Then pause and be enlightened; there is moreIn such a survey than the sating gazeOf wonder pleased, or awe which would adoreThe worship of the place, or the mere praiseOf art and its great masters, who could raiseWhat former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;The fountain of sublimity displaysIts depth, and thence may draw the mind of manIts golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.
CLX.
Or, turning to the Vatican, go seeLaocoon's torture dignifying pain—A father's love and mortal's agonyWith an immortal's patience blending:—VainThe struggle; vain, against the coiling strainAnd gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,The old man's clench; the long envenomed chainRivets the living links,—the enormous aspEnforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.
CLXI.
Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,The God of life, and poesy, and light—The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and browAll radiant from his triumph in the fight;The shaft hath just been shot—the arrow brightWith an immortal's vengeance; in his eyeAnd nostril beautiful disdain, and mightAnd majesty, flash their full lightnings by,Developing in that one glance the Deity.
CLXII.
But in his delicate form—a dream of Love,Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breastLonged for a deathless lover from above,And maddened in that vision—are expressedAll that ideal beauty ever blessedThe mind within its most unearthly mood,When each conception was a heavenly guest—A ray of immortality—and stoodStarlike, around, until they gathered to a god?
CLXIII.
And if it be Prometheus stole from heavenThe fire which we endure, it was repaidBy him to whom the energy was givenWhich this poetic marble hath arrayedWith an eternal glory—which, if madeBy human hands, is not of human thoughtAnd Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laidOne ringlet in the dust—nor hath it caughtA tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.
CLXIV.
But where is he, the pilgrim of my song,The being who upheld it through the past?Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.He is no more—these breathings are his last;His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,And he himself as nothing:—if he wasAught but a phantasy, and could be classedWith forms which live and suffer—let that pass—His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass,
CLXV.
Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and allThat we inherit in its mortal shroud,And spreads the dim and universal pallThro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloudBetween us sinks and all which ever glowed,Till Glory's self is twilight, and displaysA melancholy halo scarce allowedTo hover on the verge of darkness; raysSadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze,
CLXVI.
And send us prying into the abyss,To gather what we shall be when the frameShall be resolved to something less than thisIts wretched essence; and to dream of fame,And wipe the dust from off the idle nameWe never more shall hear,—but never more,Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:It is enough, in sooth, that ONCE we boreThese fardels of the heart—the heart whose sweat was gore.
CLXVII.
Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,A long, low distant murmur of dread sound,Such as arises when a nation bleedsWith some deep and immedicable wound;Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground.The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chiefSeems royal still, though with her head discrowned,And pale, but lovely, with maternal griefShe clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.
CLXVIII.
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?Could not the grave forget thee, and lay lowSome less majestic, less beloved head?In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fledThe present happiness and promised joyWhich filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy.
CLXIX.
Peasants bring forth in safety.—Can it be,O thou that wert so happy, so adored!Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoardHer many griefs for One; for she had pouredHer orisons for thee, and o'er thy headBeheld her Iris.—Thou, too, lonely lord,And desolate consort—vainly wert thou wed!The husband of a year! the father of the dead!
CLXX.
Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made:Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dustThe fair-haired Daughter of the Isles is laid,The love of millions! How we did entrustFuturity to her! and, though it mustDarken above our bones, yet fondly deemedOur children should obey her child, and blessedHer and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemedLike star to shepherd's eyes; 'twas but a meteor beamed.
CLXXI.
Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongueOf hollow counsel, the false oracle,Which from the birth of monarchy hath rungIts knell in princely ears, till the o'erstrungNations have armed in madness, the strange fateWhich tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flungAgainst their blind omnipotence a weightWithin the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,—
CLXXII.
These might have been her destiny; but no,Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,Good without effort, great without a foe;But now a bride and mother—and now THERE!How many ties did that stern moment tear!From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breastIs linked the electric chain of that despair,Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppressedThe land which loved thee so, that none could love thee best.
CLXXIII.
Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hillsSo far, that the uprooting wind which tearsThe oak from his foundation, and which spillsThe ocean o'er its boundary, and bearsIts foam against the skies, reluctant sparesThe oval mirror of thy glassy lake;And, calm as cherished hate, its surface wearsA deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.
CLXXIV.
And near Albano's scarce divided wavesShine from a sister valley;—and afarThe Tiber winds, and the broad ocean lavesThe Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,'Arms and the Man,' whose reascending starRose o'er an empire,—but beneath thy rightTully reposed from Rome;—and where yon barOf girdling mountains intercepts the sight,The Sabine farm was tilled, the weary bard's delight.
CLXXV.
But I forget.—My pilgrim's shrine is won,And he and I must part,—so let it be,—His task and mine alike are nearly done;Yet once more let us look upon the sea:The midland ocean breaks on him and me,And from the Alban mount we now beholdOur friend of youth, that ocean, which when weBeheld it last by Calpe's rock unfoldThose waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled
CLXXVI.
Upon the blue Symplegades: long years—Long, though not very many—since have doneTheir work on both; some suffering and some tearsHave left us nearly where we had begun:Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,We have had our reward—and it is here;That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun,And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dearAs if there were no man to trouble what is clear.
CLXXVII.
Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,With one fair Spirit for my minister,That I might all forget the human race,And, hating no one, love but only her!Ye Elements!—in whose ennobling stirI feel myself exalted—can ye notAccord me such a being? Do I errIn deeming such inhabit many a spot?Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
CLXXVIII.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society where none intrudes,By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:I love not Man the less, but Nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the Universe, and feelWhat I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
CLXXIX.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;Man marks the earth with ruin—his controlStops with the shore;—upon the watery plainThe wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remainA shadow of man's ravage, save his own,When for a moment, like a drop of rain,He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
CLXXX.
His steps are not upon thy paths,—thy fieldsAre not a spoil for him,—thou dost ariseAnd shake him from thee; the vile strength he wieldsFor earth's destruction thou dost all despise,Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,And send'st him, shivering in thy playful sprayAnd howling, to his gods, where haply liesHis petty hope in some near port or bay,And dashest him again to earth:—there let him lay.
CLXXXI.
The armaments which thunderstrike the wallsOf rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,And monarchs tremble in their capitals.The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs makeTheir clay creator the vain title takeOf lord of thee, and arbiter of war;These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,They melt into thy yeast of waves, which marAlike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
CLXXXII.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?Thy waters washed them power while they were freeAnd many a tyrant since: their shores obeyThe stranger, slave, or savage; their decayHas dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play—Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow—Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
CLXXXIII.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's formGlasses itself in tempests; in all time,Calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm,Icing the pole, or in the torrid climeDark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime—The image of Eternity—the throneOf the Invisible; even from out thy slimeThe monsters of the deep are made; each zoneObeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
CLXXXIV.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joyOf youthful sports was on thy breast to beBorne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boyI wantoned with thy breakers—they to meWere a delight; and if the freshening seaMade them a terror—'twas a pleasing fear,For I was as it were a child of thee,And trusted to thy billows far and near,And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.
CLXXXV.
My task is done—my song hath ceased—my themeHas died into an echo; it is fitThe spell should break of this protracted dream.The torch shall be extinguished which hath litMy midnight lamp—and what is writ, is writ—Would it were worthier! but I am not nowThat which I have been—and my visions flitLess palpably before me—and the glowWhich in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low.
CLXXXVI.
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been—A sound which makes us linger; yet, farewell!Ye, who have traced the Pilgrim to the sceneWhich is his last, if in your memories dwellA thought which once was his, if on ye swellA single recollection, not in vainHe wore his sandal-shoon and scallop shell;Farewell! with HIM alone may rest the pain,If such there were—with YOU, the moral of his strain.
{1} Lady Charlotte Harley, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.