Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling:- his last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests, and still as the divided frame

Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

-

The stagnate night: till the minutest ray

Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It paused-it fluttered. But when heaven remained
Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.

'Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame
No sense, no motion, no divinity —

ALASTOR: OR.

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven &d wander-a bright stream Once fed with many-voiced waves — a dream Or youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

O,

for Medea's wondrous alchemy,

Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice

Which

but

one living man has drained, who now,

Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels

No proud He bears Lone as

exemption in the blighting curse over the world wanders for ever, incarnate death! O, that the dream

Of dark magician in his visioned cave,

Raking

the cinders of a crucible

For life and

power, even when his feeble hand

Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,-ah! thou hast fled !
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

The child of

grace and genius.

Heartless things

Are done and said i' the world, and many worms

28

And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,

In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice: - but thou art fled -
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas !
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed-not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shews o' the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too 'deep for tears,' when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;

But pale despair and cold tranquility,

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

O! THERE Te spits of the

And gent of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, rieres es fir

As stur-beams my het trees:

Such lovely minister to meet

Oft hast thou turned fom man thy lonely feet.

With mountain winds, and babbing springs,
And moonlight sea that are the voice

Of these inexplicable tie

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes

Beams that were never meant for thine,

Another's wealth :- tame sacrifice

To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?

Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy?
Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?

That natural scenes or human smiles

Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;

The glory of the moon is dead;

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase; the mad endeavor
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.

Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,

Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.