523

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. THE awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us; visiting

This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river;
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown;
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom, why man has such a scope

For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever

To sage or poet these responses given :

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain endeavour :

Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent

Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,

Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lover's eyes;

Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,

Like darkness to a dying flame!

Depart not as thy shadow came:

Depart not, lest the grave should be,

Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed:

I was not heard: I saw them not:
When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me:

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight

Outwatched with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illumed my brow,
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony

In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my outward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

ARETHUSA arose

ARETHUSA.

From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;

Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing,
She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook;

And opened a chasm
In the rocks;-with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind
It concealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below:
The beard and the hair
Of the river God were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me.
For he grasps me now by the hair!"
The loud Ocean heard,
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;