The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt

All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times,

Which dim tradition interruptedly

Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view;

Yet dim from their infinitude.

The Spirit seemed to stand

High on an isolated pinnacle;
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
Above, and all around

Nature's unchanging harmony.

"I thank thee. Thou hast given

A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;

For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul

Requires no other heaven."

MAB.

Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
Much yet remains unscanned.
Thou know'st how great is man;
Thou know'st his imbecility:
Yet learn thou what he is;
Yet learn the lofty destiny
Which restless Time prepares
For every living soul.

Behold a gorgeous palace, that amid
Yon populous city rears its thousand towers,
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,
Encompass it around: the dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hear'st thou not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on:
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain

That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool

Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites that man

Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles

At the deep curses which the destitute

Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan

But for those morsels which his wantonness

Wastes in unjoyous revelry,

to save

All that they love from famine: when he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face

Of hypocritical assent he turns,

Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.

Now to the meal

Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
From every clime, could force the loathing sense
To overcome satiety, if wealth

The spring it draws from poisons not, or

vice,

Stubborn unfeeling, vice, converteth not

Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils

His unforced task, when he returns at even,
And by the blazing fagot meets again
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
Tastes not a sweeter meal.

Behold him now

Stretched on the gorgeous couch. His fevered

brain

Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon
The slumber of intemperance subsides,
And Conscience, that undying serpent, calls
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye-
Oh! mark that deadly visage.

KING.

Oh! must this last forever?

No cessation!

Awful death,

I wish yet fear to grasp thee! Not one moment
Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace,
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurk'st
With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st
The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace,
O visit me but once, and pitying shed
One drop of balm upon my withered soul!

MAB.

Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
And peace defileth not her snowy robes

In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
His slumbers are but varied agonies;

They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err: earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;

And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,

she only knows

How justly to proportion to the fault,
The punishment it merits.

Is it strange

That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug

The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange

That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured

Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity?

That man's mild nature rises not in war

Against a king's employ? No: 'tis not strange,
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives
Just as his father did; the unconquered powers
Of precedent and custom interpose

Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,
To those who know not nature, nor deduce
The future from the present, it may seem,
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
Of this unnatural being; not one wretch,
Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm
To dash him from his throne!

Those gilded flies

That, basking in the sunshine of a court,
Fatten on its corruption! what are they?

The drones of the community; they feed On the mechanic's labour; the starved hind For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death, To glut their grandeur: many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.