Classic Poem

CANTO II

Antiquity , thou Titan-born!
That rear'st thee, in stupendous scorn
At all succession from thy bed
On prime earth's firm foundations spread,
And look'st with dim but settled eye
O'er thy deep lap, within whose span
Layer upon layer sepulchred lie
Whole generations of frail man!
That steady glare not fierce Simoom,
Blasting with his hot pinion blinds,
Nor floods of dust thy corse entomb,
Heaped o'er thee by the sexton winds!
Nor temple, tower, nor ponderous town
Built on thy grave can keep thee down,
But still thou rear'st thee in thy scorn,
Antiquity, thou Titan-born,
To crush our souls with that dim frown!
Strong Son of Chaos! who didst seem
Only a fairer form of him,
Moulding his mountainous profounds
To fanes and monumental grounds;
His rocky coigns, with giant ease,
In pyramids and palaces
Piling aslope, as we with pain
His ruinous rubbish raised in vain!
Thou that with Tubal old compeer
In living cliffs didst statue man
And carve, for toys, leviathan
Or mammoth, yet found bedded here
His stony limbs, where once he stood
Scarce moved a footpace by the Flood!
Still at thy works in mute amaze,
Sorrow and envy and awe we gaze,
Enlarge our little eyeballs still
To grasp in these degenerate days
Marvels that shewed a mighty will,
Huge power and hundred-handed skill,
That seek prostration and not praise
Too faint such lofty ears to fill!
From Ind to Egypt thou art one,
Pyramidal Memphis to Tanjore,
From Ipsambul to Babylon
Reddening the waste suburban o'er;
From sand-locked Thebes to old Ellore,
Her caverned roof on columns high
Pitched, like a Giant brood that bore
Headstrong the mountain to the sky:
That one same Power, enorm, sublime
Thou art, from antique clime to clime,
Eternal stumbling-block of Time!
Whose fragmentary limbs do stay,
Stones of offence, his difficult way,
And turn it o'er our works of clay.
Lo! where thy strength colossal lay
Dormant, within the deep-sunk halls
Of cities labyrinthian
'Mid sandy Afric and the walls
Of sunburnt Syria or Deccan,
Up from the bilging globe he calls
Seas to surprise thee, or enthralls
Earth to deluginous ocean,
So far he may; with foamy van
Whelming her shores where thou bedreamed
Heard'st not the tide that o'er thee teemed
Mountains of water! Ay in vain!
O'ersailing vessels see below
Clear thro' the glass-green undulous plain,
Like emerald cliffs unmoved glow
Thy towering forms stretched far a-main
By Coromandel, or that side
Neptunian Ganges rolls the tide
Of his swoln sire; by Moab's lake
Whose purulent flood dry land doth slake
With bittern ooze, where that salt Wife
Drinks her own tears she weeps as rife,
Empillared there, as when she turned
Back tow'rds her liquorish late-spent life
Where Shame's sulphureous cities burned:
By Dorian Sicily and Misene,
Upon whose strand thou oft didst lean
Thy temple-crowned head; and where
Antium with opposite Carthage were;
By green Juvernia's giant road
Paved from her headlong slope and broad
Sands down to Rachlin's columned isle,
And dim Finn Gael's huge antred pile
Where his vast orgue, high fluted, stands
Basaltic, swept with billowy hands
Oft, till the mystic chancel mourn
To weltering biers around it borne
Hoarse ritual o'er the wrecked forlorn;
There did the scythed Demon hew
Sheer the Cyclopian causeway thro',
Letting the steep Icelandic sea
In on the Ibernian and on Thee!
So from their icy moorings he,
Lopt cable, loosed the Arctic isles
Full sail, with mountainous weigh and prore
To force that boom of seadriven piles,
Bulwark against the Northern bore
Of Ocean laid by thee, and now
Chaining the Strait, as long before,
Tho' scattered on the Southern bow
Kamschatka's sparry waters o'er —
What need for thy great relics plough
Tartarian sands, or seek that scroll
Which the rapt Bonze can scarce unroll,
Thy chronicle, in pagodas dim,
Lengthening it wave and wave a-flow
Incessant, as from darkness' brim
Wells forth Cathaian Hoan-ho?
What need thy famous works be told
I' the New World, older than the Old,
If sooth the Mexique annals say,
With Eve's first born Tradition gray,
And monuments more fixed than they —
Pyramids baked in Noah's sun,
Dials and monstrous Gods, far back
Out-dating Denderah's Zodiac,
Crocodilopolis and Karnak;
With scrolls of pictured speech begun
Ere smoother hieroglyph could run,
Slight copy of that primeval one?
What need the wondrous town untomb,
Palenque, aye too old for Fame
To tell her antediluvian name
Or fate; perchance, at her own doom,
Crept back into Creation's womb,
Tired of endurance, thro' the chasm
Oped in Earth's side with mighty spasm
When Orinook burst forth, and down
From Chimborazo's streamy crown
Rolled oceanic Maranon,
Contributing fresh seas to seas;
Huge chasm! with Andes' ponderous chain
Locked to Eternity again,
The gulf of All as well as these.
Passing thy pierless bridges swung
Gorge over, darkening every dell,
With keystone rocks colossal hung
Like Sin's broad way from heaven to hell,
That thou to striding eyes must seem
Truly sole Pontifex supreme;
Leaving among those untrod lands
That glistening marvel of thy hands,
Famed El Dorado, diamond walled
And paved, and golden tiled and halled,
Doubling with other torrid light
The furious summer of that zone,
And like the sun himself too bright
For mortal eyes to gaze upon;
Turned from my vast digression o'er
Earth's wandering list, from Afric's shore,
Where'er thy landmarks globe around
Gigantic stepping-stones I found,
Off them to bear my Spirit bound
Far on, with rainbow leap sublime
Vaulting at once from clime to clime,
O'er starry peaks and floods profound
Vanishing on as swift as sound!
Goalward at length untired I flee
Past the still Verdurous Isles, that be
Oases of the herbless sea,
And those Happy Gardens placed
Edenlike in an azure waste,
Befanned with sunniest winds, the air
Swims visible in bright halo there,
Feeding with such rich juice the mould
That every fruit-tree drops with gold,
In tawny Harvest's pendant ear
Glitters the gold grain twice a year,
Each rivulet doth his bed emboss
With the crisp ore and yellowing dross,
His margin trim with asphodel
Gorgeously frounc'd; and spreads as well
Woodland wide-over this rich flower,
Till each fair Isle thro' dale and fell
Seems to inlap a golden shower
Heaven-loved; and where the breezes run
Her wavy grasses full of sun
Flow like a bright flood all in one.
Ah me! how long my soul beguiles
The Siren of those Fortunate Isles!
Now, now right on my course I steer,
Fast, by the seagates of Tangier
Where crag-construct on either strand,
Huge outwork of thy offspring's hand,
Calpe and shelving Abyla stand,
Herculean pillars crumbled down
To hills, yet stedfast their renown;
Still their old mightiness survives
Even in that one worn pedestal
Which spread the sea with Spanish lives
Scattered like weeds beneath the wall,
Unshaken while their pride did fall,
And widowing half a race of wives,
Yet holds the prostrate realm in thrall! —
Rock of thy fame, and Albion's too!
Pitched on whose cope Islâm did call
With shrieking fife and shrill halloo
Afric, seen at one underview,
From Fez to Babelmandeb, all
Miramolin Afric, till he blew
His glorious breath loud blazoning thro'
The land of scimitar and shawl.
Like him from this haught terrace, I
Can Egypt's hollow realm descry
Whence my extravagant wing did bend,
Where at one swoop my soar shall end,
Blind falcon! towering to the sun
Ever, till thou entreat me down,
With magical voice, Antiquity!
More proud thy bird than Jove's to be,
Creature sublime, beside thy knee
Perched, and for aye in life's disdain,
'Mid the great stillnesses, thy reign,
Sitting with Solitude and thee.

As from the moist and gelid sleep
Of Death we rise on shuddering bones,
The waste of that long night to weep,
We pined us down to skeletons;
So shuddering, weeping, weltering, worn,
Gleaming with spectral eyes forlorn,
Upon my bleak estate and bare
Greyly I rose; like wan Despair
Slow roused from Dissolution's lair.
But in what dread dominion? Air
Hung like a hell-blue vapour there,
Steaming from some thick ooze, that cold
Over my foot like reptiles rolled
Sluggish, with many a slimy fold;
Lethe's foul self, perchance, or flood
Made slab with gouts of gall and blood
Wept by the woe that wades the mud,
Cocytus, bubbling with drowned sighs.
But lo! what shadowy forms arise,
Far off, to these ferruginous skies?
Mountains, as sharp as squally clouds
When fell winds whistle in the shrouds,
Upcall to Fury, above, before,
My vision by this ominous shore,
Where each a burning pyramid seems,
O'erflown with liquorous fire, that teems
Down the slope edges in four streams.
Most sure the abysmal fen I tread
Shelves to the River of the Dead
That bears unto the eternal sea
Millions of ghastly things like me.
Hark! from slow-floating bier and bier
Murmurs and rueful sobs I hear,
The while from these sepulchring hills
A yewtree wind the valley fills
That whispers with fast-fleeting breath,
" This is the dolorous Valley of Death!
Valley of Dolour — and of Death! "

Oh sorrow of Sinfulness! the gate
To Pain, kept wide by watchful Hate!
Sloping aloft with cliffy sides,
Thro' the burnt air the porchway rides;
Demoniac shapes, devices grim,
Trenching the storied panels dim,
And mystic signs, dark oracles
Of Destiny, and Hell's decrees!
Alas! what scalding sand-wind rolls
Me to the sulphury rack of souls
Fierce on, and scarfs my victim eyes
With careless wreaths for sacrifice?
Thus weep I, whirlwind-rapt amain:
Save me! O save, ye mighty Twain,
Arbiters here twixt Sin and Pain!
Tho' Angels still of Judgment, be
Angels of Mercy now to me!
Bend down your level looks, or raise
One iron finger from the knee,
So Cherubin Pities sing your praise!
Thus to a Twain that reared their forms
Like promontories o'er the storms,
Methought, dread Umpires of my doom,
Sitting impalled within the gloom
As ebon Seraphim by Night's throne,
Low at their feet I made my moan.
They stirred not at my prayer; but dumb,
Sate like the symbols of the world to come
Immutable, inscrutable!
I lay
Drowned in my heart-blood, wept away
Fruitlessly at those feet, long time
Like the dust-clung, outcast corse of Crime.

A sigh that seemed to come from heaven
By some airial Sorrow given,
Weeping his sublunar state — a sigh —
One faint far sound, like a swan's cry
Heard thro' the daffodils ere it die,
O'ercame my senses; a sweet wail
Soothing me with its violet gale
To gentlest mood. I looked — and lo!
Sweet as Love's star a crest did glow
On that now visible head I deemed
One of my Arbiter's. Fair it beamed
With soft dilation, mellowing still
The heav'n-fall'n gem its saffron fire,
Crowning the radiant front until
Godlike and glorified entire:
The while, as there essayed his skill
Light-handed Zephyr o'er a lyre
With the bright hair strung like golden wire,
Dulcetly did the sunbeams thrill
Within that coronal attire,
Hailing the dawn! And at such hail
Behold a-peak the Orient dale,
Morning, with light-blown silver veil,
Stands dewy-eyed, and matron-pale;
Breathing in smiles and tears upon
This sacred head her blessings dear,
As erst she did, each daylight peer,
Sad for her monumental Son.
O unchanged world! 'Twas Memnon here
Sat gazing with a mournful cheer
Still at his mother! Still with smile
Fond as her own would fain beguile
Her sorrow! Still each matin rise
Welcomed her bright tears with his sighs!
Most strange! most true! for I anon
Heard the famed chant heard long agone
By storiers sage ascend the skies
From his Æolian barbiton;
Soft parleying like the voice of rills
With Echo in the distant hills,
But versing words more liquid clear
Than those could, to a thirstier ear.

Thus, with a breezy rise and fall, rang the Memnonian rhyme,
Like the sweet-mouthed bells of heaven, wild but in one same chime.

Winds of the West, arise!
Hesperian balmiest airs, O waft back those sweet sighs
To her that breathes them from her own pure skies,
Dew-dropping, mixt with dawn's engoldened dyes,
O'er my unhappy eyes!
From primrose bed and willow bank, where your moss cradle lies,
O from your rushy bowers, to waft back her sweet sighs,
Winds of the West, arise!

Over the ocean blown,
Far-winnowing, let my soul be mingled with her own,
By sighs responsive to each other known!
Bird unto bird's loved breast has often flown
From distant zone to zone;
Why must the Darling of the Morn lament him here alone?
Shall not his fleeting spirit be mingled with her own,
Over the ocean blown?

From your airial bourne
Look down, O Mother, and hear your hapless Memnon mourn!
Spectre of my gone self, by sorrow worn,
Leave me not, Mother beloved! from your embraces torn,
For ever here forlorn!
For ever, ever lonely here! of all life's glory shorn!
Look down, O Mother! behold your hapless Memnon mourn,
From your airial bourne!

The sweet Voice swooned, deep thrilling; then
Raised its wild monody once more,
As the far murmuring of the main
Heard in a sea-shell's fairy shore,
Scarce sensible, made one with pain,
Wind-lost and fitfuller than before;
Yet still methought the mystic strain
Burden like this bewildered bore.

O could my Spirit wing
Hills over, where salt Ocean hath his fresh headspring
And snowy curls bedeck the blue-haired King,
Up where sweet oral birds articulate sing
Within the desert ring —
Their mighty shadows o'er broad Earth the Lunar
Mountains fling,
Where the Sun's chariot bathes in Ocean's fresh headspring —
O could my Spirit wing!

O could this Spirit, prisoned here
Like thine, Immortal Murmurer!
In hatefullest bounds and bonds of clay,
O could this Spirit of mine away
To those strange lands — " Away! away! "
Methought the breeze with soft command
Raised itself in a sigh to say
After me, whispering still " Away! "
Still by my side re-echoing bland
In fervorous secrecy — " Away! "
The desert breeze with pinion gray
Rustled along the leafless sand,
Warning me still — " Away! away! "

Not less than magic breath had blown
Ashy ambition now to flame,
Within me; but like veins in stone
Red grew the blood in my cold frame:
Tho' drained this life-spring to the lees
On lancing rocks — this body worn,
Weed-wrung, and saturate with seas
Gulped thro' — by their wild mercy borne
Half jellied hither, and well-nigh
Piecemeal by those white coursers torn
That shook their manes of me, foam high,
Cast on their saviour backs forlorn —
Tho' thus my flesh, my spirit still
Is unsubdued! aspiring will
Buoys up my sinking power. 'Tis thine,
This quenchless spark! To thee this glow,
This rise from my sea-grave I owe,
Nepenthe! vital fire divine!
Yet ah! what boots if cup of bliss
Have such a bitter dreg as this?
Fragile and faint must I still on
The arduous path that I have gone,
Or burn in my own sighs! Like thee,
A winged cap, O Mercury!
I wear, that lifts me still to heaven,
Tho' down to herd with mortals driven.

Now as swift as Sadness may
Let me to those hills away,
Where the shadows of the Moon
Reach broad Earth at brightest noon,
Where the Sun's car glittering
Waits at Ocean's fresh head-spring,
And sweet oral birds do sing
Wild catches in the desert ring,
Mocking the changeful-crested King!
That must be where Cybele rears
Her tow'red head above the spheres,
Awful to Gods! where Eden high,
With terraced stairs that climb the sky,
Long lost to mortal ken doth lie.
E'en let me thither sad and slow
As wayworn he from thence doth go,
Reptilous Nile! — As shades that pass
Silent and soft o'er fields of grass,
So let my trackless spectre glide
His solitary wave beside.

Hundred-gated City! thou
With gryphon'd porch and avenue
For denizen giants, serve they now
But to let one poor mortal thro'?
Wide those streaming gates of war
Ran once with many a conqueror,
Horseman and chariot, to the sound
Of the dry serpent blazoning round
Theban Sesostris' dreaded name.
Where is now the loud acclaim?
Where the trample and the roll,
Shaking staid Earth like a mole?
Sunk to a rush's sigh! — Farewell,
Thou bleached wilderness o'erblown
By treeless winds, unscythable
Sandbanks, with peeping rocks bestrown
That for thy barrenness seem'st to be
The bed of some retreated sea!
City of Apis, shrine and throne,
Fare thee well! dispeopled sheer
Of thy mighty millions, here
Giant thing inhabits none,
But vast Desolation!

Farewell thee! — and lowly too,
Ye rev'rend sites, colossal names,
Esne and Ombos and Edfou,
Echoing still your bygone fames
In such ponderous syllables,
Howsoe'er forgotten else
Over white-cliffed Elephantine,
Thro' thy quarries red and gray,
Womb of sublimity, Syene
Onward still I take my way:
Where broad Nile with deafening hymn
Enters the land of Mizraim,
O'er sounding cliffs made musical
By his wave-choral waterfall;
Athwart high Nubia's tawny shelves,
Down which ploughing deep he delves,
Long strider of the level sands,
Three cataract steps to lower lands.
Scarce my fiery breath I cool
In thee, hill-hollowed Ipsambul,
Where primeval Troglodyte
Turned the torrid day to night.
Helmed high within the gloom,
Thy pillaring statues sit sublime,
Taking, each side, colossal room
On granite thrones no king might climb,
And keeping halled state till Doom,
Co-templar Deities with Time.
Or before thy porch profound
By the choked river's antique roll,
From their seats, dry fathoms drowned,
Peering mildly over ground,
Head-free, along the desert shoal,
If not with form discumbered whole,
Looking blank on, as they did see
Far o'er this little earthy knoll
Into thy depths, Infinity.

Narrowing now my path begins
Toward the lofty Abyssins;
Now in silk-soft fleece below,
Shrunk to miniature sound and show,
Tumbos' cataract seems to flow
A visual roar, and that high steep
Jebel Arambo, a step deep.
Now while this keen air renews,
On my strength its aim pursues,
From that old sand-swallowed Isle
Meroe, doubled by the Nile,
Balking before whose watery bar
Vainly Simoom his dragon cheers,
That sandward home from Senaar
Back on his stormy rider rears,
Fierce recusant to daggle still
His dusty wings at that blind will!
So I too, in dragon scorn,
With red breath like the desert-born,
Bicker against the winds that press
Me from that broad wilderness.
Westward then, where Nile divides
In two varicolour tides,
Milky and sable, I shall rise
By that soft galaxy to the skies.

Thanks, Nepenthe fine, for this
Living apotheosis!
Hark! above me I do hear
Heavenly joybells ringing clear,
And see their golden mouths, ding-dong,
Vibrate with a starry tongue.
Welcome! welcome! still they toll
Syllabled sweetly in knell-knoll,
While more deep, with undulous swell,
Chimes unseen the burden-bell,
Mellowing, in the mighty boom
Of his huge sonorous womb,
Their sweet clangour, like the din
Of streams lost in a roaring lynn.
Twilight now o'er lawn and dale
Draws her dew-enwoven veil,
Tender-bosomed flowers to keep
Unruffled in their balmy sleep;
Her's from planet fair and star
Day's last blushing Hour doth steal,
Those bright rivals to reveal,
And the Queen-Moon, their non-pareil,
Rolling between her noiseless car,
Where in heaven-wide race they reel
Light splintering from each glassy wheel.
Small birds now thro' leafy shed
Rustling haste to bower and bed,
And the Roc, slow winnowing, sails
Heavily homeward thro' the vales
Clanging betimes, while they do cheep,
The tremblers, and more in wood creep.
Then shall not I, in some thick sward
Rest me, like gazelle or pard,
Brinded hyaena or zebir barred;
Now that even these supple rovers
Hie to caves and heathy covers,
There to sleep till huntress Morn
Rouse them again with her far horn!

Solitary wayfarer!
Minstrel winged of the green wild!
What dost thou delaying here,
Like a wood-bewildered child
Weeping to his far-flown troop,
Whoop! and plaintive whoop! and whoop!
Now from rock and now from tree,
Bird! methinks thou whoop'st to me,
Flitting before me upward still
With clear warble, as I've heard
Oft on my native Northern hill
No less wild and lone a bird,
Luring me with his sweet chee-chee
Up the mountain crags which he
Tript as lightly as a bee,
O'er steep pastures, far among
Thickets and briary lanes along,
Following still a fleeting song!
If such my errant nature, I
Vainly to curb or coop it try
Now that the sundrop thro' my frame
Kindles another soul of flame!
Whoop on, whoop on, thou can'st not wing
Too fast or far, thou well-named thing,
Hoopoe, if of that tribe which sing
Articulate in the desert ring!

Striding the rough mountain mane
Of Earth, her forelock now I gain,
Whence I behold the lucid spheres
As thick as ocean dropt in tears
On the sapphire-paven ciel,
That close now to my head doth wheel.
Brighter the Moon, and brighter glows!
Broader and broader still she grows!
On that steepling pinnacle
With glance rocks silver-slated down,
Her radiant ball sits tangible,
Huge pearl of Afric's mountain crown!
Ponderous jewel of Earth's crest!
There, star-studded she doth rest,
Filling every vale and lea
From her lucid fountain free,
Bank high, as with a crystal sea.
Flooded bright each woodland moves
Crisp as the sounding coral groves,
And each emerald lane doth seem
Bed of a diamond-watered stream.
But lo! what mighty shadows cast
Their lengths upon the glittering vast
Portentous, as with giant reach
Eclipse thro' fields of air did stretch
Printing the lunar hills upon
Earth's disk in darkest colours dun?
Ha! more true shall Fantasy,
Twin-brother profane to Prophecy,
Interpret yon bright written sign,
Blazoning the dome with sense divine.
Yon far luminary stands
Apparent on these peaked lands,
Meanful device and monogram
Of their veritable name —
The Mountains of the Moon! long known
On Afric's groin enormous zone,
But trod by mortal me alone!
'Less Gomer here did set his shoon,
Crossing to southern Zanguebar,
And call'd them Jebel-el-Gomar,
Arabiqued, Mountains of the Moon:
Since that double word implies
This sense, and toward the Star they rise
Her semblable footstool in the skies.

Now that she sinks amid the hills
And vaporous gloom her region fills,
Tearful light each orb distils,
Faintly closing his small eye!
Wrapt in stole of sablest dye,
Death-heavy Darkness on his throne
Nods like a corse! What anguish draws
That sigh, to make Existence pause,
And the deep slumberers under stone
Turn in their wormy beds and groan?
Yet, a more terrible moan!
Like the buried Titan's sob
Bursting Etna's rocky chains
It shakes huge Afric with a throb,
Her stout girdle scarce sustains.
Hark, another! — but like the sound
Of Hell's breath bubbling up thro' pools profound,
Sent forth in cloudy wise!
And now that Dawn, with flickering plumage gray
Brushes the thick-spun web of Night away,
Two pools in mist and murmur bubble before mine eyes!
Black-watered that: right o'er
Its cave, a bust of Mauritanian mood,
Thick-lipt and carved in negro curls, as rude
As the grim lake itself in wavy tresses wore:
This ripples in soft ringlets, and sleek folds
Of milky undulance, eastward oozing
The hill's green shoulders down, diffusing
His wealth of waters o'er the humble wolds:
Not like his dark Brother making
His chasmy way, by choice, nor taking
Precipitous steps into the Atlantic holds.
Over the smooth well-front was seen
Cut in a stony table of Syene,
A head, of that colossal leaven,
But with mild looks, and patient eyeballs graven,
Waiting for day!
She rose, maternal Morn!
With her first golden smile greeting the brow
Memnonian, and with balmiest sighs
Breathing her soul of love into those sanguine eyes
That gazed with large affection on the skies!
And like the joy of a faint-swelling horn
Heard far aloof, notes of glad welcome now
Rose from the steep front of the Goddess-born.

Charactered underneath upon the stone
I read these mystic words alone:

Memnon — the God of the Blue River — the King
Of the Endless Valley — Whoever his Spirit
Will free from earthly fetters, let him mingle
A cup of darkness here with one of light,
Fit opiate for Life's fever,
And so be blest, pouring it on his brain.

Two cups I mingled, dark and light,
From that black fountain and this white,
Pouring the opiate deftly down
The Nile-God's cleft and hollow crown,
As I divined his will. The air
Grew vocal for a moment there,
With out-flown shriek of joy; and where
Welkin aloft the sunbird sings,
I heard a clap and rush of wings,
As if some earth-pent spirit freed
Rose to the realms of bliss indeed!

Memnon from that day, by the shore
Of Nile, sits murmurless evermore!

Thy claybound spirit is free, and mine
Still in this barry skeleton pine?
No! — and I quaffed from either well
The mingled cup of heaven and hell!

Darkness began to hood the sky,
Methought, once more, the day to die
On this bleak death-bed, but not I!
From the sharp East a blackening wind
Came with broad vans the hills behind,
In her cloud-hung pavilion
Rolling Death's sable sister on,
Portentous Night! Within the fold
Of its dark valance I was rolled
Whirling, steep down, as in a pall
Down the great gulf's eternal fall.

No sun came forth again; but gray
As the still rocks on which I lay
Bleaching at last, endured the day.
O'er me the hard sky, massy-paven,
Seemed to be dropping crags from heaven
To make Earth — dust, and hurricanes
Let scatter on her their whistling manes.
So, with his ensigns wet, Monsoon
Swept o'er the Mountains of the Moon,
Dreadfully calling cloud on cloud
From the deep South, that in thick crowd,
Swoln with the summons, bellying ran
To burst their rude strength in the van,
Till mass o'er mass enormous hurled
Heavily toppling stood the world!

Such terror vain Ambition waits
Still on the high tops he would tread:
Stand fast, ye thunder-shaken gates,
Against the rain-flood, o'er my head
Beating like ocean on his bed!
O let me wing unshent again
To sweet Earth's lowest lowliest plain;
Then let the rushing deluge sweep
Her proudest pinnacles to the deep!

Desert paths of the dry streams!
Swifter than the torrent teems
Scourged by South winds, as I flee
Spread your gray sands firm for me!
Pendant cliffs with sheltering brow
Shade me from destruction now!
Rocky steps of giant stride
Descending Afric, down your side,
Your unhewn smoothness let me slide!
Air! O air, with thickening breath
Stay me not in the gripe of Death!
Back by the blown locks who doth still
Pull me to his cruel will;
Let me into thy sightless sea
Like the poor minnow from the shark,
From those fell jaws that gape for me,
Plunge into deepest abysses dark!

Welcome dusky, unsunned dells,
Roofed with savage trees o'erblown,
Caverns in whose dripping cells
Hermit Sadness sits alone!
Eldern forests, whispering dim
Secrets in your dread Sanhedrim,
And nodding Fate on those below;
Fearless thro' such inquest grim,
Rustling your mossy beards I go.
Fathomless falls for wild Despair!
Gulfs intransible of deep air!
Gladly from yon tempest I
To your terrible shelter fly.
Welcome, rocky vaults and rude,
Cave-continued for the flood
That rolls his serpent-strength between,
Hissing beside me tho' unseen,
Thro' his vast ambush subterrene;
Chasms with cragged teeth beset,
Swallow me deeper, deeper yet!
Lowliest path is least unsure,
Most sublime most insecure!
Fond Earth, within her parent breast
Finds us, weak little ones, safe room
And thither pain or care opprest,
Sooner or later, as their doom,
All creep for refuge and for rest.

Shadowy aisles of pillared trees
Now my errant fancy please,
Dim cathedral walks like these;
Nave by numerous transepts crost,
Each in his own long darkness lost,
Cloister and chancel, thick embossed
Their roofs with pendant foliage, thro'
Whose fretted branchwork richly pours
The sun, in golden order due,
His bright mosaic on the floors.

Spreading now the darksome bourne,
Into warm twilight I return,
Still by these umbrageous eaves,
Sheltered: and where the thinner leaves,
With verdant panes, too bright illume,
Glance and pass forward into gloom
Thro' the dim-green air I hear
Only the rush of waters near,
Or see their spray a moment gleam,
Watermotes in the passing beam.

By that visionary shore
Steep channel of continual roar,
Billowy duct of flowing thunder,
That wallows the rooted woodland under,
Wandering I, in dizzy wonder,
Tread the hollow crust that caves
The rueful Erebus of waves
Beneath me surging. Blind I roam
The wilderness. O gentle Eve!
Pale Daughter of the Day, receive
My greeting glad! — All hail, thou dome
Of God's great Temple, lit so bright
With lamps of ever-living light,
Kept trim within those censers rare
By Virgins quiring to their care,
Voice-joined, tho' separate in far air.
Awful Night! thy sombre plumes,
Shadowed athwart the moonlight pale,
Make this rock-bestudded vale
Gleam like an antique place of tombs,
With lustre cold that chills the gale.
Grateful now to fallen me
This deep tranquillity!
Here in folded silence fast
Shall I fix myself at last,
Till I grow by age as grey
As the rocks, and stiff as they,
Making ever here my own
Statue and monumental stone!

Cliff, of smoothest front sublime,
Tablet for that old storier Time!
What huge aboriginal sons
Of Earth, beat down by vengeful waves,
Sleep beneath these obliterate stones
In unmeasurable graves?
What mystic word inscribed can show
His terrible might who sleeps below? —
Sinews resolved to wreaths of sand!
Seams of white dust his bony frame!
His place on Glory's scroll doth stand
Blank — or filled up with others' fame!
Yet was he one that Pelion-high
Clomb perchance the difficult sky,
Pelion on Oeta and Ossa heaved
Till of sight and sense bereaved,
Storm or sun stricken as I!
Ay, and shall Adam's pigmy sperm
Think to reach that sacred sphere
Which, from high-battled hills infirm,
No Briarean arms came near;
Or think that his small memory dear,
Writ in the sands, shall aye survive,
While the eternal headstones here
Keep no giant name alive!
The sands of thy own life, Renown,
Run between two creations down,
Few centuries apart! What need
Glorious thought, or word, or deed,
When all mortal grandeur must
Lie with oblivion in the dust?

Then hie on to humble lands!
On, still onward let me roam,
O'er sea-broad Sahara sands,
By the cataract's grizzled foam,
Where live-bounding he doth come,
Headlong Niger! down the rocks,
Swept with his dishevelled locks,
Sable turned to silver flocks,
Like dark rain to driven snow,
When the blasts hibernal blow!
Now my steps as mute proceed
By his solitary roll
Winding round each desert knoll
As a gay enamelled mead,
With its yellow-blossom reed
Single bright thing that doth breed
There; and rushy tufts of grass
Only sighing as we pass:
This wide waste of air unstirred
By the voice of bee or bird,
Even the soaring eagle's scream
Far off, like music in a dream
Imaged to the ear, is heard.
Strange pleasure in such wild to wander
Following murmurless Meander,
That loses his own serpent folds
Oft within the sabulous wolds.
May not I, ere these be crost,
Grave of all things living, be lost,
Now that in this inky lake,
Dry Afric's mediterranean,
Unsailed sea, the Mountain Snake
Buries his sightless head again?
Yet whate'er my soul inspire,
Purple sweet instinct with fire,
Or that late delirious draught,
Which from lunar wells I quaffed,
Still I turn where sand and sky
Spread in blank boundlessness to mine eye.

Thou, night-shaded Fountain! pure
Essence of darkness, deep distilled,
'Tis thou that hast my soul, most sure,
With thy sad infusion filled!
Else wherefore love I thus to tread
O'er the dust of Nature dead,
Buried in her own ashes gray,
Without one offspring of her womb
To strew her even a leafy tomb?
Wherefore love I thus to stray,
Finding joy in the lone wild,
Like Desertion's only child,
That in the sunburnt, silent air
Builds his crumbling castles there
And builds and plays with his despair?

Solitude as deep and wide,
Treeless and herbless, never trod
Gray Triton underneath the tide,
Wandering the tawny barrens broad.
All is dumb, and the dead sands
Lie in long warps on both hands,
Furrows incult or barely sown,
Like desecrate lands, with salt alone,
Steed of sterility! — O more fleet
Must be my Arimaspian feet
To 'scape this dragon of the air,
Winding me round with sulphury flare,
Than the wild ostrich as she glides
Sheer onward with unpanting sides!

Lo! in the mute mid wilderness,
What wondrous Creature, of no kind,
His burning lair doth largely press,
Gaze fixt, and feeding on the wind?
His fell is of the desert dye,
And tissue adust, dun-yellow and dry,
Compact of living sands; his eye
Black luminary, soft and mild,
With its dark lustre cools the wild.
From his stately forehead springs,
Piercing to heaven, a radiant horn!
Lo, the compeer of lion-kings,
The steed self-armed, the Unicorn!
Ever heard of, never seen,
With a main of sands between
Him and approach; his lonely pride
To course his arid arena wide,
Free as the hurricane, or lie here,
Lord of his couch as his career!
Wherefore should this foot profane
His sanctuary, still domain?
Let me turn, ere eye so bland
Perchance be fire-shot, like heaven's brand,
To wither my boldness! Northward now,
Behind the white star on his brow
Glittering straight against the Sun,
Far athwart his lair I run.

What marvellous things I saw besides,
Wandering heaven's wide furnace thro',
With floor of burning sands, and sides,
And glowing cope of glassy blue,
Ne'er could mortal tongue nor ear
Intelligibly tell or hear!
Enow to have seen and sung of those
Beauteous chimeras, called in scorn,
Single of species both, and born
Mid among mankind, that but knows
The Phaenix and the Unicorn
Ev'n now, as dim-seen thro' a horn!
Both symbols of proud solitude,
One of melancholy gladness,
One of most majestic sadness,
And therefore to such neighbourhood
I won, by sympathetic madness,
Where let no other steps intrude!

Across the desert's shrivelled scroll
I past, myself almost to sands
Crumbling, to make another knoll
Amidst the numberless of those lands.

Welcome! Before my bloodshot eyes,
Steed of the East, a camel stands,
Mourning his fallen lord that dies.
Now, as forth his spirit flies,
Ship of the Desert! bear me on,
O'er this wavy-bosomed lea,
That solid seemed and staid anon,
But now looks surging like a sea. —
On she bore me, as the blast
Whirling a leaf, to where in calm
A little fount poured dropping-fast
On dying Nature's heart its balm.
Deep we sucked the spongy moss,
And cropt for dates the sheltering palm,
Then with fleetest amble cross
Like desert, fed upon like alm.
That most vital beverage still,
Tho' near exhaust, preserved me till
Now the broad Barbaric shore
Spread its havens to my view,
And mine ear rung with ocean's roar,
And mine eye glistened with its blue!
Till I found me once again
By the ever-murmuring main,
Listening across the distant foam
My native church bells ring me home.
Alas! why leave I not this toil
Thro' stranger lands, for mine own soil?
Far from ambition's worthless coil,
From all this wide world's wearying moil, —
Why leave I not this busy broil,
For mine own clime, for mine own soil,
My calm, dear, humble, native soil!
There to lay me down at peace
In my own first nothingness?