The genii of the breezes sweep: Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall
Through some cathedral window, but the teints
Are such as may not find
Comparison on earth.

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light:

These the Queen of Spells drew in,
She spread a charm around the spot,
And leaning graceful from the ethereal car,
Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid."

Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams, When silveryclouds float through the wildered brain, When every sight of lovely, wild and grand,

Astonishes, enraptures, elevates-
When fancy at a glance combines
The wond'rous and the beautiful,—
So bright, so fair, so wild a shape
Hath ever yet beheld,

As that which reined the coursers of the air,
And poured the magic of her gaze
Upon the sleeping maid.

The broad and yellow moon
Shone dimly through her form—
That form of faultless symmetry;
The pearly and pellucid car

Moved not the moonlight's line:
"Twas not an earthly pageant ;
Those who had look'd upon the sight,
Passing all human glory,
Saw not the yellow moon,
Saw not the mortal scene,
Heard not the night-wind's rush,
Heard not an earthly sound,
Saw but the fairy pageant,
Heard but the heavenly strains
That filled the lonely dwelling.

The Fairy's frame was slight ; yon fibrous cloud,
That catches but the palest tinge of even,

And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,
Yet with an undulating motion,
Swayed to her outline gracefully.

From her celestial car
The Fairy Queen descended,
And thrice she waved her wand
Circled with wreaths of amaranth :
Her thin and misty form
Moved with the moving air,
And the clear silver tones,
As thus she spoke, were such
As are unheard by all but gifted ear.

FAIRY.

Stars! your balmiest influence shed! Elements ! your wrath suspend ! Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds

That circle thy domain !

Let not a breath be seen to stir
Around yon grass-grown ruin's height,
Let even the restless gossamer

Sleep on the moveless air!
Soul of Ianthe! thou,

Judged alone worthy of the envied boon
That waits the good and the sincere; that waits
Those who have struggled, and with resolute will
Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the
The icy chains of custom, and have shone [chains,
The day-stars of their age;-Soul of Ianthe!
Awake! arise !

Sudden arose

Ianthe's Soul; it stood

All beautiful in naked purity,

The perfect semblance of its bodily frame.
Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,
Each stain of earthliness

Had passed away, it reassumed
Its native dignity, and stood
Immortal amid ruin.

Upon the couch the body lay,
Wrapt in the depth of slumber :

Its features were fixed and meaningless,
Yet animal life was there,
And every organ yet performed
Its natural functions; 'twas a sight
Of wonder to behold the body and soul.
The self-same lineaments, the same
Marks of identity were there ;

Yet, oh how different! One aspires to heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,
And ever-changing, ever-rising still,

Wantons in endless being.

The other, for a time the unwilling sport
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
Then like a useless and worn-out machine,
Rots, perishes and passes.

FAIRY.

Spirit! who hast dived so deep; Spirit! who hast soar'd so high; Thou the fearless, thou the mild, Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, Ascend the car with me.

SPIRIT.

Do I dream? Is this new feeling
But a visioned ghost of slumber?
If indeed I am a soul,
A free, a disembodied soul,
Speak again to me.

FAIRY.

I am the Fairy MAB: to me 'tis given
The wonders of the human world to keep.
The secrets of the immeasurable past,
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern, unflattering chroniclens, I find :
The future, from the causes which arise
In each event, I gather: not the sting
Which retributive memory implants
In the hard bosom of the selfish man;
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,

Are unforeseen, unregistered by me:
And it is yet permitted me, to rend
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
For which it hath its being, and may taste
That peace, which in the end, all life will share.
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,
Ascend the car with me!

The chains of earth's immurement
Fell from Ianthe's spirit ;

They shrank and brake like bandages of straw
Beneath a wakened giant's strength.
She knew her glorious change,
And felt in apprehension uncontrolled
New raptures opening round:
Each day-dream of her mortal life,
Each frenzied vision of the slumbers
That closed each well-spent day,
Seemed now to meet reality.

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;
The silver clouds disparted;
And as the car of magic they ascended,
Again the speechless music swelled,
Again the coursers of the air

Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen,
Shaking the beamy reins,
Bade them pursue their way.

The magic car moved on.

The night was fair, and countless stars
Studded heaven's dark blue vault,-

Just o'er the eastern wave
Peeped the first faint smile of morn :-
The magic car moved on-

From the celestial hoofs

The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,
And where the burning wheels
Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak,
Was traced a line of lightning.
Now it flew far above a rock,

The utmost verge of earth,

The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow Lowered o'er the silver sea.

Far, far below the chariot's path,
Calm as a slumbering babe,
Tremendous Ocean lay.

The mirror of its stillness showed

The pale and waning stars,
The chariot's fiery track,
And the grey light of morn
Tinging those fleecy clouds
That canopied the dawn.
Seemed it, that the chariot's way

Lay through the midst of an immense concave,
Radiant with million constellations, tinged

With shades of infinite colour,
And semicircled with a belt
Flashing incessant meteors.

The magic car moved on.

As they approached their goal,
The coursers seemed to gather speed;
The sea no longer was distinguished; earth
Appear'd a vast and shadowy sphere;

The sun's unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave;

Its rays of rapid light

Parted around the chariot's swifter course, And fell, like ocean's feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel's prow.

The magic car moved on.

Earth's distant orb appeared

The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;
Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.

It was a sight of wonder: some
Were horned like the crescent moon;
Some shed a mild and silver beam

Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;
Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,
Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed,
Eclipsed all other light.

Spirit of Nature! here!

In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple.

Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee:

Yet not the meanest worm

That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath.
Spirit of Nature! thou!
Imperishable as this scene,
Here is thy fitting temple!

II.

IF solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the wild ocean's echoing shore,
And thou hast lingered there,
Until the sun's broad orb

Seemed resting on the burnished wave,
Thou must have marked the lines

Of purple gold, that motionless

Hung o'er the sinking sphere:

Thou must have marked the billowy clouds

Edged with intolerable radiancy,

Towering like rocks of jet

Crowned with a diamond wreath.

And yet there is a moment,

When the sun's highest point

Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery gold,
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark blue sea;
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth,
And furled its wearied wing

Within the Fairy's fane.

Yet not the golden islands

Gleaming in yon flood of light,

Nor the feathery curtains

Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,
Nor the burnished ocean-waves,

Paving that gorgeous dome,

So fair, so wonderful a sight

As Mab's ethereal palace could afford.

Yet likest evening's vault, that fairy Hall!
As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
Its vast and azure dome,
Its fertile golden islands
Floating on a silver sea;

Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
And pearly battlements around
Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.

The magic car no longer moved.
The Fairy and the Spirit
Entered the Hall of Spells :

Those golden clouds

That rolled in glittering billows
Beneath the azure canopy,

With the ethereal footsteps trembled not:
The light and crimson mists,

Floating to strains of thrilling melody

Through that unearthly dwelling,
Yielded to every movement of the will.
Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,
And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,
Used not the glorious privilege

Of virtue and of wisdom.

Spirit the Fairy said,
And pointed to the gorgeous dome,
This is a wondrous sight
And mocks all human grandeur;
But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell
In a celestial palace, all resigned
To pleasurable impulses, immured
Within the prison of itself, the will

Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled.
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!
This is thine high reward:-the past shall rise;
Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach
The secrets of the future.

The Fairy and the Spirit

Approached the overhanging battlement.-
Below lay stretched the universe!
There, far as the remotest line
That bounds imagination's flight,
Countless and unending orbs
In mazy motion intermingled,
Yet still fulfilled immutably
Eternal Nature's law.
Above, below, around

The circling systems formed
A wilderness of harmony;

Each with undeviating aim,

In eloquent silence, through the depths of Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light

That twinkled in the misty distance :
None but a spirit's eye
Might ken that rolling orb ;
None but a spirit's eye,
And in no other place

But that celestial dwelling, might behold
Each action of this earth's inhabitants.

But matter, space and time, In those aerial mansions cease to act; And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul Fears to attempt the conquest.

space

The Fairy pointed to the earth. The Spirit's intellectual eye Its kindred beings recognized. The thronging thousands, to a passing view, Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.

How wonderful! that even

The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch
That moves the finest nerve,

And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link In the great chain of nature.

Behold, the Fairy cried, Palmyra's ruin'd palaces !

Behold! where grandeur frowned; Behold! where pleasure smiled; What now remains?-the memory Of senselessness and shameWhat is immortal there? Nothing-it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently

The remnant of its fame.

Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trodThe earthquakes of the human race,— Like them, forgotten when the ruin

That marks their shock is past.

Beside the eternal Nile The Pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way; Those Pyramids shall fall;

Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell The spot whereon they stood; Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder's name!

Behold yon sterile spot;

Where now the wandering Arab's tent
Flaps in the desert-blast.

There once old Salem's haughty fane

Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day

Exposed its shameful glory.

Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father,

Worn out with toil and slavery, implored

The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,
And spare his children the detested task
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning
The choicest days of life,

To soothe a dotard's vanity.

There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;
They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb
The unborn child,-old age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were

fiends:

But what was he who taught them that the God
Of nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
Itself into forgetfulness.

Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,

There is a moral desert now:

The mean and miserable huts,

The yet more wretched palaces,
Contrasted with those ancient fanes,
Now crumbling to oblivion;
The long and lonely colonnades,

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,
Seem like a well-known tune,

Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
Remembered now in sadness.

But, oh! how much more changed,
How gloomier is the contrast

Of human nature there!

Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,

A coward and a fool, spreads death around-
Then, shuddering, meets his own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowled and hypocritical monk
Prays, curses, and deceives.

Spirit! ten thousand years
Have scarcely passed away,

Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks
His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons,

Wakes the unholy song

Arose a stately city,

of war,

Metropolis of the western continent :
There, now, the mossy column-stone,
Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,
Which once appeared to brave
All, save its country's ruin;
There the wide forest scene,

Rude in the uncultivated loveliness

Of gardens long run wild,

Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps
Chance in that desert has delayed,

Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked
Strangers, and ships, and merchandize :
Once peace and freedom blest
The cultivated plain :

But wealth, that curse of man,
Blighted the bud of its prosperity:
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
Fled, to return not, until man shall know
That they alone can give the bliss

Worthy a soul that claims
Its kindred with eternity.

There's not one atom of yon earth
But once was living man ;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins :
And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.

How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn

And perisheth ere noon,

Is an unbounded world;

I tell thee that those viewless beings,
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel and live like man ;
That their affections and antipathies,
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their moral state;
And the minutest throb

That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable

As the majestic laws

That rule yon rolling orbs.

The Fairy paused. The Spirit,

In ecstacy of admiration, felt

All knowledge of the past revived; the events
Of old and wondrous times,

Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded
In just perspective to the view;
Yet dim from their infinitude.
The Spirit seemed to stand

High on an isolated pinnacle ;
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
Above, and all around
Nature's unchanging harmony.

III.

FAIRY! the Spirit said,
And on the Queen of Spells
Fixed her ethereal eyes,

I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly:
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven.

MAB.

Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
Much yet remains unscanned.
Thou knowest how great is man,
Thou knowest his imbecility:
Yet learn thou what he is;
Yet learn the lofty destiny
Which restless Time prepares
For every living soul.

Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid
Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,
Encompass it around: the dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on:
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to the basest appetites-that man

Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which the destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
But for those morsels which his wantonness
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save

All that they love from famine: when he hears
The tale of horror, to some ready-made face
Of hypocritical assent he turns,

Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,
Flushes his bloated cheek.

Now to the meal

Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
From every clime, could force the loathing sense
To overcome satiety,-if wealth

The spring it draws from poisons not,- -or vice,
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not
Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils
His unforced task, when he returns at even,
And by the blazing faggot meets again
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
Tastes not a sweeter meal.

No cessation!

Oh! must this last for ever! Awful death,
I wish yet fear to clasp thee! Not one moment
Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons! wherefore lurkest
With danger, death, and solitude: yet shunn'st
The palace I have built thee! Sacred peace!
Oh visit me but once, and pitying shed
One drop of balm upon my withered soul.

Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
And peace defileth not her snowy robes

In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
His slumbers are but varied agonies,
They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err: earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sufficing nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,-she only knows
How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.

Against a king's employ? No-'tis not strange,
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives
Just as his father did; the unconquered powers
Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet,
To those who know not nature, nor deduce
The future from the present, it may seem,
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
Of this unnatural being; not one wretch,
Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed
Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm
To dash him from his throne!

Those gilded flies

That basking in the sunshine of a court,
Fatten on its corruption !-what are they?
-The drones of the community; they feed
On the mechanic's labour; the starved hind
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
Drags out in labour a protracted death,
To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil,
That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury

On those who build their palaces, and bring [vice;
Their daily bread?-From vice, black loathsome
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
Revenge, and murder.-And when reason's voice,
Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue
Is peace, and happiness and harmony;
When man's maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now.

Where is the fame
Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound
From time's light foot-fall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Aye! to-day
Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.

The virtuous man Who, great in his humility, as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good, And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge, Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit ;-when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more: