Oh, what great troubles and adversities hast Thou shewed me! and yet didst Thou turn and refresh me: yea, and broughtest me from the deep of the earth again. Psalm lxxi. 18.
Day and Night, strange centinels on Time's watch,
Winter and Summer, that arch'd vault above
Still varying, still the same, and hum of men,
Piling dwarf citadels in sand; ye seem
A dream departing to my languid eye,
Wearied with watchfulness! All but the cloud,
Which round its hermit being the spirit wrought,
Peopled with fond inquietudes. I strove
To steal beneath the wing of pitiless sleep,
Till o'er my heart there came a spell, and rous'd
To keenest life those subtle ministers,
a These extracts are taken from some reflections in an illness, written in the year 1826, the whole of which it has been considered advisable not to publish, as not conducing to Christian quietness of mind, an objection which it is hoped these passages
Which, from the spirit's viewless citadel,
Hold commune with the outer world; and then
The bodiless creations of the brain
Seem'd to assume a strange reality,
Figure, and life, and this material ball
A visionary shadow, seeming fair.
I seem'd to living consciousness awak'd
From the short dream of life, where, as we thought
To ply our busy schemes, an unseen hand
Hurried us on from scene to scene, and weigh'd
In scales of stern probation; we the while
From fear to hope, from hope to fear, ranged on,
Unconscious. All was stillness-then from far
The thrilling chain of Recollections woke,
Like long-forgotten strains in distance heard:
And all again was stillness-Memory seem'd
To lift the curtain from her shadowy world,
Like a bright isle beyond the o'er-darken'd seas,
Pictur'd upon a watery cloud, and brought
To a strange nearness: there a thousand shapes
In moonlight shadows seem'd to gleam; fair Hope,
Eye-bright before, and lost in gloom behind,
Embryo Resolve, and Warning, lightning-clear,
And heav'n-ward Instincts, on the infant soul
Dawnings of Immortality; nor least
That deep mysterious gloom in mortal joy
Speaking of Eden lost. A dream-like light
Was o'er me, and as when th' unfetter'd soul
All eye,
all ear, careless of space and time,
Sports darkling, and around the slumberous woof
Weaves in one image distant scenes: and then
Around me came the scenes of infancy,
Wearing unearthly freshness. . . . . .
Strange hectic bloom, as if the glow of youth,
Like in that fabled City of the Dead,
Dwelt in cold marble. While in vain I sought
The pulse of life, it seem'd so shadowy still,
As if that Lethe, and the shapes that brood
On her black mirror, were upon the world,
And Nature's wheel were still; so motionless
Stood the bright scene, like a mute waterfall,
Hanging in ice-bound stillness 'neath the Moon.
The Sun was resting on the ocean wave,
Where, 'tween two winding hills that closed the vale,
The watery landscape lay, and seem'd to join
The bending sky: from far around, the clouds
Hasten'd to hang their golden canopy,
Lit by his parting smile. It was a scene
That seem'd to mock reality, so still
In viewless struggle between light and shade,
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