Rival the pride of summer.
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken The stillness of its solitude:-one voice Alone inspired its echoes ;-even that voice Which hither came, floating among the winds, And led the loveliest among human forms To make their wild haunts the depository Of all the grace and beauty that endued Its. motions, render up its majesty, Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, Commit the colours of that varying cheek, That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a star Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds, Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace.-O storm of death! Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night: And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still Guiding its irresistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world, from the red field Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed Of innocence, the scaffold, and the throne, A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey He hath prepared, prowling around the world; Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past,
That paused within his passive being now,
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place His pale leau hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest, Diffused and motionless, ou the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm ;-and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses
The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair, The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace, and faintly smiling:-his last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests, and still as the divided frame Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still: And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night-till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused-it fluttered. But when heaven remained Utterly black, the murky shades involved An image, silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. Even as a vapour fed with golden beams That ministered on sunlight, ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame- No sense, no motion, no divinity-
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander-a bright stream Once fed with many-voiced waves-a dream
Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchymy, Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death! Oh, that the dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world! But thou art fied Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast filed! The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Are done and said i'the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison,
Lifts still its solemn voice :-but thou art fled- Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee Been purest ministers, who are, alas! Now thou art not. Upon those palid lips So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes That image sleep in death, upon that form Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this simple strain,; Let not high verse, mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or paiuting's woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, And all the shows o'the world are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. It is a woe too deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt every where; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness. Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snow-drop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
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