Ascends the rocky summit, where thou dwell'st
Remote from man, conversing with the spheres!
O lead me, queen sublime, to solemn glooms
Congenial with my soul; to cheerless shades,
To ruin'd seats, to twilight cells and bowers,
Where thoughtful Melancholy loves to muse,
Her favourite midnight haunts. The laughing scenes
Of purple Spring, where all the wanton train
Of Smiles and Graces seem to lead the dance

In sportive round, while from their hands they shower
Ambrosial blooms and flowers, no longer charm ;
Tempe, no more I court thy balmy breeze,
Adieu, green vales! ye broider'd meads, adieu !
Beneath yon ruin'd abbey's moss-grown piles

Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,

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Where through some western window the pale moon 30
Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light;
While sullen sacred silence reigns around,

Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower
Amid the mouldering caverns dark and damp,
Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves
Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green
Invests some wasted tower. Or let me tread

Its neighbouring walk of pines, where mused of old
The cloister'd brothers: through the gloomy void
That far extends beneath their ample arch
As on I pace, religious horror wraps

My soul in dread repose. But when the world
Is clad in Midnight's raven-colour'd robe,
'Mid hollow charnel let me watch the flame
Of taper dim, shedding a livid glare
O'er the wan heaps; while airy voices talk
Along the glimmering walls; or ghostly shape
At distance seen, invites with beckoning hand

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My lonesome steps, through the far-winding vaults. 49
Nor undelightful is the solemn noon

Of night, when haply wakeful from my couch
I start lo, all is motionless around!
Roars not the rushing wind; the sons of men
And every beast in mute oblivion lie;
All nature's hush'd in silence and in sleep.
O then how fearful is it to reflect,

That through the still globe's awful solitude,
No being wakes but me! till stealing sleep
My drooping temples bathes in opiate dews.
Nor then let dreams, of wanton folly born,
My senses lead through flowery paths of joy ;
But let the sacred Genius of the night
Such mystic visions send, as Spenser saw,
When through bewildering Fancy's magic maze,
To the fell house of Busyrane, he led
Th' unshaken Britomart; or Milton knew,
When in abstracted thought he first conceived
All heaven in tumult, and the Seraphim
Come towering, arm'd in adamant and gold.

Let others love soft Summer's evening smiles,

As listening to the distant waterfall,
They mark the blushes of the streaky west;

I choose the pale December's foggy glooms.

Then, when the sullen shades of evening close,

Where through the room a blindly-glimmering gleam
The dying embers scatter, far remote

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From Mirth's mad shouts, that through th' illumined roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,

Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge.
Then let my thought contemplative explore
This fleeting state of things, the vain delights,
The fruitless toils, that still our search elude,

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As through the wilderness of life we rove.
This sober hour of silence will unmask
False Folly's smile, that like the dazzling spells
Of wily Comus cheat th' unweeting eye
With blear illusion, and persuade to drink
That charmed cup, which Reason's mintage fair
Unmoulds, and stamps the monster on the man.
Eager we taste, but in the luscious draught
Forget the poisonous dregs that lurk beneath.

Few know that elegance of soul refined,
Whose soft sensation feels a quicker joy
From Melancholy's scenes, than the dull pride
Of tasteless splendour and magnificence
Can e'er afford. Thus Eloise, whose mind
Had languish'd to the pangs of melting love,
More genuine transport found, as on some tomb
Reclined, she watch'd the tapers of the dead;
Or through the pillar'd aisles, amid pale shrines
Of imaged saints, and intermingled graves,
Mused a veil'd votaress; than Flavia feels,
As through the mazes of the festive ball,

Proud of her conquering charms and beauty's blaze,
She floats amid the silken sons of dress,

And shines the fairest of th' assembled fair.

When azure noontide cheers the dædal globe,
And the blest regent of the golden day

Rejoices in his bright meridian tower,
How oft my wishes ask the night's return,
That best befriends the melancholy mind!

Hail, sacred Night! thou too shalt share my song!
Sister of ebon-scepter'd Hecate, hail!

Whether in congregated clouds thou wrapp'st
Thy viewless chariot, or with silver crown
Thy beaming head encirclest, ever hail!

What though beneath thy gloom the sorceress train, 117
Far in obscured haunt of Lapland moors,

With rhymes uncouth the bloody caldron bless;
Though Murder wan beneath thy shrouding shade
Summons her slow-eyed votaries to devise
Of secret slaughter, while by one blue lamp
In hideous conference sits the listening band,
And start at each low wind, or wakeful sound;
What though thy stay the pilgrim curseth oft,
As all-benighted in Arabian wastes

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He hears the wilderness around him howl
With roaming monsters, while on his hoar head
The black-descending tempest ceaseless beats;
Yet more delightful to my pensive mind
Is thy return, than blooming morn's approach,
Even then, in youthful pride of opening May,
When from the portals of the saffron east
She sheds fresh roses, and ambrosial dews.
Yet not ungrateful is the morn's approach,
When dropping wet she comes, and clad in clouds,
While through the damp air scowls the lowering south,
Blackening the landscape's face, that grove and hill
In formless vapours undistinguish'd swim:
Th' afflicted songsters of the sadden'd groves
Hail not the sullen gloom; the waving elms
That, hoar through time, and ranged in thick array,
Enclose with stately row some rural hall,

Are mute, nor echo with the clamours hoarse
Of rooks rejoicing on their airy boughs;
While to the shed the dripping poultry crowd,
A mournful train: secure the village hind

Hangs o'er the crackling blaze, nor tempts the storm;
Fix'd in th' unfinish'd furrow rests the plough:

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Rings not the high wood with enliven❜d shouts 150

Of early hunter all is silence drear;

And deepest sadness wraps the face of things.

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Through Pope's soft song though all the Graces breathe,

And happiest art adorn his Attic page;

Yet does my mind with sweeter transport glow,
As at the root of mossy trunk reclined,
In magic Spenser's wildly-warbled song
I see deserted Una wander wide
Through wasteful solitudes, and lurid heaths,
Weary, forlorn; than when the fated fair 1
Upon the bosom bright of silver Thames
Launches in all the lustre of brocade,
Amid the splendours of the laughing sun.
The gay description palls upon the sense,
And coldly strikes the mind with feeble bliss.
Ye youths of Albion's beauty-blooming isle,
Whose brows have worn the wreath of luckless love,
Is there a pleasure like the pensive mood,
Whose magic wont to soothe your soften'd souls?
O tell how rapturous the joy, to melt
To Melody's assuasive voice; to bend
Th' uncertain step along the midnight mead,
And pour your sorrows to the pitying moon,
By many a slow trill from the bird of woe
Oft interrupted; in embowering woods.
By darksome brook to muse, and there forget
The solemn dulness of the tedious world,
While Fancy grasps the visionary fair :
And now no more th' abstracted ear attends
The water's murmuring lapse, th' entranced eye
Pierces no longer through th' extended rows
Of thick-ranged trees; till haply from the depth
The woodman's stroke, or distant tinkling team,
'The fated fair:' see Rape of the Lock.'

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