SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES. O, WANDERING dim on the extremest edge That shivers o'er the dead pool stiff and dry, Still by cracked arch and broken shaft I trace A child's play-altar reared of stones and moss, Mute recognition of the all-ruling Grace. How far are ye from the innocent, from those Whose hearts are as a little lane serene, Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows, Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves!- Your souls partake its influence,"not in vain Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly, — ye who never knew 1 Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled; Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue! One band ye cannot break, — the force that clips Yet strives with you no less that inward might The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes; By bigot feet polluted ; Yet they who watch your God-compelled return Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods. TO THE PAST. WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls, O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast, There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth worshipped once as deathless. There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands, Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands Of Asia's long-quenched glory. Still as a city buried 'neath the sea Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently Into Time's gnawing river. Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun, Of their old godhead lorn, Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun, Which they misdeem for morn; And yet the eternal sorrow In their unmonarched eyes says day is done O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, The shapes that haunt thy gloom |