The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense concave, As they approached their goal, The winged shadows seemed to gather speed. With the sun's cloudless orb, Parted around the chariot's swifter course, Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel's prow. The magic car moved on. Earth's distant orb appeared The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens, It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned, Spirit of Nature! here In this interminable wilderness Of worlds, at whose involved immensity Here is thy fitting temple. Yet not the lightest leaf That quivers to the passing breeze Is less instinct with thee, Yet not the meanest worm, That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead, Spirit of Nature! thou If solitude hath ever led thy steps Until the sun's broad orb Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean, Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold That without motion hang Over the sinking sphere; Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds, Towering like rocks of jet Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge, When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea; That gleam amid yon flood of purple light, That canopy the sun's resplendent couch, So fair so wonderful a sight Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss The magic car no longer moved; Entered the eternal gates. Those clouds of aëry gold That slept in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy, With the ethereal footsteps trembled not; While slight and odorous mists Floated to strains of thrilling melody Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines. The Demon and the Spirit That limits swift imagination's flight, Eternal Nature's law. In eloquent silence through the depths of space Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy. Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by, Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes, In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce, With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues Breathing in self contempt fierce blasphemies Against the Demon of the World, and high Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit, Serene and inaccessibly secure, Stood on an isolated pinnacle, The flood of ages combating below, Necessity's unchanging harmony. 51 1815. ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. PREFACE. THE poem entitled "Alastor," may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's selfcentred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathics with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their after its communities, when the vacancy of the'r spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. December 14, 1815. "The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, "Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans mare." EARTH, Ocean, air, beloved brotherhood! CONFESS. ST. AUGUST. Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; Mother of this unfathomable world! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge: . . . . and, though ne'er yet Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought |