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

ences, 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 Uniting with those breathless kisses, made beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning Such magic as compels the charmèd night with human grief; these, and such as they have To render up thy charge: and, though ne'er their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They

yet

thought,

40

are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who Enough from incommunicable dream, attempt to exist without human sympathy, the And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday 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. "The good die first,

And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket!"

20

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,

Up. p. 422.

30

1 Wordsworth's phrase: see his My Heart Leaps According to Hogg, Shelley had actually done

this.

3 Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality, line 142.

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.

50

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb
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.
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate
notes,

60

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.

70

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

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

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,
Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
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

90 Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

1 Figures on the temple of Denderah in Upper 3 In central Asia: poetically regarded as an earthly Egypt.

Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
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 a while,
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,
Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

190

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

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 moonlight 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 Aornos1 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
200 Sung dirges in the wind: his listless hand
Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
As in a furnace burning secretly

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
Gazed on the empty scene as vacantly

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

250

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, for ever lost,
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, 210
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
death
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

In its career: the infant would conceal

O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow His troubled visage in his mother's robe

239

The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,

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 water 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,

430

Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks,
Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
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
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,

Is left, the boat paused shuddering.-Shall it Fold their beams round the hearts of those that

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 ex-
panded sail,

400

And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
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
For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave

Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,
Which nought 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 forebore. 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

Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence

Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with
jasmine,

A soul-dissolving odour, 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 469
420 Their own wan light through the reflected lines
Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
Of that still fountain: as the human heart,