Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee; Which thou hast now received. Virtue shall keep The Fairy waves her wand of charm. The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. The vast and fiery globes that rolled Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared That there attendant on the solar power Earth floated then below. The chariot paused a moment there; The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, The Body and the Soul united then. A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame; Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: That through the casement shone. 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, cod depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sen 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 sympathies 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 search after its communities when the vacancy of their 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. EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul རྩྭ 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 grey 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; XHoping 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 alchemist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks t With my most innocent love; until strange tears, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, strain Of some mysterious and deserted fane) There was a Poet whose untimely tomb D | Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness. Gentle and brave and generous, no lorn bard By solemn vision and bright silver dream His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips: and all of great Or good or lovely which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates he felt And knew. When early youth had passed, he left To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With sluggish surge; or where the secret caves, To avarice or pride, their starry domes Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 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 Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Of more than man, where marble dæmons watch Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, Of the world's youth; through the long burning day Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, To speak her love :-and watched his nightly sleep, Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie, In joy and exultation held his way; Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine |