SELECTED POEMS. ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. PREFACE. THE poem entitled "ALASTOR " may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and 5 majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long 10 as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and selfpossessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images 15 to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the 20 imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks 5 in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that IO Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency 15 is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy 20 nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who 25 attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tenderhearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, 30 the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. 35 The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket! December 14, 1815. ALASTOR; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.- Confess. St. August. EARTH, Ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; Mother of this unfathomable world! Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 5 ΙΟ 15 20 25 Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 30 Staking his very life on some dark hope, With my most innocent love, until strange tears 35 Such magic as compels the charmèd night To render up thy charge: . . . and, though ne'er yet And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, 40 Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 45 And motions of the forests and the sea, There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 55 50 |