That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins :
And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell-
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.

"How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon,

Is an unbounded world;

I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere, Think, feel and live like man ; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state;

And the minutest throb

That through their frame diffuses

The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable

As the majestic laws

That rule yon rolling orbs."

The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt

All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times,

Which dim tradition interruptedly

Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view;

Yet dim from their infinitude.

The Spirit seemed to stand

High on an isolated pinnacle;
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe
Above, and all around

Nature's unchanging harmony.

III.

"Fairy!" the Spirit said,
And on the Queen of Spells
Fixed her ethereal eyes,

"I thank thee. Thou hast given

A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly;

For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul

Requires no other heaven."

MAB.

Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
Much yet remains unscanned.
Thou know'st how great is man;
Thou know'st his imbecility:
Yet learn thou what he is;

Yet learn the lofty destiny
Which restless Time

For every living soul.

prepares

Behold a gorgeous palace, that amid

Yon populous city rears its thousand towers,
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,
Encompass it around: the dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hear'st thou not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on:
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool

Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to the basest appetites that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles

At the deep curses which the destitute

Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy

Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan

But for those morsels which his wantonness

Wastes in unjoyous revelry,

to save

All that they love from famine: when he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face

Of hypocritical assent he turns,

Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.

Now to the meal

Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
From every clime, could force the loathing sense
To overcome satiety, — if wealth

The spring it draws from poisons not,-or vice,

Stubborn unfeeling, vice, converteth not

Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils

His unforced task, when he returns at even,
And by the blazing fagot meets again
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
Tastes not a sweeter meal.

Behold him now

Stretched on the gorgeous couch. His fevered

brain

Reels dizzily awhile; but ah! too soon

The slumber of intemperance subsides,

And Conscience, that undying serpent, calls
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye—
Oh! mark that deadly visage.

Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace,
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurk'st
With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun'st
The palace I have built thee?
Sacred peace,
O visit me but once, and pitying shed
One drop of balm upon my withered soul!

MAB.

Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
And peace defileth not her snowy robes

In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
His slumbers are but varied agonies;

They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err: earth in itself
Contains at once the evil and the cure;

And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law,

she only knows

How justly to proportion to the fault,
The punishment it merits.

Is it strange

That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug

The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange