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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extract from Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

Extract from Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

(See full text.)

  • Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem amans amare.
  • Confess. St. August.

  • EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!

    If our great mother has imbued my soul

    With aught of natural piety to feel

    Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

    If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

    With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

    And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;

    If Autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,

    And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns

    Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs—

    If Spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes

    Her first sweet kisses—have been dear to me;

    If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast,

    I consciously have injured, but still loved

    And cherished these my kindred;—then forgive

    This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw

    No portion of your wonted favour now!

    Mother of this unfathomable world,

    Favour my solemn song! for I have loved

    Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched

    Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,

    And my heart ever gazes on the depth

    Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed

    In charnels and on coffins, where black Death

    Keeps record of the trophies won from thee;

    Hoping to still these obstinate questionings

    Of thee and thine by forcing some lone ghost,

    Thy messenger, to render up the tale

    Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,

    When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

    Like an inspired and desperate alchemist

    Staking his very life on some dark hope,

    Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

    With my most innocent love; until strange tears,

    Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

    Such magic as compels the charmèd night

    To render up thy charge. And, though ne’er yet

    Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,

    Enough from incommunicable dream,

    And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,

    Has shone within me, that serenely now

    And moveless (as a long-forgotten lyre

    Suspended in the solitary dome

    Of some mysterious and deserted fane)

    I wait thy breath, Great Parent; that my strain

    May modulate with murmurs of the air,

    And motions of the forests and the sea,

    And voice of living beings, and woven hymns

    Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

    There was a Poet whose untimely tomb

    No human hand with pious reverence reared,

    But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds

    Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

    Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness.

    A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked

    With weeping flowers or votive cypress-wreath

    The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:

    Gentle and brave and generous, no lorn bard

    Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:

    He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude.

    Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes;

    And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined

    And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.

    The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,

    And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,

    Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

    By solemn vision and bright silver dream

    His infancy was nurtured. Every sight

    And sound from the vast earth and ambient air

    Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.

    The fountains of divine philosophy

    Fled not his thirsting lips: and all of great

    Or good or lovely which the sacred past

    In truth or fable consecrates he felt

    And knew. When early youth had passed, he left

    His cold fireside and alienated home,

    To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.

    Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness

    Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

    With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

    His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

    He like her shadow has pursued, where’er

    The red volcano overcanopies

    Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

    With burning smoke; or where bitumen-lakes

    On black bare pointed islets ever beat

    With sluggish surge; or where the secret caves

    Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

    Of fire and poison, inaccessible

    To avarice or pride, their starry domes

    Of diamond and of gold expand above

    Numberless and immeasurable halls,

    Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

    Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.

    Nor had that scene of ampler majesty

    Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

    And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims

    To love and wonder. He would linger long

    In lonesome vales, making the wild his home;

    Until the doves and squirrels would partake

    From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,

    Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,—

    And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er

    The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend

    Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form

    More graceful than her own.
    His wandering step,

    Obedient to high thoughts, has visited

    The awful ruins of the days of old:

    Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

    Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers

    Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

    Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange,

    Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

    Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx,

    Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills

    Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,

    Stupendous columns, and wild images

    Of more than man, where marble dæmons watch

    The zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

    Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around

    He lingered, poring on memorials

    Of the world’s youth; through the long burning day

    Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon

    Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades,

    Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

    And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

    Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

    The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

    Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

    Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,

    And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

    From duties and repose to tend his steps:

    Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

    To speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,

    Sleepless herself to gaze upon his lips

    Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

    Of innocent dreams arose. Then, when red morn

    Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home,

    Wildered and wan and panting, she returned.

    The poet, wandering on, through Arabie,

    And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,

    And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down

    Indus and Oxus from their icy caves.

    In joy and exultation held his way;

    Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

    Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine

    Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

    Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

    His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

    There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

    Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid

    Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

    Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

    Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

    Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

    His inmost sense suspended in its web

    Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

    Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,

    And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

    Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

    Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

    Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

    A permeating fire. Wild numbers then

    She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

    Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands

    Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

    Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

    The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

    The beating of her heart was heard to fill

    The pauses of her music, and her breath

    Tumultuously accorded with those fits

    Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

    As if her heart impatiently endured

    Its bursting burden. At the sound he turned,

    And saw, by the warm light of their own life,

    Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

    Of woven wind; her outspread arms now bare,

    Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

    Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

    Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

    His strong heart sank and sickened with excess

    Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled

    His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

    Her panting bosom:—she drew back awhile;

    Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

    With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

    Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

    Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

    Involved and swallowed-up the vision; sleep,

    Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

    Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

    Roused by the shock, he started from his trance.

    The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

    Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

    The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

    Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

    The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

    Of yesternight? the sounds that soothed his sleep,

    The mystery and the majesty of earth,

    The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes

    Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

    As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.

    The Spirit of sweet Human Love has sent

    A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

    Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

    Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;

    He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!

    Were limbs and breath and being intertwined

    Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost

    In the wide pathless desert of dim Sleep,

    That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of Death

    Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

    O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,

    And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

    Lead only to a black and watery depth,—

    While Death’s blue vault with loathliest vapours hung,

    Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

    Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

    Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?

    This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;

    The insatiate hope which it awakened stung

    His brain even like despair.
    While daylight held

    The sky, the Poet kept mute conference

    With his still soul. At night the passion came,

    Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,

    And shook him from his rest, and led him forth

    Into the darkness.—As an eagle, grasped

    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 moonlight snake,

    He fled. 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 his 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

    Leapt 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. Higher and higher still

    Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge,

    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 beloved eyes, the Poet sate

    Holding the steady helm. Evening came on;

    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.
    At midnight

    The moon arose: and lo! the ethereal 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 jagged 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

    Engulfed 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. Sleep and Death

    Shall not divide us long.’
    The boat pursued

    The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone

    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 gnarlèd roots

    Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms

    In darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,

    Reflecting yet distorting every cloud,

    A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.

    Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,

    With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round,

    Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose;

    Till on the verge of the extremest curve,

    Where through an opening of the rocky bank

    The waters overflow, and a smooth spot

    Of glassy quiet ’mid those battling tides

    Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink

    Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress

    Of that resistless gulf embosom it?

    Now shall it fall?—A wandering stream of wind

    Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,

    And, lo! with gentle motion between banks

    Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,

    Beneath a woven grove, it sails: and, hark!

    The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar

    With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.

    Where the embowering trees recede, and leave

    A little space of green expanse, the cove

    Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers

    Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes

    Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave

    Of the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,

    Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,

    Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay,

    Had e’er disturbed before. The Poet longed

    To deck with their bright hues his withered hair;

    But on his heart its solitude returned,

    And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid

    In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame,

    Had yet performed its ministry: it hung

    Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud

    Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods

    Of night close over it.
    The noonday sun

    Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass

    Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence

    A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,

    Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks,

    Mocking its moans respond and roar for ever.

    The meeting boughs and implicated leaves

    Wove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as, led

    By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,

    He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank,

    Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark

    And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,

    Expanding its immense and knotty arms,

    Embraces the light beech. The pyramids

    Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame

    Most solemn domes within; and far below,

    Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,

    The ash and the acacia floating hang,

    Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed

    In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,

    Starred with ten-thousand blossoms, flow around

    The grey trunks; and, as gamesome infants’ eyes,

    With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles,

    Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,

    These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs,

    Uniting their close union; the woven leaves

    Make network of the dark-blue light of day

    And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable

    As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns

    Beneath these canopies extend their swells,

    Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms

    Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen

    Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine

    A soul-dissolving odour, to invite

    To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,

    Silence and Twilight here, twin sisters, keep

    Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,

    Like vaporous shapes half-seen. Beyond, a well,

    Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,

    Images all the woven boughs above,

    And each depending leaf, and every speck

    Of azure sky darting between their chasms;

    Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves

    Its portraiture, but some inconstant star

    Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,

    Or painted bird sleeping beneath the moon,

    Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,

    Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings

    Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

    Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld

    Their own wan light through the reflected lines

    Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth

    Of that still fountain; as the human heart,

    Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,

    Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard

    The motion of the leaves; the grass that sprung

    Startled, and glanced and trembled, even to feel

    An unaccustomed presence; and the sound

    Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs

    Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed

    To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes

    Of shadowy silver or enshrining light

    Borrowed from aught the visible world affords

    Of grace or majesty or mystery;

    But,—undulating woods, and silent well,

    And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom

    Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,—

    Held commune with him, as if he and it

    Were all that was. Only—when his regard

    Was raised by intense pensiveness—two eyes,

    Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought

    And seemed with their serene and azure smiles

    To beckon him.

    *****

    When on the threshold of the green recess

    The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death

    Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

    Did he resign his high and holy soul

    To images of the majestic past,

    That paused within his passive being now,

    Like winds that bear sweet music when they breathe

    Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place

    His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk

    Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone

    Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,

    Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink

    Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,

    Surrendering to their final impulses

    The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,

    The torturers, slept: no mortal pain or fear

    Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,

    And his own being unalloyed by pain,

    Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

    The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there

    At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight

    Was the great moon, which o’er the western line

    Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,

    With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed

    To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills

    It rests; and still, as the divided frame

    Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,

    That ever beat in mystic sympathy

    With Nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still.

    And, when two lessening points of light alone

    Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp

    Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

    The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray

    Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.

    It paused—it fluttered. But, when heaven remained

    Utterly black, the murky shades involved

    An image silent, cold, and motionless,

    As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.

    Even as a vapour fed with golden beams

    That ministered on sunlight, ere the west

    Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—

    No sense, no motion, no divinity—

    A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

    The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream

    Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream

    Of youth which night and time have quenched for ever—

    Still, dark and dry, and unremembered now.

    Oh for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,

    Which, wheresoe’er it fell, made the earth gleam

    With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale

    From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh that God,

    Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice

    Which but one living man has drained, who now,

    Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels

    No proud exemption in the blighting curse

    He bears, over the world wanders for ever,

    Lone as incarnate death! Oh that the dream

    Of dark magician in his visioned cave,

    Raking the cinders of a crucible

    For life and power even when his feeble hand

    Shakes in its last decay, were the true law

    Of this so lovely world!—But thou art fled,

    Like some frail exhalation which the dawn

    Robes in its golden beams,—ah thou hast fled!

    The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,

    The child of grace and genius! Heartless things

    Are done and said i’ the world, and many worms

    And beasts and men live on, and mighty earth,

    From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,

    In vesper low or joyous orison,

    Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—

    Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes

    Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee

    Been purest ministers, who are, alas!

    Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips,

    So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

    That image sleep in death, upon that form

    Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear

    Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues

    Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

    Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

    In the frail pauses of this simple strain,

    Let not high verse mourning the memory

    Of that which is no more, or painting’s woe,

    Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery

    Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

    And all the shows o’ the world, are frail and vain

    To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.

    It is a woe ‘too deep for tears’ when all

    Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

    Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

    Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

    The passionate tumult of a clinging hope,—

    But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

    Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,

    Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

    (1815.)