change came o'er the spirit of my dream. e lady of his love;-Oh! she was changed by the sickness of the soul; her mind d wander'd from its dwelling, and her eyes ey had not their own lustre, but the look hich is not of the earth; she was become e queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts ere combinations of disjointed things; ad forms impalpable and unperceived others' sight familiar were to hers.
ad this the world calls phrensy; but the wise ve a far deeper madness, and the glance melancholy is a fearful gift;
hat is it but the telescope of truth?
hich strips the distance of its phantasies,
d brings life near in utter nakedness, aking the cold reality too real!
change came o'er the spirit of my dream.- e Wanderer was alone as heretofore, e beings which surrounded him were gone, I were at war with him; he was a mark r blight and desolation, compass'd round ith Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix'd
In all which was served up to him, until Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, (11) He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men, And made him friends of mountains: with the stars And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues; and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was open'd wide, And voices from the deep abyss reveal'd A marvel and a secret-Be it so.
My dream was past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality-the one
To end in madness-both in misery.
TITAN! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise ; What was thy pity's recompense ? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift eternity
Was thine-and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell; And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit :
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself-an equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory-
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