VIII. Something too much of this:—but now 'tis past, He of the breast which fain no more would feel, Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; IX. His had been quaff'd too quickly, and he found The dregs were wormwood; but he fill'd again, And from a purer fount, on holier ground, And deem'd its spring perpetual; but in vain! Still round him clung invisibly a chain Which gall'd for ever, fettering though unseen, And heavy though it clank'd not; worn with pain, Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, Entering with every step, he took, through many a scene. X. Secure in guarded coldness, he had mix'd Fit speculation! such as in strange land stand He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand. XI. But who can view the ripen'd rose, nor seek The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime. XII. But soon he knew himself the most unfit Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd XIII. Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where roll'd the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake. XIV.. Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars, To which it mounts, as if to break the link That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. XV. But in Man's dwellings he became a thing His breast and beak against his wiry dome XVI. Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again, With nought of hope left, but with less of gloom; The very knowledge that he lived in vain, That all was over on this side the tomb, Had made Despair a smilingness assume, Which, though 'twere wild,-as on the plunder'd wreck When mariners would madly meet their doom With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check. XVII. Stop!-for thy tread is on an Empire's dust! Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory? |