While the boundless forest shakes, Noon descends around me now: Mingling light and fragrance, far Where the infant frost has trodden The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; And the Alps, whose snows are spread And my spirit, which so long By the glory of the sky; Be it love, light, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. Noon descends, and after noon Half the crimson light she brings The frail bark of this lone being,) Sits beside the helm again. Other flowering isles must be O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps, To some calm and blooming cove, And the light and smell divine Of all the flowers that breathe and shine. We may live so happy there, That the spirits of the air, Envying us, may even entice The polluting multitude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies They, not it, would change; and soon And the earth grow young again. JULIAN AND MADDALO. COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius; and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men, and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries. Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral super |