CLX. Or, turning to the Vatican, go see A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending :-Vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. CLXI. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and light— The Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight; The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might, And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. CLXII. But in his delicate form-a dream of Love, Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast The mind with in its most unearthly mood, Starlike, around, until they gather'd to a god! CLXIII. And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought. CLXIV. But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, The being who upheld it through the past? Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. He is no more-these breathings are his last; His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, And he himself as nothing:-if he was Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd With forms which live and suffer-let that passHis shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, CLXV. Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all That we inherit in its mortal shroud, And spreads the dim and universal pall Through which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud Between us sinks and all which ever glow'd, Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays To hover on the verge of darkness; rays Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, CLXVI. And send us prying into the abyss, To gather what we shall be when the frame These fardels of the heart-the heart whose sweat was gore. CLXVII. Hark! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, With some deep and immedicable wound; Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground, The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd, And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. CLXVIII. Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, Death hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy. CLXIX. Peasants bring forth in safety.-Can it be, Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, And desolate consort-vainly wert thou wed! |