I am plunging now through its azure veil,

While another rises dim and pale,
And this must shortly sink afar
To hold in the west the evening star.

"Here clinging we are daily cast Into the future, out of the past,Through the sunshine into the night,

Through the darkness into the light.
Thus we whirl in the noiseless stream,
And the sky glides over us like a
dream,

Full of stars and mystery
And prophecy of things to be.

"This very moment we hold a place
Never filled before in space-
Where never again the world shall
reel-

The same wave never revisits the wheel.

Year by year our course is run
In a voyage around the sun;
In million circlings forth and back
We never retrace a once gone track.
Did the countless earths abroad, like
snails,

Leave behind them shining trails,
What a web of strange design
Through the eternal space would
shine!

And such a web of marvellous lines Left by each satellite and sun, Though by us unseen, still clearly shines

To the observant eye of One.

"And did the countless souls of men
Leave life-trails visible to the ken,
Each hued with color to betray
The character which passed that way,
How intricate and variously-hued
Would seem the woof of pathways
rude

Across the world's great surface laid!
And so inwoven with lines of shade,
Of vice and cruelty, anger and hate,
That darkness would preponderate!
And such a woof of tangled trails
Lies o'er the world and never pales-
Never varies. On earth's great page
Each soul records its pilgrimage,
And under the eye of God each shines
As visible in eternal lines,

As on the cliff I see from here The various strata-lines appear.

"Thank Heaven! my path shall no longer run

With the common highways under the sun!

From the ways of men it shall lie apart,

On a new and a separate chart;
No other foot shall e'er intrude
In my skyey holds of solitude.
Henceforth alone I walk afar
In the dream which death shall
scarcely mar,

Far above the obtrusive ken
And idle inquiry of men.
Already I can hear rehearse
The higher life of the universe,
Commune with those spirits whose
white tents

Are never stirred by these elements,
Camped on the dim ethereal fields
With meteor banners and starry
shields!

"And now my sole companion shall be My sorrow embodied; and, hermitlike, we

Will renounce the world and rest at ease,

Content with our own sweet sympathies.

Tell me no more of that larger plan, The charity for and the faith in man : I have tried it well, and ever found The seven sins filling its utmost bound!

And they who live in the world must be One with the world, or content to see Their dearest rights and their holiest

trust

With heels of steel trampled into the dust!

All this I have suffered, and scarcely restrained

At times the revenge whose swift blow would have gained The bad world's respect, and left me exempt

A little from all save my soul's selfcontempt.

I was as a weed that is chafed on the beach;

But, Heaven be praised! being thrown out of reach,

where no more

The billows affright with their roll and their roar.

I have tasted the best which the world can bestow,

But friendship turned bitter-love ended in woe!

"In the school of envy, and malice, and strife,

I have studied and learned the lesson of life;

Studied it well from that dreary hour When the dark-hearted Fates had

power,

Ministering at my birth-who threw Upon my brow their black baptismal

dew!

From that sad night what time my spirit's barque,

Sailing over the sea of space,
In a moment ominous and dark,
Was stranded on this desert place,-
This treacherous reef of time,
This rank and poisonous clime
Called earth, where savage men
In hut or palace make their hateful
den,-

I have known little peace and less of joy!

And even when a pleasure-seeking boy, Unlovely faces with distempered tongue

Were my attendants, and they ever hung

Inseparably about me, like the shades
From a baleful torchlight flung,
Which the torch-bearer not evades
Until the light be drenched
And in the oblivious sea of death and
darkness quenched.

And I have borne this torch-
This flickering life-and still must
bear,

Watching it flaunt and flare,
Where all my hopes, like night-
moths, fly and scorch
Their airy pinions, till their writhing

forms

Drop round my feet a mass of wing

less worms!

"But, lo! the tempest of the world is past!

Its passion-bolts are no longer cast

Who stands to gaze when life is done! Even the peasant with her bright blue

eye

Seemed but the remnant of a cloud gone by;

Or rather let me deem her form
The farewell rainbow of the storm.
Of horrors that have frowned on me,
I am glad that in leaving this gallery
A living thing so pure and bright
Should have closed the hateful place
from sight.

"How sweet it is to find release
In this aërial tower of peace!
In this antechamber of the sky
Next to the halls of eternity-
This and the outer world serene,
With only one thin door between
Waiting to take that one step more
When opens the celestial door,
And then, with the sudden splendor
blind,

Hear the great portals close behind!"

III.

'TWAS evening, and he mounted high
Up to the terrace that faced the sky.
The fisherman, in his boat below
Swinging to the billows' flow,
Beheld him like a guard of old
On a dusky tower-a shadow bold
Standing against the sundown gold.
There Roland watched the dome of day
In a conflagration fall away,
And saw the first white star that sped
To gaze at the sunset ere it fled.
Westward he saw the spires and domes
Overtopping the noisy homes
Of toil and trade, but all so far
He felt no tremor of the jar
That like a daily earthquake rolls
Through the world of dust-bound
souls.

Protected from the fitful gusts
Blown from the lips of Caliban lusts."

Here and there a meteor fleet,
Struck from the invisible feet

And the beautiful bird shall still be as meek

When her red heart quivers in the falcon's beak!”

"Horrible fiend !" he cried, in pain, "Back to your baneful den again!

black,

And strike me ere the fiend have

"This hour, thou wretched ghost! is thine

But the next and the next shall all be mine!

The cup is brewing which he shall quaff,

While the angels shall weep and the fiends shall laugh!

Then thou shalt be scourged away with scorn

Into the outer dark forlorn,

And a mortal head usurp the breast Which late thy phantom cheek has prest!

Blood warms to blood-dust cleaves to dust

And in that hour depart thou must, Thou dead leaf on a midnight gust!"

Still clinging where its hour is brief, Then even as a pale dead leaf Shuddered and sighed, as if even The spirit-lady in her grief

Which filled the black arch of the night

With sheeted flashings of spectral light.

And every maniac ocean-gust

Some pressed to their pale lips empty vials

Till frenzied with their fruitless trials: Some, with their faces to the sky, Walked ever searching for a beam.

Into the air-again and again
Flinging on the window-pane
White briny flakes, in rage and spite,
As if to drown the altar light.