Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall, The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul: Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole, The gay recess of Wisdom and of And Passion's host, that never Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit? Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee, And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore; How sweet it were in concert to adore With those who made our mortal labors light! To hear each voice we feared to hear no more! Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight, The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right! BYRON Childe Harold. THE IMMORTAL MIND. WHEN coldness wraps this suffering clay, Ah, whither strays the immortal mind? It cannot die, it cannot stay, But leaves its darkened dust behind. Then, unembodied, doth it trace Or fill at once the realms of space, Eternal, boundless, undecayed, A thought unseen, but seeing all, All, all in earth, or skies displayed, Shall it survey, shall it recall: Each fainter trace that memory holds, So darkly of departed years, In one broad glance the soul beholds, And all, that was, at once appears. Before creation peopled earth, Its eyes shall roll through chaos back; And where the farthest heaven had birth, The spirit trace its rising track. And where the future mars or makes, Its glance dilate o'er all to be, While sun is quenched or system breaks, Fixed in its own eternity. Above or love, hope, hate, or fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years as moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thoughts shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die. BYRON. CELINDA. WALKING thus towards a pleasant grove, Which did, it seemed, in new delight Reposed so as o'er his breast Such a weight as no burden was. see, Thy hands again these hands infold, And all chaste pleasures can be told Shall with us everlasting be. Let then no doubt, Celinda, touch, Much less your fairest mind invade; Were not our souls immortal made, Our equal loves can make them such." LORD EDWARD HERBERT. Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. VI. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. VII. Behold the child among his newborn blisses, A six years' darling of a pygmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newlylearned art; A wedding or a festival, And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; — MORAL. The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, . Hence, in a season of calm weather, Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. X. Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound |