In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast Burn with the poison, and precipitates
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,
Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day, a weary waste of hours, Bearing within his life the brooding care That ever fed on its decaying flame.
And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair Sered by the autumn of strange suffering Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand Hung like dead bone within its withered skin; Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone
As in a furnace burning secretly
From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, Who ministered with human charity
His human wants, beheld with wondering awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, Encountering on some dizzy precipice
That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused In its career: the infant would conceal His troubled visage in his mother's robe In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
To remember their strange light in many a dream Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe
That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door.
At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main.
His eyes pursued its flight.—“ Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide.
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following his eager soul, the wanderer
Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft
On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,
And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.
As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat.-A whirlwind swept it on, With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea. The waves arose.
Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.
Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war
Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate: As if their genii were the ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate Holding the steady helm.
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray That canopied his path o'er the waste deep; Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day; Night followed, clad with stars. On every side More horribly the multitudinous streams Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock The calm and spangled sky. The little boat Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam Down the steep cataract of a wintry river; Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave; Now leaving far behind the bursting mass That fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled— As if that frail and wasted human form, Had been an elemental god.
The moon arose and lo! the etherial cliffs Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone
Among the stars like sunlight, and around
Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves Bursting and eddying irresistibly
Rage and resound for ever.—Who shall save ?— The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove— The crags closed round with black and jaggèd arms, The shattered mountain overhung the sea, And faster still, beyond all human speed, Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, The little boat was driven. A cavern there Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on With unrelaxing speed. -"Vision and Love!" The Poet cried aloud, "I have beheld The path of thy departure.
Shall not divide us long!"
The windings of the cavern.
At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell
Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm; Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the knarlèd roots
Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,
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