And my brain reels-and yet my foot is firm: There is a power upon me which withholds, And makes it my fatality to live; To justify my deeds unto myself, The last infirmity of evil. Aye, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, [An eagle passes.] Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well mayst thou swoop so near me; -I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision. - Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make A conflict of its elements, and My soul would drink those echoes. Oh that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment, born and dying With the blest tone which made me! Ye toppling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things that still would live; On the young flourishing forest, or the hut And hamlet of the harmless villager. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, Heaped with the damned like pebbles. I am giddy. THE APPARITION. BYRON. XII. ORACLES AND COUNSELS. GOOD COUNSEL.-SUPREME HOURS. "For words must sparks be of those fires they strike."- LORD BROOKH. |