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 burthen: 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, Nolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
Roused by the shock, he started from his tranceThe 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, Conduct, 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.
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 chafed 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 running 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 Rush'd 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 Ingulphed 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. Day-light 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 gnarled 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
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