imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks 5 in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that IO Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency 15 is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy 20 nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who 25 attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tenderhearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, 30 the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. 35 The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, December 14, 1815. וד ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare. Confess. St. August. EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Mother of this unfathomable world! Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 30 Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 35 Such magic as compels the charmèd night To render up thy charge: . . . and, though ne'er yet And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain There was a Poet whose untimely tomb no lorn bard 40 45 50 55 Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh: By solemn vision, and bright silver dream, 60 65 His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, 70 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 75 His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves To avarice or pride, their starry domes Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 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 dæmons watch Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, Of the world's youth, through the long burning day 115 120 |