The chariot seemed to fly

Through the abyss of an immense concave,
Radiant with million constellations, tinged
With shades of infinite colour,
And semicircled with a belt
Flashing incessant meteors.

As they approached their goal,

The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.
The sea no longer was distinguished; earth
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended
In the black concave of heaven

With the sun's cloudless orb,
Whose 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

The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,
Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems widely rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.

It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,
And, like the moon's argentine crescent hung
In the dark dome of heaven, some did shed
A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea
Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed
Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,
Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed
Dedimmed all other light.

Spirit of Nature! here

In this interminable wilderness

Of worlds, at whose involved immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,

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,
Less shares thy eternal breath.

Spirit of Nature! thou
Imperishable as this glorious scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.

If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the shore of the immeasurable sea,
And thou hast lingered there

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,
Edged with intolerable radiancy,

Towering like rocks of jet
Above the burning deep :
And yet there is a moment
When the sun's highest point

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;
Then has thy rapt imagination soared
Where in the midst of all existing things
The temple of the mightiest Demon stands,
Yet not the golden islands

That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,
Nor the feathery curtains

That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,
Nor the burnished ocean waves
Paving that gorgeous dome,

So fair so wonderful a sight
As the eternal temple could afford.
The elements of all that human thought
Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join
To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught
Of earth may image forth its majesty.
Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall,
As heaven low resting on the wave it spread
Its floors of flashing light,

Its vast and azure dome;

And on the verge of that obscure abyss
Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf
Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse
Their lustre through its adamantine gates.

The magic car no longer moved;
The Demon and the Spirit

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
Approached the overhanging battlement.
Below lay stretched the boundless universe!
'There, far as the remotest line

That limits swift imagination's flight,
Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,
Immutably fulfilling

Eternal Nature's law.
Above, below, around,
The circling systems formed
A wilderness of harmony,
Each with undeviating aim

In eloquent silence through the depths of space
Pursued its wondrous way.

Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
Strange things within their belted orbs appear.
Like animated frenzies, dimly moved

Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,
Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead
Sculpturing records for each memory

In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,
Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell
Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:
And they did build vast trophies, instruments
Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,
Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls
With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,
Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained
With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,
The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
The likeness of a throned king came by,
When these had past, bearing upon his brow
A threefold crown; his countenance was calm,
His eye severe and cold; but his right hand
Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart
Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,
A multitudinous throng, around him knelt,

With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks
Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by,
Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,

Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues
Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,

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,
The depth of the unbounded universe
Above, and all around

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,
Burn to the socket!"

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

EARTH, Ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel

CONFESS. ST. AUGUST.

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred ;-then forgive
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favour now!

Mother of this unfathomable world!

Favour my solemn song, for I have loved
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where black death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, to render up the tale.

Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,

When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchymist

Staking his very life on some dark hope,

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

With my most innocent love, until strange tears

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

Such magic as compels the charmed night

To render up thy charge: . . . . and, though ne'er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy ininost sanctuary,

Enough from incommunicable dream,

And twilight phantasms and deep noonday thought
Has shone within me, that serenely row,
And moveless as a long-forgotten lyre,