As if the sense of love, dissolved in them,
Had folded itself round the sphered world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:

Dizzy as with delight I floated down,

Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, My coursers sought their birth-place in the sun, Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil, Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire.

And where my moonlike car will stand within

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms

Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs, looking the love we feel,
In memory of the tidings it has borne,
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky:
Yoked to it by an amphisbænic snake,
The likeness of those winged steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas!
Whither has wander'd now my partial tongue,
When all remains untold which ye would hear?—
As I have said, I floated to the earth:

It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss

To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see

Such mighty change, as I had felt within,
Express'd in outward things; but soon I look'd,

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walk'd
One with the other even as spirits do,

None fawn'd, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,

None frown'd, none trembled, none with eager fear Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,

Which spurr'd him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdain'd to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remain'd
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire amongst men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill :

None talk'd that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
From Custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they fear'd to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being new, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill-shame,

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, wherein And beside which, by wretched men were borne Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes

* 'Lasciate ogni speranza voi che' ntrate.'-Divina Com.: Inferno, iii.

Of reason'd wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no more remember'd fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs

Of those who were their conquerors; mouldering round
Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests,

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide

As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorr'd by God and man,
Which, under many a name and many a form,
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragg'd to his altars soil'd and garlandless,

And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they fear'd, which fear was hate,
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandon'd shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called Life,
Which mimick'd, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside :
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclass'd, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man
Passionless-no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made and suffer'd them.
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,

From Chance, and Death, and Mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense Inane,*

Id. III. 4.

THE SONG OF TRIUMPH.†

The Earth.

THE joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vapourous exultation not to be confined!
Ha ha! the animation of delight

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

The Moon.

Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,

Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,

And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me, through me!

The Earth.

Ha ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains,

* Whatever may be thought of the expediency or Utopianism, there can be but one opinion, it may be presumed, as to the melody and sweetness of the language, and the lofty faith of this dream of an Astræa Redux, and a Golden Age to be.

The Hallelujah Chorus,' as it may be termed, celebrating in jubilant and ecstatic song the completed Redemption.

Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter : The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,

And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses, Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.

The Moon.

The shadow of white death has past
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.

The Earth.

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, And wanders up the vault of the blue day, Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

The Moon.

Thou art folded, thou art lying

In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine:

All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine On mine, on mine!