When the exulting elements in scorn Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep; — and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread
Proteus transformed to metal did not make
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood; And forms of unimaginable wood,
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time. — Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine: A pretty bowl of wood - not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the dæmons of the earthquake, who
Reply to them in lava- cry halloo !
And call out to the cities o'er their head,
Roofs, towers and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth — and then all
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk within The walnut bowl it lies, veinèd and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains The inmost shower of its white fire - the breeze Is still blue heaven smiles over the pale seas.
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood - I have made to float
A hollow screw with cogs - Henry will know The thing I mean and laugh at me,
He fears not I should do more mischief.
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. Then comes a range of mathematical Instruments, for plans nautical and statical; A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass With ink in it; a china cup that was What it will never be again, I think,
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at—and which I
Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out, "heads or tails?" where'er we be. Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures, — disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, With lead in the middle I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb of time, Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.
And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind. Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, Ruffling the ocean of their self-content; ·
I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them — Libeccio rushes round With an inconstant and an idle sound;
I heed him more than them — the thunder-smoke Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloke Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare; The ripe corn under the undulating air
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines - The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill The empty pauses of the blast; — the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain, And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, The interrupted thunder howls; above One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love On the unquiet world; — while such things are, How could one worth your friendship heed the war Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be But are not. - I demand if ever we
Shall meet as then we met; and she replies,
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
"I know the past alone - but summon home
she speaks of all to come."
But I, an old diviner, who knew well Every false verse of that sweet oracle, Turned to the sad enchantress once again, And sought a respite from my gentle pain, In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion - how on the sea-shore We watched the ocean and the sky together, Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm, And felt the transverse lightning linger warm Upon my cheek and how we often made Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be; - and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun Of this familiar life, which seems to be But is not, or is but quaint mockery Of all we would believe, and sadly blame The jarring and inexplicable frame
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes Were closed in distant years; - or widely guess The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; - or how You listened to some interrupted flow Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, With little skill perhaps ; or how we sought Those deepest wells of passion or of thought Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears; Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed! Or how I, wisest lady! then indued The language of a land which now is free, And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty, Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, "My name is Legion!"— that majestic tongue, Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found An echo in our hearts, and with the sound Startled oblivion; - thou wert then to me As is a nurse - when inarticulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do. If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the ætherial way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin, - greater none than he Though fallen and fallen on evil times - to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of to-come
The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge - he who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind
Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
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