FROM 'ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF Solitude'
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaereba » quid amarem amans amare Confess. St. August.
Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness; If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs— If Spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses- have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast, I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred;-then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now!
Mother of this unfathomable world, Favour my solemn song! for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins. where black Death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee; Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 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,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love; until strange tears, 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,
And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome
Of some mysterious and deserted fane)
I wait thy breath, Great Parent; that my strain 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 man.
There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hand with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness. A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers or votive cypress-wreath The lone couch of his everlasting sleep: Gentle and brave and generous, no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh: He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes; And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
By solemn vision and bright silver dream His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
The fountains of divine philosophy
Fled not his thirsting lips: and all of great
Or good or lovely which the sacred past
In truth or fable consecrates he felt
And knew. When early youth had passed, he left His cold fireside and alienated home,
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke; or where bitumen-lakes On black bare pointed islets ev
With sluggish surge; or where the secret caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and immeasurable halls,
Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty
Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven 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 partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,- And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own.
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange, Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble dæmons watch The zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around He lingered, poring on memorials
Of the world's youth; through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.
Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps: Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe
To speak her love :-and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself to gaze upon his lips
Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath
Of innocent dreams arose. Then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, Wildered and wan and panting, she returned.
The poet, wandering on, through Arabie, And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aërial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves.
In joy and exultation held his way;
Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within
Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood
Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
A permeating fire. Wild numbers then
She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange symphony, and in their branching veins The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. The beating of her heart was heard to fill The pauses of her music, and her breath Tumultuously accorded with those fits Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burden. At the sound he turned, And saw, by the warm light of their own life, Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind; her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. His strong heart sank and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled His gasping breath, and spread his ans to meet
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