The memory of that mental excellence.
Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine
The indecision of my present mind

With its past clearness, yet it seems to me
As even then the torrent of quick thought
Absorbed me from the nature of itself

With its own fleetness. Where is he, that borne
Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding element?

My thoughts which long had grovelled in the slime

Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house
Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of Spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of star-lit wings, which burn
Fan-like and fibred with intensest bloom;
Even so my thoughts erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength

To bear them upward through the trackless fields
Of undefined existence far and free.

Then first within the South methought I saw

A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile

Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement

On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.

Behind

In diamond light up spring the dazzling peaks
Of Pyramids, as far surpassing earth's
As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft
Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place

Stood out a pillared front of burnished gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were

Or metal more ethereal, and beneath

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan,
Through length of porch and valve and boundless
hall,

Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitude of multitudes
That ministered around it - if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Staggered beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

With ministering hand he raised me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment filled
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,

Like a swoln river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake :
"There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man; and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable;

And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
Of glory of heaven.* With earliest light of
Spring,

And in the glow of sallow Summertide,

And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,

I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood

Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters

Betraying the close kisses of the wind

And win him unto me: and few there be

* "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

So
gross
of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: they with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel

My fulness: I have filled thy lips with power.
I have raised thee nigher to the spheres of heaven,
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravished

sense

Listenest the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years. I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth;
So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms,
And cool impeachéd twilights. Child of man,
Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o' the city, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous domes,
Her gardens frequent with the stately palm,
Her pagods hung with music of sweet bells,
Her obelisks of rangéd chrysolite,

Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulfs himself in sands, as not enduring

To carry through the world those waves, which

bore

The reflex of my city in their depth.

O city! O latest throne! where I was raised
To be a mystery of loveliness

Unto all eyes, the time is wellnigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery; soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,

Low-built, mud-walled, barbarian settlements.
How changed from this fair city!"

Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted heavenward on the wing: and Î
Was left alone on Calpe, and the moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

POEMS

PUBLISHED IN THE EDITION OF 1830, AND

OMITTED IN LATER EDITIONS.

ELEGIACS.

LOW-FLOWING breezes are roaming the broad valley dimmed in the gloaming:

Thro' the black-stemmed pines only the far river shines.

Creeping through blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,

Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;

Deeply the turtle cooes; shrilly the owlet halloos; Winds creep: dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:

Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn.

Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth :

Twin peaks shadowed with pine slope to the dark hyaline.

Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad

Throbbing in wild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.

The ancient poetess singeth that Hesperus all things bringeth,

Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.

Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.

False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?

THE "HOW" AND THE "WHY."

?

I AM any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor :

Some say this life is pleasant,

Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,

In eternity no past.

We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The bulrush nods unto its brother.

The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? what do they there?
Why two and two make four ? why round is not
square?

Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly? Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?

Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep or whether we die?

How you are you? why I am I?

Who will riddle me the how and the why?