THE NEW WORLD. DEMOGORGON. THOU, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, THE EARTH. I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies. DEMOGORGON. Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth THE MOON. I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee! DEMOGORGON. Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods, Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness : A VOICE FROM ABOVE. Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless. DEMOGORGON. Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse A VOICE FROM BENEATH. Or as they Whom we have left, we change and pass away. DEMOGORGON. Ye elemental Genii, who have homes From man's high mind even to the central stone Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on: A CONFUSED VOICE. We hear thy words waken Oblivion. DEMOGORGON. Spirits, whose homes are flesh ye beasts and birds, Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds; Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds, Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes : A VOICE. Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. DEMOGORGON. Man, who wert once a despot and a slave; A traveller from the cradle to the grave ALL. Speak: thy strong words may never pass away. DEMOGORGON. This is the day, which down the void abysm Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance, Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to re-assume An empire o'er the disentangled doom. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; LIFE may change, but it may fly not; Yet were Life a charnel where Sent not life its soul of light, Hellas. The Sensitive Plant. PART FIRST. A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the Spring arose on the garden fair, But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noon-tide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant. The snow-drop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, |