Through the cold mass

Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;

Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;

Language is a perpetual Orphic song,

Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng

Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

 

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep

They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,

Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

THE MOON.

The shadow of white death has passed

From my path in heaven at last,

A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;

And through my newly-woven bowers,

Wander happy paramours,

Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep

Thy vales more deep.

THE EARTH.

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold

A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,

And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,

And wanders up the vault of the blue day,

Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray

Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

THE MOON.

Thou art folded, thou art lying

In the light which is undying

Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;

All suns and constellations shower

On thee a light, a life, a power

Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine

On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH.

I spin beneath my pyramid of night,

Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,

Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;

As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,

Under the shadow of his beauty lying,

Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON.

As in the soft and sweet eclipse,

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,

High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;

So when thy shadow falls on me,

Then am I mute and still, by thee

Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,

Full, oh, too full!

 

Thou art speeding round the sun

Brightest world of many a one;

Green and azure sphere which shinest

With a light which is divinest

Among all the lamps of Heaven

To whom life and light is given;

I, thy crystal paramour

Borne beside thee by a power

Like the polar Paradise,

Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;

I, a most enamoured maiden

Whose weak brain is overladen

With the pleasure of her love,

Maniac-like around thee move

Gazing, an insatiate bride,

On thy form from every side

Like a Mænad, round the cup

Which Agave lifted up

In the weird Cadmæan forest.

Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest

I must hurry, whirl and follow

Through the heavens wide and hollow,

Sheltered by the warm embrace

Of thy soul from hungry space,

Drinking from thy sense and sight

Beauty, majesty, and might,

As a lover or a chameleon

Grows like what it looks upon,

As a violet's gentle eye

Gazes on the azure sky

Until its hue grows like what it beholds,

As a gray and watery mist

Glows like solid amethyst

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,

When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow –

THE EARTH.

And the weak day weeps

That it should be so.

Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight

Falls on me like thy clear and tender light

Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,

Through isles for ever calm;

Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce

The caverns of my pride's deep universe,

Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce

Made wounds which need thy balm.

PANTHEA.

I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,

A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,

Out of the stream of sound.

IONE.

Ah me! sweet sister,

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,

And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew

Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.

PANTHEA.

Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness,

Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky

Is showered like night, and from within the air

Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up

Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,

Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,

Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

IONE.

There is a sense of words upon mine ear.

PANTHEA.

An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,

Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,

Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll

The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH.

I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth

With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth

Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON.

I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!

DEMOGORGON.

Ye Kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,

Aetherial Dominations, who possess

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:

A VOICE FROM ABOVE.

Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse

Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,

Whether your nature is that universe

Which once ye saw and suffered –

A VOICE FROM BENEATH.

Or as they

Whom we have left, we change and pass away.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes

From man's high mind even to the central stone

Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes

To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:

A CONFUSED VOICE.

We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON.

Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds,

Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;

Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,

Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes: –

A VOICE.

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;

A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;

A traveller from the cradle to the grave

Through the dim night of this immortal day:

ALL.

Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON.

This is the day, which down the void abysm

At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,

And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:

Love, from its awful throne of patient power

In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,

And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs

And folds over the world its healing wings.

 

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,

These are the seals of that most firm assurance

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;

And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,

Mother of many acts and hours, should free

The serpent that would clasp her with his length;

These are the spells by which to reassume

An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

 

.