ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.—
                Confess. St. August. 


          Earth, ocean, air, belovèd 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, belovèd 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 alchymist
    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 noon-day 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 hands 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 sung, 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 past, 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 ever beat
    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.

           His wandering step
    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 sphynx,
    Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills
    Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
    Stupendous columns, and wild images
    Of more than man, where marble daemons 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 veilèd 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 burthen: 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 sunk and sickened with excess
    Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled
    His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
    Her panting bosom:...she drew back a while,
    Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
    With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
    Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
    Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
    Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
    Like a dark flood suspended in its course
    Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

          Roused by the shock he started from his trance—
    The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
    Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
    The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
    Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled
    The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
    Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
    The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
    The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
    Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
    As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
    The spirit of sweet human love has sent
    A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
    Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
    Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
    He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!
    Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
    Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,
    In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
    That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
    Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
    O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,
    And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
    Lead only to a black and watery depth,
    While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,
    Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
    Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
    Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
    This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,
    The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
    His brain even like despair.

           While daylight held
    The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
    With his still soul. At night the passion came,
    Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
    And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
    Into the darkness.—As an eagle grasped
    In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
    Burn with the poison, and precipitates
    Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
    Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
    O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven
    By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,
    Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
    Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
    Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,
    He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
    Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
    Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
    Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep,
    Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
    Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
    Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
    Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
    Day after day a weary waste of hours,
    Bearing within his life the brooding care
    That ever fed on its decaying flame.
    And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair
    Sered by the autumn of strange suffering
    Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand
    Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;
    Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
    As in a furnace burning secretly
    From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,
    Who ministered with human charity
    His human wants, beheld with wondering awe
    Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,
    Encountering on some dizzy precipice
    That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind
    With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
    Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
    In its career: the infant would conceal
    His troubled visage in his mother's robe
    In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
    To remember their strange light in many a dream
    Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught
    By nature, would interpret half the woe
    That wasted him, would call him with false names
    Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
    At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
    Of his departure from their father's door.

          At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
    He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
    Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
    His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
    Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
    It rose as he approached, and with strong wings
    Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
    High over the immeasurable main.
    His eyes pursued its flight.—"Thou hast a home,
    Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,
    Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
    With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
    Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
    And what am I that I should linger here,
    With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
    Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
    To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
    In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
    That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile
    Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
    For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
    Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
    Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
    With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

          Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.
    There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
    Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
    A little shallop floating near the shore
    Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
    It had been long abandoned, for its sides
    Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints
    Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
    A restless impulse urged him to embark
    And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;
    For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves
    The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

          The day was fair and sunny: sea and sky
    Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind
    Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.
    Following his eager soul, the wanderer
    Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft
    On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
    And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea
    Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

          As one that in a silver vision floats
    Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds
    Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly
    Along the dark and ruffled waters fled
    The straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on,
    With fierce gusts and precipitating force,
    Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea.
    The waves arose. Higher and higher still
    Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge
    Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
    Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
    Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast
    Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
    With dark obliterating course, he sate:
    As if their genii were the ministers
    Appointed to conduct him to the light
    Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate
    Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,
    The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
    High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
    That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
    Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
    Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
    O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;
    Night followed, clad with stars. On every side
    More horribly the multitudinous streams
    Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war
    Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock
    The calm and spangled sky. The little boat
    Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam
    Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;
    Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;
    Now leaving far behind the bursting mass
    That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled—
    As if that frail and wasted human form,
    Had been an elemental god.

           At midnight
    The moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffs
    Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
    Among the stars like sunlight, and around
    Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves
    Bursting and eddying irresistibly
    Rage and resound for ever.—Who shall save?—
    The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—
    The crags closed round with black and jaggèd arms,
    The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
    And faster still, beyond all human speed,
    Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
    The little boat was driven. A cavern there
    Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
    Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on
    With unrelaxing speed.—"Vision and Love!"
    The Poet cried aloud, "I have beheld
    The path of thy departure. Sleep and death
    Shall not divide us long!"

           The boat pursued
    The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone
    At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
    Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
    Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
    The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,
    Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
    Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell
    Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound
    That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass
    Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm;
    Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,
    Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
    With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots
    Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
    In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
    Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,
    A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
    Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
    With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,
    Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
    Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
    Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,
    The waters overflow, and a smooth spot
    Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides
    Is left, the boat paused shuddering.—Shall it sink
    Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress
    Of that resistless gulf embosom it?
    Now shall it fall?—A wandering stream of wind,
    Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
    And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks
    Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,
    Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!
    The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,
    With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
    Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
    A little space of green expanse, the cove
    Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
    For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
    Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave
    Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,
    Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,
    Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay
    Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed
    To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,
    But on his heart its solitude returned,
    And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid
    In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame
    Had yet performed its ministry: it hung
    Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
    Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods
    Of night close over it.

           The noonday sun
    Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
    Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
    A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves
    Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks
    Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
    The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
    Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led
    By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
    He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank
    Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark
    And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
    Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
    Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
    Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
    Most solemn domes within, and far below,
    Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
    The ash and the acacia floating hang
    Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
    In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
    Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
    The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,
    With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,
    Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
    These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
    Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
    Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
    And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
    As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
    Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
    Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
    Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen
    Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,
    A soul-dissolving odour, to invite
    To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,
    Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
    Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
    Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well,
    Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
    Images all the woven boughs above,
    And each depending leaf, and every speck
    Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
    Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
    Its portraiture, but some inconstant star
    Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
    Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
    Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
    Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
    Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

          Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
    Their own wan light through the reflected lines
    Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth
    Of that still fountain; as the human heart,
    Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,
    Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
    The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung
    Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel
    An unaccustomed presence, and the sound
    Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs
    Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed
    To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes
    Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,
    Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
    Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;—
    But, undulating woods, and silent well,
    And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
    Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
    Held commune with him, as if he and it
    Were all that was,—only... when his regard
    Was raised by intense pensiveness,... two eyes,
    Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,
    And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
    To beckon him.

           Obedient to the light
    That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing
    The windings of the dell.—The rivulet
    Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine
    Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell
    Among the moss, with hollow harmony
    Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
    It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:
    Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
    Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
    That overhung its quietness.—"O stream!
    Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
    Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
    Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
    Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,
    Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course
    Have each their type in me: and the wide sky,
    And measureless ocean may declare as soon
    What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
    Contains thy waters, as the universe
    Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
    Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
    I' the passing wind!"

           Beside the grassy shore
    Of the small stream he went; he did impress
    On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught
    Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one
    Roused by some joyous madness from the couch
    Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,
    Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame
    Of his frail exultation shall be spent,
    He must descend. With rapid steps he went
    Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow
    Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
    The forest's solemn canopies were changed
    For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
    Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
    The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae
    Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
    And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines
    Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
    The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,
    Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,
    The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin
    And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes
    Had shone, gleam stony orbs:—so from his steps
    Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade
    Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds
    And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued
    The stream, that with a larger volume now
    Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there
    Fretted a path through its descending curves
    With its wintry speed. On every side now rose
    Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,
    Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
    In the light of evening, and its precipice
    Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,
    Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,
    Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues
    To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands
    Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
    And seems, with its accumulated crags,
    To overhang the world: for wide expand
    Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
    Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
    Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
    Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
    Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
    Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
    In naked and severe simplicity,
    Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
    Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
    Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
    Yielding one only response, at each pause,
    In most familiar cadence, with the howl
    The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
    Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,
    Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,
    Fell into that immeasurable void,
    Scattering its waters to the passing winds.

          Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine
    And torrent, were not all;—one silent nook
    Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
    Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
    It overlooked in its serenity
    The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
    It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
    Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
    The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
    And did embower with leaves for ever green,
    And berries dark, the smooth and even space
    Of its inviolated floor, and here
    The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
    In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
    Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,
    Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt
    Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
    The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
    One human step alone, has ever broken
    The stillness of its solitude:—one voice
    Alone inspired its echoes;—even that voice
    Which hither came, floating among the winds,
    And led the loveliest among human forms
    To make their wild haunts the depository
    Of all the grace and beauty that endued
    Its motions, render up its majesty,
    Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
    And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
    Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
    Commit the colours of that varying cheek,
    That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

          The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and poured
    A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge
    That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
    Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
    Wan moonlight even to fulness: not a star
    Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
    Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
    Slept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!
    Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
    And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
    Guiding its irresistible career
    In thy devastating omnipotence,
    Art king of this frail world, from the red field
    Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
    The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
    Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
    A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
    His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
    He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
    Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
    Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
    Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
    The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

          When on the threshold of the green recess
    The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
    Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
    Did he resign his high and holy soul
    To images of the majestic past,
    That paused within his passive being now,
    Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
    Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
    His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
    Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
    Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
    Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
    Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
    Surrendering to their final impulses
    The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
    The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
    Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
    And his own being unalloyed by pain,
    Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
    The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
    At peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight
    Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
    Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
    With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
    To mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hills
    It rests, and still as the divided frame
    Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
    That ever beat in mystic sympathy
    With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
    And when two lessening points of light alone
    Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
    Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
    The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray
    Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
    It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained
    Utterly black, the murky shades involved
    An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
    As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
    Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
    That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
    Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—
    No sense, no motion, no divinity—
    A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
    The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream
    Once fed with many-voicèd waves—a dream
    Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,
    Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

          O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
    Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
    With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
    From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
    Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
    Which but one living man has drained, who now,
    Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
    No proud exemption in the blighting curse
    He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
    Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
    Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
    Raking the cinders of a crucible
    For life and power, even when his feeble hand
    Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
    Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
    Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
    Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!
    The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
    The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
    Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
    And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
    From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
    In vesper low or joyous orison,
    Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—
    Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
    Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
    Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
    Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
    So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
    That image sleep in death, upon that form
    Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
    Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
    Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
    Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
    In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
    Let not high verse, mourning the memory
    Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
    Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
    Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
    And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain
    To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
    It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all
    Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
    Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
    Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
    The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
    But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
    Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
    Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.