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, 30 When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, Like an inspired and desperate alchemist 35 Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmèd night To render up thy charge: and, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, 40 And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 45 I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 50 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 The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, 65 And Silence, too enamored of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would par take From his innocuous hand his bloodless Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, e'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake,2 suspend By solemn vision, and bright silver 105 Her timid steps to gaze upon a form dream, His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 70 Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. His cold fireside and alienated home Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 80 With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 110 115 More graceful than her own. He like her shadow has pursued, where 'er 120 Hang their mute thoughts on the mute The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice On black bare pointed islets ever beat caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible 90 To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, 1 The cypress is an emblem of mourning; it is a common tree in graveyards. walls around, He lingered, poring on memorials Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, Filled the mysterious halls with floating 125 Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 3 Supernatural beings of Greek mythology con- men. 4 Mythological figures arranged in the fashion of the zodiac, on the walls, columns, etc., of the temple of Denderah, a city in Upper Egypt. Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed 235 Through tangled swamps and deep pre his sleep, Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever 245 lost, 210 In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rain- 250 And pendent mountains seen in the calm 215 Lead only to a black and watery depth, Where every shade which the foul grave 255 Hides its dead eye from the detested day, 220 This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart; cipitous 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 Aornos seen from Petra's steep 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, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone, As in a furnace burning secretly, awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, Encountering on some dizzy precipice That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind The insatiate hope which it awakened, 260 With lightning eyes, and eager breath, |