIII
     'And said: "A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden;
     How wilt thou prove thy worth?" Then joy and sleep
     Together fled; my soul was deeply laden,
     And to the shore I went to muse and weep;
     But as I moved, over my heart did creep
     A joy less soft, but more profound and strong
     Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep
     The path of the sea-shore; that Spirit's tongue
   Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.

                 XLIV
     'How, to that vast and peopled city led,
     Which was a field of holy warfare then,
     I walked among the dying and the dead,
     And shared in fearless deeds with evil men,
     Calm as an angel in the dragon's den;
     How I braved death for liberty and truth,
     And spurned at peace, and power, and fame; and when
     Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth,
   How sadly I returned--might move the hearer's ruth.

                 XLV
     'Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said.
     Know then that, when this grief had been subdued,
     I was not left, like others, cold and dead;
     The Spirit whom I loved in solitude
     Sustained his child; the tempest-shaken wood,
     The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night--
     These were his voice, and well I understood
     His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright
   With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.

                 XLVI
     'In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,
     When the dim nights were moonless, have I known
     Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers
     When thought revisits them:--know thou alone,
     That, after many wondrous years were flown,
     I was awakened by a shriek of woe;
     And over me a mystic robe was thrown
     By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow
   Before my steps--the Snake then met his mortal foe.'

                 XLVII
     'Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?'
     'Fear it!' she said, with brief and passionate cry,
     And spake no more. That silence made me start--
     I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,
     Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky,
     Beneath the rising moon seen far away,
     Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,
     Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay
   On the still waters--these we did approach alway.

                 XLVIII
     And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion,
     So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain,--
     Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean
     Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign;
     And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain
     Of waters, azure with the noontide day.
     Ethereal mountains shone around; a Fane
     Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay
   On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.

                 XLIX
     It was a Temple, such as mortal hand
     Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream
     Reared in the cities of enchanted land;
     'T was likest Heaven, ere yet day's purple stream
     Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam
     Of the unrisen moon among the clouds
     Is gathering--when with many a golden beam
     The thronging constellations rush in crowds,
   Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.

                 L
     Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,
     When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce
     Genius beholds it rise, his native home,
     Girt by the deserts of the Universe;
     Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse,
     Or sculpture's marble language can invest
     That shape to mortal sense--such glooms immerse
     That incommunicable sight, and rest
   Upon the laboring brain and over-burdened breast.

                 LI
     Winding among the lawny islands fair,
     Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep,
     The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair
     Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep,
     Encircling that vast Fane's aërial heap.
     We disembarked, and through a portal wide
     We passed, whose roof of moonstone carved did keep
     A glimmering o'er the forms on every side,
   Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed.

                 LII
     We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof
     Was diamond which had drunk the lightning's sheen
     In darkness and now poured it through the woof
     Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen
     Its blinding splendor--through such veil was seen
     That work of subtlest power, divine and rare;
     Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,
     And hornèd moons, and meteors strange and fair,
   On night-black columns poised--one hollow hemisphere!

                 LIII
     Ten thousand columns in that quivering light
     Distinct, between whose shafts wound far away
     The long and labyrinthine aisles, more bright
     With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;
     And on the jasper walls around there lay
     Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,
     Which did the Spirit's history display;
     A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,
   Which, in their wingèd dance, unconscious Genii wrought.

                 LIV
     Beneath there sate on many a sapphire throne
     The Great who had departed from mankind,
A mighty Senate;--some, whose white hair shone
     Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful and blind;
     Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind;
     And ardent youths, and children bright and fair;
     And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined
     With pale and clinging flames, which ever there
   Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.

                 LV
     One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,
     Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,
     Distinct with circling steps which rested on
     Their own deep fire. Soon as the Woman came
     Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit's name
     And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.
     Darkness arose from her dissolving frame,--
     Which, gathering, filled that dome of woven light,
   Blotting its spherèd stars with supernatural night.

                 LVI
     Then first two glittering lights were seen to glide
     In circles on the amethystine floor,
     Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side,
     Like meteors on a river's grassy shore;
     They round each other rolled, dilating more
     And more--then rose, commingling into one,
     One clear and mighty planet hanging o'er
     A cloud of deepest shadow which was thrown
   Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.

                 LVII
     The cloud which rested on that cone of flame
     Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,
     Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,
     The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm
     Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform
     The shadowy dome, the sculptures and the state
     Of those assembled shapes--with clinging charm
     Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate
   Majestic yet most mild, calm yet compassionate.

                 LVIII
     Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw
     Over my brow--a hand supported me,
     Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue
     Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;
     And a voice said, 'Thou must a listener be
     This day; two mighty Spirits now return,
     Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea;
     They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn;
   A tale of human power--despair not--list and learn!

                 LIX
     I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently.
     His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow
     Which shadowed them was like the morning sky,
     The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow
     Through the bright air the soft winds as they blow
     Wake the green world; his gestures did obey
     The oracular mind that made his features glow,
     And where his curvèd lips half open lay,
   Passion's divinest stream had made impetuous way.

                 LX
     Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair
     He stood thus beautiful; but there was One
     Who sate beside him like his shadow there,
     And held his hand--far lovelier; she was known
     To be thus fair by the few lines alone
     Which through her floating locks and gathered cloke,
     Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone;
     None else beheld her eyes--in him they woke
   Memories which found a tongue, as thus he silence broke.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Second

               
                    I
     THE star-light smile of children, the sweet looks
     Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,
     The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
     And the green light which, shifting overhead,
     Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
     The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,
     The lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread
     And on the twining flax--in life's young hours
   These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's folded powers.

                 II
     In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,
     Such impulses within my mortal frame
     Arose, and they were dear to memory,
     Like tokens of the dead; but others came
     Soon, in another shape--the wondrous fame
     Of the past world, the vital words and deeds
     Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,
     Traditions dark and old whence evil creeds
   Start forth and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.

                 III
     I heard, as all have heard, the various story
     Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.
     Feeble historians of its shame and glory,
     False disputants on all its hopes and fears,
     Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers
     Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state,
     Yet, flattering Power, had given its ministers
     A throne of judgment in the grave--'t was fate,
   That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.

                 IV
     The land in which I lived by a fell bane
     Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,
     And stabled in our homes, until the chain
     Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide
     That blasting curse men had no shame. All vied
     In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust
     Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
     Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,
   Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.

                 V
     Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,
     And the ethereal shapes which are suspended
     Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,
     The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended
     The colors of the air since first extended
     It cradled the young world, none wandered forth
     To see or feel; a darkness had descended
     On every heart; the light which shows its worth
   Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.

                 VI
     This vital world, this home of happy spirits,
     Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind;
     All that despair from murdered hope inherits
     They sought, and, in their helpless misery blind,
     A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,
     And stronger tyrants:--a dark gulf before,
     The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,
     Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore
   On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.

                 VII
     Out of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe
     Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,
     And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro
     Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought
     The worship thence which they each other taught.
     Well might men loathe their life! well might they turn
     Even to the ills again from which they sought
     Such refuge after death!--well might they learn
   To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!

                 VIII
     For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,
     Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent
     Before one Power, to which supreme control
     Over their will by their own weakness lent
     Made all its many names omnipotent;
     All symbols of things evil, all divine;
     And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent
     The air from all its fanes, did intertwine
   Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine.

                 IX
     I heard, as all have heard, life's various story,
     And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;
     But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary
     In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale
     By famine, from a mother's desolate wail
     O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood
     Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale
     With the heart's warfare, did I gather food
   To feed my many thoughts--a tameless multitude!

                 X
     I wandered through the wrecks of days departed
     Far by the desolated shore, when even
     O'er the still sea and jagged islets darted
     The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,
     Among the clouds near the horizon driven,
     The mountains lay beneath one planet pale;
     Around me broken tombs and columns riven
     Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale
   Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!

                 XI
     I knew not who had framed these wonders then,
     Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;
     But dwellings of a race of mightier men,
     And monuments of less ungentle creeds,
     Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds
     The language which they speak; and now, to me,
     The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,
     The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,
   Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.

                 XII
     Such man has been, and such may yet become!
     Ay, wiser, greater, gentler even than they
     Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome
     Have stamped the sign of power! I felt the sway
     Of the vast stream of ages bear away
     My floating thoughts--my heart beat loud and fast--
     Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray
     Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed
   Beneath truth's steady beams upon its tumult cast.

                 XIII
     It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,
     Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound
     In darkness and in ruin! Hope is strong,
     Justice and Truth their wingèd child have found!
     Awake! arise! until the mighty sound
     Of your career shall scatter in its gust
     The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground
     Hide the last altar's unregarded dust,
   Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust.

                 XIV
     It must be so--I will arise and waken
     The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,
     Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken
     The swoon of ages, it shall burst, and fill
     The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will--
     It may not be restrained!--and who shall stand
     Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still
     But Laon? on high Freedom's desert land
   A tower whose marble walls the leaguèd storms withstand!

                 XV
     One summer night, in commune with the hope
     Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray
     I watched beneath the dark sky's starry cope;
     And ever from that hour upon me lay
     The burden of this hope, and night or day,
     In vision or in dream, clove to my breast;
     Among mankind, or when gone far away
     To the lone shores and mountains, 't was a guest
   Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.

                 XVI
     These hopes found words through which my spirit sought
     To weave a bondage of such sympathy
     As might create some response to the thought
     Which ruled me now--and as the vapors lie
     Bright in the outspread morning's radiancy,
     So were these thoughts invested with the light
     Of language; and all bosoms made reply
     On which its lustre streamed, whene'er it might
   Through darkness wide and deep those trancèd spirits smite.

                 XVII
     Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,
     And oft I thought to clasp my own heart's brother,
     When I could feel the listener's senses swim,
     And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother
     Even as my words evoked them--and another,
     And yet another, I did fondly deem,
     Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;
     And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem
   As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.

                 XVIII
     Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth
     Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep
     Did Laon and his friend on one gray plinth,
     Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,
     Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep;
     And that this friend was false may now be said
     Calmly--that he like other men could weep
     Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
   Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.

                 XIX
     Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,
     I must have sought dark respite from its stress
     In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow--
     For to tread life's dismaying wilderness
     Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,
     Amid the snares and scoffs of humankind,
     Is hard--but I betrayed it not, nor less
     With love that scorned return sought to unbind
   The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.

                 XX
     With deathless minds, which leave where they have passed
     A path of light, my soul communion knew,
     Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,
     As from a mine of magic store, I drew
     Words which were weapons; round my heart there grew
     The adamantine armor of their power;
     And from my fancy wings of golden hue
     Sprang forth--yet not alone from wisdom's tower,
   A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.

                 XXI
     An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes
     Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home
     When I might wander forth; nor did I prize
     Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty dome
     Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,
     And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,
     Since kin were cold, and friends had now become
     Heartless and false, I turned from all to be,
   Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.

                 XXII
     What wert thou then? A child most infantine,
     Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age
     In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;
     Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage
     A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,
     When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
     Some tale or thine own fancies would engage
     To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
   With passion o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

                 XXIII
     She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
     A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
     One impulse of her being--in her lightness
     Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew
     Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue
     To nourish some far desert; she did seem
     Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
     Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
   Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.

                 XXIV
     As mine own shadow was this child to me,
     A second self, far dearer and more fair,
     Which clothed in undissolving radiancy
     All those steep paths which languor and despair
     Of human things had made so dark and bare,
     But which I trod alone--nor, till bereft
     Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,
     Knew I what solace for that loss was left,
   Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.

                 XXV
     Once she was dear, now she was all I had
     To love in human life--this playmate sweet,
     This child of twelve years old. So she was made
     My sole associate, and her willing feet
     Wandered with mine where Earth and Ocean meet,
     Beyond the aërial mountains whose vast cells
     The unreposing billows ever beat,
     Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells
   Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.

                 XXVI
     And warm and light I felt her clasping hand
     When twined in mine; she followed where I went,
     Through the lone paths of our immortal land.
     It had no waste but some memorial lent
     Which strung me to my toil--some monument
     Vital with mind; then Cythna by my side,
     Until the bright and beaming day were spent,
     Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,
   Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.

                 XXVII
     And soon I could not have refused her. Thus
     Forever, day and night, we two were ne'er
     Parted but when brief sleep divided us;
     And, when the pauses of the lulling air
     Of noon beside the sea had made a lair
     For her soothed senses, in my arm she slept,
     And I kept watch over her slumbers there,
     While, as the shifting visions over her swept,
   Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.

                 XXVIII
     And in the murmur of her dreams was heard
     Sometimes the name of Laon. Suddenly
     She would arise, and, like the secret bird
     Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky
     With her sweet accents, a wild melody,--
     Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong
     The source of passion whence they rose to be;
     Triumphant strains which, like a spirit's tongue,
   To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung--

                 XXIX
     Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream
     Of her loose hair. Oh, excellently great
     Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme
     Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate
     Amid the calm which rapture doth create
     After its tumult, her heart vibrating,
     Her spirit o'er the Ocean's floating state
     From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing
   Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring!

                 XXX
     For, before Cythna loved it, had my song
     Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,
     A mighty congregation, which were strong,
     Where'er they trod the darkness, to disperse
     The cloud of that unutterable curse
     Which clings upon mankind; all things became
     Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,
     Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame
   And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's wondrous frame.

                 XXXI
     And this belovèd child thus felt the sway
     Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud
     The very wind on which it rolls away;
     Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet endowed
     With music and with light their fountains flowed
     In poesy; and her still and earnest face,
     Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed
     Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,
   Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.

                 XXXII
     In me, communion with this purest being
     Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise
     In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing
     Left in the human world few mysteries.
     How without fear of evil or disguise
     Was Cythna! what a spirit strong and mild,
     Which death or pain or peril could despise,
     Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild,
   Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!

                 XXXIII
     New lore was this. Old age with its gray hair,
     And wrinkled legends of unworthy things,
     And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare
     To burst the chains which life forever flings
     On the entangled soul's aspiring wings;
     So is it cold and cruel, and is made
     The careless slave of that dark Power which brings
     Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,
   Laughs o'er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.

                 XXXIV
     Nor are the strong and the severe to keep
     The empire of the world. Thus Cythna taught
     Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep,
     Unconscious of the power through which she wrought
     The woof of such intelligible thought,
     As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay
     In her smile-peopled rest my spirit sought
     Why the deceiver and the slave has sway
   O'er heralds so divine of truth's arising day.

                 XXXV
     Within that fairest form the female mind,
     Untainted by the poison clouds which rest
     On the dark world, a sacred home did find;
     But else from the wide earth's maternal breast
     Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed
     All native power, had those fair children torn,
     And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,
     And minister to lust its joys forlorn,
   Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.

                 XXXVI
     This misery was but coldly felt, till she
     Became my only friend, who had endued
     My purpose with a wider sympathy.
     Thus Cythna mourned with me the servitude
     In which the half of humankind were mewed,
     Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves;
     She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food
     To the hyena Lust, who, among graves,
   Over his loathèd meal, laughing in agony, raves.

                 XXXVII
     And I, still gazing on that glorious child,
     Even as these thoughts flushed o'er her:--'Cythna sweet,
     Well with the world art thou unreconciled;
     Never will peace and human nature meet
     Till free and equal man and woman greet
     Domestic peace; and ere this power can make
     In human hearts its calm and holy seat,
     This slavery must be broken'--as I spake,
   From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation brake.

                 XXXVIII
     She replied earnestly:--'It shall be mine,
     This task,--mine, Laon! thou hast much to gain;
     Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride repine,
     If she should lead a happy female train
     To meet thee over the rejoicing plain,
     When myriads at thy call shall throng around
     The Golden City.'--Then the child did strain
     My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound
   Her own about my neck, till some reply she found.

                 XXXIX
     I smiled, and spake not.--'Wherefore dost thou smile
     At what I say? Laon, I am not weak,
     And, though my cheek might become pale the while,
     With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek
     Through their array of banded slaves to wreak
     Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought
     It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek
     To scorn and shame, and this belovèd spot
   And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.

                 XL
     'Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest
     How a young child should thus undaunted be;
     Methinks it is a power which thou bestowest,
     Through which I seek, by most resembling thee,
     So to become most good, and great, and free;
     Yet, far beyond this Ocean's utmost roar,
     In towers and huts are many like to me,
     Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore
   As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.

                 XLI
     'Think'st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,
     And none will heed me? I remember now
     How once a slave in tortures doomed to die
     Was saved because in accents sweet and low
     He sung a song his judge loved long ago,
     As he was led to death. All shall relent
     Who hear me; tears as mine have flowed, shall flow,
     Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent
   As renovates the world; a will omnipotent!

                 XLII
     'Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces,
     Through Penury's roofless huts and squalid cells
     Will I descend, where'er in abjectness
     Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells;
     There with the music of thine own sweet spells
     Will disenchant the captives, and will pour
     For the despairing, from the crystal wells
     Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty lore,
   And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.

                 XLIII
     'Can man be free if woman be a slave?
     Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,
     To the corruption of a closèd grave!
     Can they, whose mates are beasts condemned to bear
     Scorn heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
     To trample their oppressors? In their home,
     Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear
     The shape of woman--hoary Crime would come
   Behind, and Fraud rebuild Religion's tottering dome.

                 XLIV
     'I am a child:--I would not yet depart.
     When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp
     Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,
     Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp
     Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp
     Of ages leaves their limbs. No ill may harm
     Thy Cythna ever. Truth its radiant stamp
     Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm,
   Upon her children's brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.

                 XLV
     'Wait yet awhile for the appointed day.
     Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand
     Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;
     Amid the dwellers of this lonely land
     I shall remain alone--and thy command
     Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet trance,
     And, multitudinous as the desert sand
     Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance,
   Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.

                 XLVI
     'Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain
     Which from remotest glens two warring winds
     Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain
     Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds
     Of evil catch from our uniting minds
     The spark which must consume them;--Cythna then
     Will have cast off the impotence that binds
     Her childhood now, and through the paths of men
   Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent's den.

                 XLVII
     'We part!--O Laon, I must dare, nor tremble,
     To meet those looks no more!--Oh, heavy stroke!
     Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble
     The agony of this thought?'--As thus she spoke
     The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,
     And in my arms she hid her beating breast.
     I remained still for tears--sudden she woke
     As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed
   My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.

                 XLVIII
     'We part to meet again--but yon blue waste,
     Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess
     Within whose happy silence, thus embraced,
     We might survive all ills in one caress;
     Nor doth the grave--I fear 't is passionless--
     Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:--we meet again
     Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless
     Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain
   When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.'

                 XLIX
     I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now
     The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,
     Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow.
     So we arose, and by the star-light steep
     Went homeward--neither did we speak nor weep,
     But, pale, were calm with passion. Thus subdued,
     Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep,
     We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,
   Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Third


                 I
     WHAT thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber
     That night, I know not; but my own did seem
     As if they might ten thousand years outnumber
     Of waking life, the visions of a dream
     Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream
     Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,
     Whose limits yet were never memory's theme;
     And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,
   Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.

                 II
     Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace
     More time than might make gray the infant world,
     Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space;
     When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,
     From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled;
     Methought, upon the threshold of a cave
     I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled
     With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave,
   Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.

                 III
     We lived a day as we were wont to live,
     But Nature had a robe of glory on,
     And the bright air o'er every shape did weave
     Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,
     The leafless bough among the leaves alone,
     Had being clearer than its own could be;
     And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown,
     In this strange vision, so divine to me,
   That if I loved before, now love was agony.

                 IV
     Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night, descended,
     And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere
     Of the calm moon--when suddenly was blended
     With our repose a nameless sense of fear;
     And from the cave behind I seemed to hear
     Sounds gathering upwards--accents incomplete,
     And stifled shrieks,--and now, more near and near,
     A tumult and a rush of thronging feet
   The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.

                 V
     The scene was changed, and away, away, away!
     Through the air and over the sea we sped,
     And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,
     And the winds bore me; through the darkness spread
     Around, the gaping earth then vomited
     Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung
     Upon my flight; and ever as we fled
     They plucked at Cythna; soon to me then clung
   A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.

                 VI
     And I lay struggling in the impotence
     Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,
     Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense
     To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound
     Which in the light of morn was poured around
     Our dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware
     I rose, and all the cottage crowded found
     With armèd men, whose glittering swords were bare,
   And whose degraded limbs the Tyrant's garb did wear.

                 VII
     And ere with rapid lips and gathered brow
     I could demand the cause, a feeble shriek--
     It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low--
     Arrested me; my mien grew calm and meek,
     And grasping a small knife I went to seek
     That voice among the crowd--'t was Cythna's cry!
     Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak
     Its whirlwind rage:--so I passed quietly
   Till I beheld where bound that dearest child did lie.

                 VIII
     I started to behold her, for delight
     And exultation, and a joyance free,
     Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light
     Of the calm smile with which she looked on me;
     So that I feared some brainless ecstasy,
     Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her.
     'Farewell! farewell!' she said, as I drew nigh;
     'At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,
   Now I am calm as truth--its chosen minister.

                 IX
     'Look not so, Laon--say farewell in hope;
     These bloody men are but the slaves who bear
     Their mistress to her task; it was my scope
     The slavery where they drag me now to share,
     And among captives willing chains to wear
     Awhile--the rest thou knowest. Return, dear friend!
     Let our first triumph trample the despair
     Which would ensnare us now, for, in the end,
   In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.'

                 X
     These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,
     Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew
     With seeming careless glance; not many were
     Around her, for their comrades just withdrew
     To guard some other victim; so I drew
     My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly,
     All unaware three of their number slew,
     And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry
   My countrymen invoked to death or liberty.

                 XI
     What followed then I know not, for a stroke,
     On my raised arm and naked head came down,
     Filling my eyes with blood.--When I awoke,
     I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,
     And up a rock which overhangs the town
     By the steep path were bearing me; below
     The plain was filled with slaughter,--overthrown
     The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow
   Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow.

                 XII
     Upon that rock a mighty column stood,
     Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,
     Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude
     Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,
     Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly
     Scarcely the cloud, the vulture or the blast
     Has power, and when the shades of evening lie
     On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast
   The sunken daylight far through the aërial waste.

                 XIII
     They bore me to a cavern in the hill
     Beneath that column, and unbound me there;
     And one did strip me stark; and one did fill
     A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare
     A lighted torch, and four with friendless care
     Guided my steps the cavern-paths along;
     Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair
     We wound, until the torch's fiery tongue
   Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.

                 XIV
     They raised me to the platform of the pile,
     That column's dizzy height; the grate of brass,
     Through which they thrust me, open stood the while,
     As to its ponderous and suspended mass,
     With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!
     With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound;
     The grate, as they departed to repass,
     With horrid clangor fell, and the far sound
   Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned.

                 XV
     The noon was calm and bright:--around that column
     The overhanging sky and circling sea,
     Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn,
     The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,
     So that I knew not my own misery;
     The islands and the mountains in the day
     Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see
     The town among the woods below that lay,
   And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.

                 XVI
     It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed
     Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone
     Swayed in the air:--so bright, that noon did breed
     No shadow in the sky beside mine own--
     Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.
     Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame
     Rested like night; all else was clearly shown
     In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came,
   But of the living blood that ran within my frame.

                 XVII
     The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!
     A ship was lying on the sunny main;
     Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon;
     Its shadow lay beyond. That sight again
     Waked with its presence in my trancèd brain
     The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold;
     I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain
     Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold,
   And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.

                 XVIII
     I watched until the shades of evening wrapped
     Earth like an exhalation; then the bark
     Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.
     It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark;
     Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark
     Its path no more! I sought to close mine eyes,
     But, like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;
     I would have risen, but ere that I could rise
   My parchèd skin was split with piercing agonies.

                 XIX
     I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever
     Its adamantine links, that I might die.
     O Liberty! forgive the base endeavor,
     Forgive me, if, reserved for victory,
     The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly!
     That starry night, with its clear silence, sent
     Tameless resolve which laughed at misery
     Into my soul--linkèd remembrance lent
   To that such power, to me such a severe content.

                 XX
     To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair
     And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun,
     Its shafts of agony kindling through the air,
     Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,
     Or when the stars their visible courses run,
     Or morning, the wide universe was spread
     In dreary calmness round me, did I shun
     Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead
   From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.

                 XXI
     Two days thus passed--I neither raved nor died;
     Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest
     Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside
     The water-vessel, while despair possessed
     My thoughts, and now no drop remained. The uprest
     Of the third sun brought hunger--but the crust
     Which had been left was to my craving breast
     Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,
   And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.

                 XXII
     My brain began to fail when the fourth morn
     Burst o'er the golden isles. A fearful sleep,
     Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn
     Of the riven soul sent its foul dreams to sweep
     With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep--
     A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness--
     These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep
     Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness,--
   A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!

                 XXIII
     The forms which peopled this terrific trance
     I well remember. Like a choir of devils,
     Around me they involved a giddy dance;
     Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels
     Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,--
     Foul, ceaseless shadows; thought could not divide
     The actual world from these entangling evils,
     Which so bemocked themselves that I descried
   All shapes like mine own self hideously multiplied.

                 XXIV
     The sense of day and night, of false and true,
     Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst
     That darkness; one, as since that hour I knew,
     Was not a phantom of the realms accursed,
     Where then my spirit dwelt--but of the first
     I know not yet, was it a dream or no;
     But both, though not distincter, were immersed
     In hues which, when through memory's waste they flow,
   Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.

                 XXV
     Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven,
     Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare,
     And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven
     Hung them on high by the entangled hair;
     Swarthy were three--the fourth was very fair;
     As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,
     And eagerly, out in the giddy air,
     Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung
   Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.

                 XXVI
     A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,
     The dwelling of the many-colored worm,
     Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew
     To my dry lips--What radiance did inform
     Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?
     Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost
     Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm
     Within my teeth!--a whirlwind keen as frost
   Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

                 XXVII
     Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane
     Arose, and bore me in its dark career
     Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane
     On the verge of formless pace--it languished there,
     And, dying, left a silence lone and drear,
     More horrible than famine. In the deep
     The shape of an old man did then appear,
     Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
   His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.

                 XXVIII
     And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw
     That column, and those corpses, and the moon,
     And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw
     My vitals; I rejoiced, as if the boon
     Of senseless death would be accorded soon,
     When from that stony gloom a voice arose,
     Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune
     The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,
   And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.

                 XXIX
     He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled;
     As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
     Mine eye were of their madness half beguiled
     To answer those kind looks; he did enfold
     His giant arms around me to uphold
     My wretched frame; my scorchèd limbs he wound
     In linen moist and balmy, and as cold
     As dew to drooping leaves; the chain, with sound
   Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,

                 XXX
     As, lifting me, it fell!--What next I heard
     Were billow leaping on the harbor bar,
     And the shrill sea-wind whose breath idly stirred
     My hair; I looked abroad, and saw a star
     Shining beside a sail, and distant far
     That mountain and its column, the known mark
     Of those who in the wide deep wandering are,--
     So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,
   In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.

                 XXXI
     For now, indeed, over the salt sea billow
     I sailed; yet dared not look upon the shape
     Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow
     For my light head was hollowed in his lap,
     And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,--
     Fearing it was a fiend; at last, he bent
     O'er me his aged face; as if to snap
     Those dreadful thoughts, the gentle grandsire bent,
   And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

                 XXXII
     A soft and healing potion to my lips
     At intervals he raised--now looked on high
     To mark if yet the starry giant dips
     His zone in the dim sea--now cheeringly,
     Though he said little, did he speak to me.
     It is a friend beside thee--take good cheer
     'Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!'
     I joyed as those a human tone to hear
   Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.

                 XXXIII
     A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft
     Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;
     Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft
     The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
     Of morn descended on the ocean-streams;
     And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
     Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
     To hang in hope over a dying child,
   Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.

                 XXXIV
     And then the night-wind, steaming from the shore,
     Sent odors dying sweet across the sea,
     And the swift boat the little waves which bore,
     Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;
     Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see
     The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,
     As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee
     On sidelong wing into a silent cove
   Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.

The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos.
Canto Fourth


                 I
     THE old man took the oars, and soon the bark
     Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone.
     It was a crumbling heap whose portal dark
     With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;
     Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,
     And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,
     Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown
     Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood
   A changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.

                 II
     When the old man his boat had anchorèd,
     He wound me in his arms with tender care,
     And very few but kindly words he said,
     And bore me through the tower adown a stair,
     Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear
     For many a year had fallen. We came at last
     To a small chamber which with mosses rare
     Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed
   Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

                 III
     The moon was darting through the lattices
     Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day--
     So warm that to admit the dewy breeze
     The old man opened them; the moonlight lay
     Upon a lake whose waters wove their play
     Even to the threshold of that lonely home;
     Within was seen in the dim wavering ray
     The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
   Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.

                 IV
     The rock-built barrier of the sea was passed
     And I was on the margin of a lake,
     A lonely lake, amid the forests vast
     And snowy mountains. Did my spirit wake
     From sleep as many-colored as the snake
     That girds eternity? in life and truth
     Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?
     Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,
   And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?

                 V
     Thus madness came again,--a milder madness,
     Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow
     With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;
     That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,
     By my sick couch was busy to and fro,
     Like a strong spirit ministrant of good;
     When I was healed, he led me forth to show
     The wonders of his sylvan solitude,
   And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

                 VI
     He knew his soothing words to weave with skill
     From all my madness told; like mine own heart,
     Of Cythna would he question me, until
     That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,
     From his familiar lips; it was not art,
     Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke--
     When 'mid soft looks of pity, there would dart
     A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke
   When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

                 VII
     Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled;
     My thoughts their due array did reassume
     Through the enchantments of that Hermit old.
     Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
     Of those who sternly struggle to relume
     The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot;
     And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom
     Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought--
   That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

                 VIII
     That hoary man had spent his livelong age
     In converse with the dead who leave the stamp
     Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,
     When they are gone into the senseless damp
     Of graves; his spirit thus became a lamp
     Of splendor, like to those on which it fed;
     Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,
     Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,
   And all the ways of men among mankind he read.

                 IX
     But custom maketh blind and obdurate
     The loftiest hearts; he had beheld the woe
     In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate
     Which made them abject would preserve them so;
     And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,
     He sought this cell; but when fame went abroad
     That one in Argolis did undergo
     Torture for liberty, and that the crowd
   High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood,

                 X
     And that the multitude was gathering wide,--
     His spirit leaped within his aged frame;
     In lonely peace he could no more abide,
     But to the land on which the victor's flame
     Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came;
     Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue
     Was as a sword of truth--young Laon's name
     Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung
   Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.

                 XI
     He came to the lone column on the rock,
     And with his sweet and mighty eloquence
     The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,
     And made them melt in tears of penitence.
     They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.
     'Since this,' the old man said, 'seven years are spent,
     While slowly truth on thy benighted sense
     Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent,
   Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.

                 XII
     'Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
     And from the lore of bards and sages old,
     From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create
     Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
     Have I collected language to unfold
     Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
     Doctrines of human power my words have told;
     They have been heard, and men aspire to more
   Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

                 XIII
     'In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
     My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
     And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,
     And vows of faith each to the other bind;
     And marriageable maidens, who have pined
     With love till life seemed melting through their look,
     A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;
     And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,
   Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook.

                 XIV
     'The tyrants of the Golden City tremble
     At voices which are heard about the streets;
     The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble
     The lies of their own heart, but when one meets
     Another at the shrine, he inly weets,
     Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;
     Murderers are pale upon the judgment-seats,
     And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,
   And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.

                 XV
     'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds
     Abound; for fearless love, and the pure law
     Of mild equality and peace, succeeds
     To faiths which long have held the world in awe,
     Bloody, and false, and cold. As whirlpools draw
     All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway
     Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
     This hope, compels all spirits to obey,
   Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

                 XVI
     'For I have been thy passive instrument'--
     (As thus the old man spake, his countenance
     Gleamed on me like a spirit's)--'thou hast lent
     To me, to all, the power to advance
     Towards this unforeseen deliverance
     From our ancestral chains--ay, thou didst rear
     That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance
     Nor change may not extinguish, and my share
   Of good was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.

                 XVII
     'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,
     And though the woof of wisdom I know well
     To dye in hues of language, I am cold
     In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell
     My manners note that I did long repel;
     But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng
     Were like the star whose beams the waves compel
     And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue
   Were as a lance to quell the mailèd crest of wrong.

                 XVIII
     'Perchance blood need not flow; if thou at length
     Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare
     Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength
     Of words--for lately did a maiden fair,
     Who from her childhood has been taught to bear
     The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make
     Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,
     And with these quiet words--"for thine own sake
   I prithee spare me,"--did with ruth so take

                 XIX
     'All hearts that even the torturer, who had bound
     Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,
     Loosened her weeping then; nor could be found
     One human hand to harm her. Unassailed
     Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled
     In virtue's adamantine eloquence,
     'Gainst scorn and death and pain thus trebly mailed,
     And blending in the smiles of that defence
   The serpent and the dove, wisdom and innocence.

                 XX
     'The wild-eyed women throng around her path;
     From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust
     Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,
     Or the caresses of his sated lust,
     They congregate; in her they put their trust.
     The tyrants send their armèd slaves to quell
     Her power; they, even like a thunder-gust
     Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
   Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

                 XXI
     'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
     To woman, outraged and polluted long;
     Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach
     For those fair hands now free, while armèd wrong
     Trembles before her look, though it be strong;
     Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright
     And matrons with their babes, a stately throng!
     Lovers renew the vows which they did plight
   In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite;

                 XXII
     'And homeless orphans find a home near her,
     And those poor victims of the proud, no less,
     Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir
     Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness.
     In squalid huts, and in its palaces,
     Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne
     Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress
     All evil; and her foes relenting turn,
   And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.

                 XXIII
     'So in the populous City, a young maiden
     Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he
     Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen
     Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,--
     False arbiter between the bound and free;
     And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns
     The multitudes collect tumultuously,
     And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns
   Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.

                 XXIV
     'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed
     The free cannot forbear. The Queen of Slaves,
     The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead,
     Custom, with iron mace points to the graves
     Where her own standard desolately waves
     Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.
     Many yet stand in her array--"she paves
     Her path with human hearts," and o'er it flings
   The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

                 XXV
     'There is a plain beneath the City's wall,
     Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast;
     Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call
     Ten thousand standards wide; they load the blast
     Which bears one sound of many voices past,
     And startles on his throne their sceptred foe;
     He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,
     And that his power hath passed away, doth know--
   Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?

                 XXVI
     'The Tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain,
     Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood;
     They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;
     Carnage and ruin have been made their food
     From infancy; ill has become their good,
     And for its hateful sake their will has wove
     The chains which eat their hearts. The multitude,
     Surrounding them, with words of human love
   Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.

                 XXVII
     'Over the land is felt a sudden pause,
     As night and day those ruthless bands around
     The watch of love is kept--a trance which awes
     The thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound
     Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,
     Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear
     Feels silence sink upon his heart--thus bound
     The conquerors pause; and oh! may freemen ne'er
   Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

                 XXVIII
     'If blood be shed, 't is but a change and choice
     Of bonds--from slavery to cowardice,--
     A wretched fall! Uplift thy charmèd voice,
     Pour on those evil men the love that lies
     Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes!
     Arise, my friend, farewell!'--As thus he spake,
     From the green earth lightly I did arise,
     As one out of dim dreams that doth awake,
   And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.

                 XXIX
     I saw my countenance reflected there;--
     And then my youth fell on me like a wind
     Descending on still waters. My thin hair
     Was prematurely gray; my face was lined
     With channels, such as suffering leaves behind,
     Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek
     And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find
     Their food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak
   A subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.

                 XXX
     And though their lustre now was spent and faded,
     Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien
     The likeness of a shape for which was braided
     The brightest woof of genius still was seen--
     One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene,
     And left it vacant--'t was her lover's face--
     It might resemble her--it once had been
     The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace
   Which her mind's shadow cast left there a lingering trace.

                 XXXI
     What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.
     Glory and joy and peace had come and gone.
     Doth the cloud perish when the beams are fled
     Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone,
     Doth it not through the paths of night unknown,
     On outspread wings of its own wind upborne,
     Pour rain upon the earth? the stars are shown,
     When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn
   Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.

                 XXXII
     Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man
     I left, with interchange of looks and tears
     And lingering speech, and to the Camp began
     My war. O'er many a mountain-chain which rears
     Its hundred crests aloft my spirit bears
     My frame, o'er many a dale and many a moor;
     And gayly now meseems serene earth wears
     The blosmy spring's star-bright investiture,--
   A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.

                 XXXIII
     My powers revived within me, and I went,
     As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass,
     Through many a vale of that broad continent.
     At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass
     Before my pillow; my own Cythna was,
     Not like a child of death, among them ever;
     When I arose from rest, a woful mass
     That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,
   As if the light of youth were not withdrawn forever.

                 XXXIV
     Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared
     The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds
     The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,
     Haunted my thoughts. Ah, Hope its sickness feeds
     With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds!
     Could she be Cythna? Was that corpse a shade
     Such as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?
     Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made
   A light around my step which would not ever fade.