Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

                           ‘The good die first,

And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,

Burn to the socket!’

December 14, 1815.

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.

Confess. St. August.

EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!

If our great Mother has imbued my soul

With aught of natural piety to feel

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

5If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;

If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,

And winter robing with pure snow and crowns

10Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;

If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes

Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;

If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

I consciously have injured, but still loved

15And cherished these my kindred; then forgive

This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw

No portion of your wonted favour now!

   Mother of this unfathomable world!

Favour my solemn song, for I have loved

20Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched

Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,

And my heart ever gazes on the depth

Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed

In charnels and on coffins, where black death

25Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,

Hoping to still these obstinate questionings

Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost

Thy messenger, to render up the tale

Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,

30When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

Like an inspired and desperate alchymist

Staking his very life on some dark hope,

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

With my most innocent love, until strange tears

35Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

Such magic as compels the charmed night

To render up thy charge:… and, though ne’er yet

Thou hast unveil’d thy inmost sanctuary,

Enough from incommunicable dream,

40And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,

Has shone within me, that serenely now

And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre

Suspended in the solitary dome

Of some mysterious and deserted fane,

45I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain

May modulate with murmurs of the air,

And motions of the forests and the sea,

And voice of living beings, and woven hymns

Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

50   There was a Poet whose untimely tomb

No human hands with pious reverence reared,

But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds

Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—

55A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked

With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,

The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—

Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard

Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:

60He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.

Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,

And virgins, as unknown he past, have pined

And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.

The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,

65And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,

Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

   By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,

His infancy was nurtured. Every sight

And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,

70Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.

The fountains of divine philosophy

Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,

Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt

75And knew. When early youth had past, he left

His cold fireside and alienated home

To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.

Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness

Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

80With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

He like her shadow has pursued, where’er

The red volcano overcanopies

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

85With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

On black bare pointed islets ever beat

With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

Of fire and poison, inaccessible

90To avarice or pride, their starry domes

Of diamond and of gold expand above

Numberless and immeasurable halls,

Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.

95Nor had that scene of ampler majesty

Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

And the green earth lost in his heart its claims

To love and wonder; he would linger long

In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,

100Until the doves and squirrels would partake

From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,

Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,

And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er

The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend

105Her timid steps to gaze upon a form

More graceful than her own.

                                    His wandering step

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited

The awful ruins of the days of old:

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

110Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers

Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange

Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx,

115Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills

Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,

Stupendous columns, and wild images

Of more than man, where marble daemons watch

The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

120Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

He lingered, poring on memorials

Of the world’s youth, through the long burning day

Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon

Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades

125Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

   Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

130Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,

And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

From duties and repose to tend his steps:—

Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

To speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,

135Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips

Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn

Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home

Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

140   The Poet wandering on, through Arabie

And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,

And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down

Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,

In joy and exultation held his way;

145Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine

Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

150There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

155Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

His inmost sense suspended in its web

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,

And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

160Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

A permeating fire: wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

165Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands

Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

The beating of her heart was heard to fill

170The pauses of her music, and her breath

Tumultuously accorded with those fits

Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

As if her heart impatiently endured

Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,

175And saw by the warm light of their own life

Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

180Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess

Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

Her panting bosom: … she drew back a while,

185Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,

190Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

   Roused by the shock he started from his trance—

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

195The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,

The mystery and the majesty of Earth,

200The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes

Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.

The spirit of sweet human love has sent

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

205Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;

He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!

Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined

Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,

210In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,

And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

215Lead only to a black and watery depth,

While death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?

220This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,

The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung

His brain even like despair.

                                    While day-light held

The sky, the Poet kept mute conference

With his still soul. At night the passion came,

225Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,

And shook him from his rest, and led him forth

Into the darkness.—As an eagle grasped

In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast

Burn with the poison, and precipitates

230Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O’er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven

By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

235Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,

Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,

He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,

Shedding the mockery of its vital hues

Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on

240Till vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep

Hung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,

245Day after day, a weary waste of hours,

Bearing within his life the brooding care

That ever fed on its decaying flame.

And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

250Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

As in a furnace burning secretly

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

255Who ministered with human charity

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

Encountering on some dizzy precipice

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

260With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

In its career: the infant would conceal

His troubled visage in his mother’s robe

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

265To remember their strange light in many a dream

Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught

By nature, would interpret half the woe

That wasted him, would call him with false names

Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand

270At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path

Of his departure from their father’s door.

   At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore

He paused, a wide and melancholy waste

Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged

275His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,

Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.

It rose as he approached, and with strong wings

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course

High over the immeasurable main.

280His eyes pursued its flight.—‘Thou hast a home,

Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.

285And what am I that I should linger here,

With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,

Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned

To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers

In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven

290That echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile

Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly

Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,

Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,

295With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

   Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.

There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight

Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.

A little shallop floating near the shore

300Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.

It had been long abandoned, for its sides

Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

Swayed with the undulations of the tide.

A restless impulse urged him to embark

305And meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

   The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky

Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind

310Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.

Following his eager soul, the wanderer

Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft

On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,

And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea

315Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

   As one that in a silver vision floats

Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds

Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly

Along the dark and ruffled waters fled

320The straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on,

With fierce gusts and precipitating force,

Through the white ridges of the chafed sea.

The waves arose. Higher and higher still

Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge

325Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.

Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war

Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast

Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven

With dark obliterating course, he sate:

330As if their genii were the ministers

Appointed to conduct him to the light

Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate

Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,

The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues

335High ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray

That canopied his path o’er the waste deep;

Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,

Entwin’d in duskier wreaths her braided locks

O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;

340Night followed, clad with stars. On every side

More horribly the multitudinous streams

Of ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war

Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock

The calm and spangled sky. The little boat

345Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam

Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;

Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;

Now leaving far behind the bursting mass

That fell, convulsing ocean.