Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

I. On a Falling Group, in the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo

Washington Allston (1779–1843)

HOW vast, how dread, o’erwhelming is the thought

Of space interminable! to the soul

A circling weight that crushes into naught

Her mighty faculties! a wondrous whole,

Without or parts, beginning, or an end!

How fearful then on desp’rate wings to send

The fancy e’en amid the waste profound!

Yet, born as if all daring to astound,

Thy giant hand, O ANGELO, hath hurled

E’en human forms, with all their mortal weight,

Down the dread void,—fall endless as their fate!

Already now they seem from world to world

For ages thrown; yet doomed, another past,

Another still to reach, nor e’er to reach the last!