SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth-
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the sun their father rose, to bear

Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own and then imposed on them:
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem

Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep

Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my brain was rolled.

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream :—
Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear;

And others as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom

Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:

But more with motions, which each other crost,
Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,

Upon that path where flowers never grew,
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,

With over-arching elms and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.

And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,

And a cold glare intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon

“The great, the unforgotten,—they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, Signs of thought's empire over thought-their lore

"Taught them not this, to know themselves; their Could not repress the mystery within, [might And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night "Caught them ere evening."-"Who is he with chin Upon his breast, and hands crost on his chain?"— "The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win

"The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain

"Without the opportunity which bore Him on its eagle pinions to the peak From which a thousand climbers have before

66 Fallen, as Napoleon fell."-I felt my cheek
Alter to see the shadow pass away,
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak,

That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
And much I grieved to think how power and wil!
In opposition rule our mortal day,

And why God made irreconcilable

Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill

With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be." Dost thou behold,"
Said my guide," those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage—

names which the world thinks always old, "For in the battle life and they did wage, She remained conqueror. I was overcome By my own heart alone, which neither age, "Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb Could temper to its object."- "Let them pass," I cried, "the world and its mysterious doom "Is not so much more glorious than it was, That I desire to worship those who drew New figures on its false and fragile glass

"As the old faded."-" Figures ever new Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may; We have but thrown, as those before us threw, "Our shadows on it as it past away. But mark how chained to the triumphal chair The mighty phantoms of an elder day;

"All that is mortal of great Plato there Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not: The star that ruled his doom was far too fair,

"And life, where long that flower of Heaven

grew not,

Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
Or age, or sloth, or slavery, could subdue not.

"And near him walk the [
] twain,
The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.

"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion;

"The other long outlived both woes and wars, Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept The jealous key of truth's eternal doors,

"If Bacon's eagle spirit had not leapt
Like lightning out of darkness-he compelled
The Proteus shape of Nature as it slept

"To wake, and lead him to the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign.
See the great bards of elder time, who quelled

"The passions which they sung, as by their strain May well be known: their living melody Tempers its own contagion to the vein

"Of those who are infected with it-I Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain, And so my words have seeds of misery!".

"And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune To which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot The thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon

"All that was, seemed as if it had been not;
And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,

66 Trampled its sparks into the dust of death;
As day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath

"Of darkness re-illumine even the least Of heaven's living eyes-like day she came, Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased

"To move, as one between desire and shame Suspended, I said-If, as it doth seem, Thou comest from the realm without a name,

"Into this valley of perpetual dream,

"Beside my path, as silent as a ghost; But the new Vision, and the cold bright car, With solemn speed and stunning music, crost

"The forest, and as if from some dread war Triumphantly returning, the loud million Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.

"A moving arch of victory, the vermilion And green and azure plumes of Iris had Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,

"And underneath ethereal glory clad The wilderness, and far before her flew The tempest of the splendour, which forbade

"Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance Within a sunbeam;-some upon the new

"Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance

"Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply.
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,

"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand,

"Where the first wave had more than half erased The track of deer on desert Labrador; Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,

"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore, Until the second bursts;-so on my sight Burst a new vision, never seen before,

"And the fair shape waned in the coming light, As veil by veil the silent splendour drops From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite

"Of sun-rise, ere it tinge the mountain tops; And as the presence of that fairest planet, Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes

"That his day's path may end as he began it, In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,

"Or the soft note in which his dear lament The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress That turned his weary slumber to content;1

"So knew I in that light's severe excess The presence of that shape which on the stream Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,

Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;

"Others stood gazing, till within the shade Of the great mountain its light left them dim; Others outspeeded it; and others made

"Circles around it, like the clouds that swim Round the high moon in a bright sea of air; And more did follow, with exulting hymn,

"The chariot and the captives fettered there:But all like bubbles on an eddying flood Fell into the same track at last, and were

"Borne onward. I among the multitude Was swept-me, sweetest flowers delayed not long; Me, not the shadow nor the solitude;

"Me, not that falling stream's Lethean song; Me, not the phantom of that early form, Which moved upon its motion-but among

"The thickest billows of that living storm I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.

"Before the chariot had begun to climb The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme

"Of him who from the lowest depths of hell, Through every paradise and through all glory, Love led serene, and who returned to tell

"The words of hate and care; the wondrous story How all things are transfigured except Love; For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary, "The world can hear not the sweet notes that move The sphere whose light is melody to loversA wonder worthy of his rhyme-the grove "Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers, The earth was grey with phantoms, and the air Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers

"A flock of vampire-bats before the glare Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, Strange night upon some Indian vale;-thus were