your sweet errors, 75 Reflect but rapture - not least though last. 85 What is 't but chaining Beat 'gainst their prison? Time can but cloy love, Is but for boys You'll find it torture Though sharper, shorter, 90 To wean, and not wear out your joys. DARKNESS. Jeffrey remarks on this poem, which originally was called "A Dream," it " is a grand and gloomy sketch of the supposed consequences of the final extinction of the sun and the heavenly bodies; executed, undoubtedly, with great and fearful force, but with something of German exaggeration, and a fantastical solution of incidents. The very conception is terrible above all conception of known calamity, and is too oppressive to the imagination to be contemplated with pleasure, even in the faint reflection of poetry." I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. 5 Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn came and went and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread 10 And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones, The flashes fell upon them; some lay down 25 And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, 30 The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd. The wild birds shriek'd, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes 35 Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twined themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless - they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again; - a meal was bought 40 With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails men 45 Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh. And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand And they were enemies: they met beside Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things 60 For an unholy usage; they raked up, And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up 65 Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects saw, and shriek'd, and died Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, 70 The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless — A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; 75 Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd, They slept on the abyss without a surge The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The Moon, their mistress, had expired before; 80 The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them She was the Universe. PROMETHEUS. The story of the Titan Prometheus, or Forethought, has been a favorite subject for poets both in ancient and modern times. The myth relates how Prometheus was the creator of man, and ascended to heaven, lighted his torch at the chariot of the sun, and brought the fire down for the use of man. For this, the Olympian Zeus chained him to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where he was to be forever exposed to the attack of a vulture. The great tragedy of Prometheus Bound by Eschylus has been translated by Augusta Webster, Plumptre, Mrs. Browning, and others. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound was based on it, and besides Byron, Longfellow and Lowell have taken Prometheus for the subject of poems. I. TITAN! to whose immortal eyes Were not as things that gods despise; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, Which speaks but in its loneliness, II. 15 Titan! to thee the strife was given 20 The ruling principle of Hate, 25 Was thine and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee |