185
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,
Ascend the car with me!’

The chains of earth’s immurement
Fell from Ianthe’s spirit;
They shrank and brake like bandages of straw    190
Beneath a wakened giant’s strength.
She knew her glorious change,
And felt in apprehension uncontrolled
New raptures opening round:
Each day-dream of her mortal life,    195
Each frenzied vision of the slumbers
That closed each well-spent day,
Seemed now to meet reality.

The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;
The silver clouds disparted;    200
And as the car of magic they ascended,
Again the speechless music swelled,
Again the coursers of the air
Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen
Shaking the beamy reins    205
Bade them pursue their way.

The magic car moved on.
The night was fair, and countless stars
Studded Heaven’s dark blue vault, —
Just o’er the eastern wave    210
Peeped the first faint smile of morn: —
The magic car moved on —
From the celestial hoofs
The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,
And where the burning wheels    215
Eddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak,
Was traced a line of lightning.
Now it flew far above a rock,
The utmost verge of earth,
The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow    220
Lowered o’er the silver sea.

Far, far below the chariot’s path,
Calm as a slumbering babe,
Tremendous Ocean lay.
The mirror of its stillness showed    225
The pale and waning stars,
The chariot’s fiery track,
And the gray light of morn
Tinging those fleecy clouds
That canopied the dawn.    230
Seemed it, that the chariot’s way
Lay through the midst of an immense concave,
Radiant with million constellations, tinged
With shades of infinite colour,
And semicircled with a belt    235
Flashing incessant meteors.

The magic car moved on.
As they approached their goal
The coursers seemed to gather speed;
The sea no longer was distinguished; earth    240
Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere;
The sun’s unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave;
Its rays of rapid light
Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,    245
And fell, like ocean’s feathery spray
Dashed from the boiling surge
Before a vessel’s prow.

The magic car moved on.
Earth’s distant orb appeared    250
The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;
Whilst round the chariot’s way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.    255
It was a sight of wonder: some
Were horned like the crescent moon;
Some shed a mild and silver beam
Like Hesperus o’er the western sea;
Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,    260
Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like suns, and, as the chariot passed,
Eclipsed all other light.

Spirit of Nature! here!
In this interminable wilderness    265
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze    270
Is less instinct with thee:
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath.
Spirit of Nature! thou!    275
Imperishable as this scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.

2.

If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the wild Ocean’s echoing shore,
And thou hast lingered there,
Until the sun’s broad orb
Seemed resting on the burnished wave,    5
Thou must have marked the lines
Of purple gold, that motionless
Hung o’er the sinking sphere:
Thou must have marked the billowy clouds
Edged with intolerable radiancy    10
Towering like rocks of jet
Crowned with a diamond wreath.
And yet there is a moment,
When the sun’s highest point
Peeps like a star o’er Ocean’s western edge,    15
When those far clouds of feathery gold,
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark blue sea;
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth,
And furled its wearied wing    20
Within the Fairy’s fane.

Yet not the golden islands
Gleaming in yon flood of light,
Nor the feathery curtains
Stretching o’er the sun’s bright couch,    25
Nor the burnished Ocean waves
Paving that gorgeous dome,
So fair, so wonderful a sight
As Mab’s aethereal palace could afford.
Yet likest evening’s vault, that faery Hall!    30
As Heaven, low resting on the wave,it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
Its vast and azure dome,
Its fertile golden islands
Floating on a silver sea;    35
Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
And pearly battlements around
Looked o’er the immense of Heaven.

The magic car no longer moved.    40
The Fairy and the Spirit
Entered the Hall of Spells:
Those golden clouds
That rolled in glittering billows
Beneath the azure canopy    45
With the aethereal footsteps trembled not:
The light and crimson mists,
Floating to strains of thrilling melody
Through that unearthly dwelling,
Yielded to every movement of the will.    50
Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,
And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,
Used not the glorious privilege
Of virtue and of wisdom.

‘Spirit!’ the Fairy said,    55
And pointed to the gorgeous dome,
‘This is a wondrous sight
And mocks all human grandeur;
But, were it virtue’s only meed, to dwell
In a celestial palace, all resigned    60
To pleasurable impulses, immured
Within the prison of itself, the will
Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!
This is thine high reward: — the past shall rise;    65
Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach
The secrets of the future.’

The Fairy and the Spirit
Approached the overhanging battlement. —
Below lay stretched the universe!    70
There, far as the remotest line
That bounds imagination’s flight,
Countless and unending orbs
In mazy motion intermingled,
Yet still fulfilled immutably    75
Eternal Nature’s law.
Above, below, around,
The circling systems formed
A wilderness of harmony;
Each with undeviating aim,    80
In eloquent silence, through the depths of space
Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light
That twinkled in the misty distance:
None but a spirit’s eye    85
Might ken that rolling orb;
None but a spirit’s eye,
And in no other place
But that celestial dwelling, might behold
Each action of this earth’s inhabitants.    90
But matter, space and time
In those aereal mansions cease to act;
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps
The harvest of its excellence, o’er-bounds
Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul    95
Fears to attempt the conquest.

The Fairy pointed to the earth.
The Spirit’s intellectual eye
Its kindred beings recognized.
The thronging thousands, to a passing view,    100
Seemed like an ant-hill’s citizens.
How wonderful! that even
The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch
That moves the finest nerve,    105
And in one human brain
Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link
In the great chain of Nature.

‘Behold,’ the Fairy cried,
‘Palmyra’s ruined palaces! — 110
Behold! where grandeur frowned;
Behold! where pleasure smiled;
What now remains? — the memory
Of senselessness and shame —
What is immortal there?    115
Nothing — it stands to tell
A melancholy tale, to give
An awful warning: soon
Oblivion will steal silently
The remnant of its fame.    120
Monarchs and conquerors there
Proud o’er prostrate millions trod —
The earthquakes of the human race;
Like them, forgotten when the ruin
That marks their shock is past.    125

‘Beside the eternal Nile,
The Pyramids have risen.
Nile shall pursue his changeless way:
Those Pyramids shall fall;
Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell    130
The spot whereon they stood!
Their very site shall be forgotten,
As is their builder’s name!

‘Behold yon sterile spot;
Where now the wandering Arab’s tent    135
Flaps in the desert-blast.
There once old Salem’s haughty fane
Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes,
And in the blushing face of day
Exposed its shameful glory.    140
Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father;
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man’s God to sweep it from the earth,
And spare his children the detested task    145
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning
The choicest days of life,
To soothe a dotard’s vanity.
There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;    150
They rushed to war, tore from the mother’s womb
The unborn child, — old age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:
But what was he who taught them that the God    155
Of nature and benevolence hath given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing    160
Itself into forgetfulness.

‘Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
There is a moral desert now:
The mean and miserable huts,
The yet more wretched palaces,    165
Contrasted with those ancient fanes,
Now crumbling to oblivion;
The long and lonely colonnades,
Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,
Seem like a well-known tune,    170
Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
Remembered now in sadness.
But, oh! how much more changed,
How gloomier is the contrast
Of human nature there!    175
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant’s slave,
A coward and a fool, spreads death around —
Then, shuddering, meets his own.
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowled and hypocritical monk    180
Prays, curses and deceives.

‘Spirit, ten thousand years
Have scarcely passed away,
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks
His enemy’s blood, and aping Europe’s sons,    185
Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city,
Metropolis of the western continent:
There, now, the mossy column-stone,
Indented by Time’s unrelaxing grasp,    190
Which once appeared to brave
All, save its country’s ruin;
There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
Of gardens long run wild,    195
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps
Chance in that desert has delayed,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flocked    200
Strangers, and ships, and merchandise:
Once peace and freedom blessed
The cultivated plain:
But wealth, that curse of man,
Blighted the bud of its prosperity:    205
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
Fled, to return not, until man shall know
That they alone can give the bliss
Worthy a soul that claims
Its kindred with eternity.    210

‘There’s not one atom of yon earth
But once was living man;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins:    215
And from the burning plains
Where Libyan monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland’s sunless clime,
To where the golden fields    220
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.

‘How strange is human pride!    225
I tell thee that those living things,
To whom the fragile blade of grass,
That springeth in the morn
And perisheth ere noon,
Is an unbounded world;    230
I tell thee that those viewless beings,
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel and live like man;
That their affections and antipathies,    235
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their moral state;
And the minutest throb
That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,    240
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.’

The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstasy of admiration, felt    245
All knowledge of the past revived; the events
Of old and wondrous times,
Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded
In just perspective to the view;    250
Yet dim from their infinitude.
The Spirit seemed to stand
High on an isolated pinnacle;
The flood of ages combating below,
The depth of the unbounded universe    255
Above, and all around
Nature’s unchanging harmony.

3.

‘Fairy!’ the Spirit said,
And on the Queen of Spells
Fixed her aethereal eyes,
‘I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught    5
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly:    10
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other Heaven.’

MAB:
‘Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
Much yet remains unscanned.    15
Thou knowest how great is man,
Thou knowest his imbecility:
Yet learn thou what he is:
Yet learn the lofty destiny
Which restless time prepares    20
For every living soul.

‘Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid
Yon populous city rears its thousand towers
And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops
Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,    25
Encompass it around: the dweller there
Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not
The curses of the fatherless, the groans
Of those who have no friend? He passes on:
The King, the wearer of a gilded chain    30
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to the basest appetites — that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which the destitute    35
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
But for those morsels which his wantonness
Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine: when he hears    40
The tale of horror, to some ready-made face
Of hypocritical assent he turns,
Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,
Flushes his bloated cheek.
Now to the meal
Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags    45
His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,
Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled
From every clime, could force the loathing sense
To overcome satiety, — if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not, — or vice,    50
Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not
Its food to deadliest venom; then that king
Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils
His unforced task, when he returns at even,
And by the blazing faggot meets again    55
Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Behold him now
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain
Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon
The slumber of intemperance subsides,    60
And conscience, that undying serpent, calls
Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.
Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye —
Oh! mark that deadly visage.’

KING:
‘No cessation!
Oh! must this last for ever? Awful Death,    65
I wish, yet fear to clasp thee! — Not one moment
Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!
Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity
In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest
With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn’st    70
The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace!
Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed
One drop of balm upon my withered soul.’

THE FAIRY:
‘Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
And Peace defileth not her snowy robes    75
In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;
His slumbers are but varied agonies,
They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err: earth in itself    80
Contains at once the evil and the cure;
And all-sufficing Nature can chastise
Those who transgress her law, — she only knows
How justly to proportion to the fault
The punishment it merits.
Is it strange    85
That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?
Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug
The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange
That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,
Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured    90
Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds
Shut him from all that’s good or dear on earth,
His soul asserts not its humanity?
That man’s mild nature rises not in war
Against a king’s employ? No—’tis not strange.    95
He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives
Just as his father did; the unconquered powers
Of precedent and custom interpose
Between a KING and virtue. Stranger yet,
To those who know not Nature, nor deduce    100
The future from the present, it may seem,
That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
Of this unnatural being; not one wretch,
Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed
Is earth’s unpitying bosom, rears an arm
To dash him from his throne!    105
Those gilded flies
That, basking in the sunshine of a court,
Fatten on its corruption! — what are they?
 — The drones of the community; they feed
On the mechanic’s labour: the starved hind    110
For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
Drags out in labour a protracted death,    115
To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil,
That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

‘Whence, think’st thou, kings and parasites arose?
Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap
Toil and unvanquishable penury    120
On those who build their palaces, and bring
Their daily bread? — From vice, black loathsome vice;
From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
From all that ‘genders misery, and makes
Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,    125
Revenge, and murder…And when Reason’s voice,
Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue
Is peace, and happiness and harmony;    130
When man’s maturer nature shall disdain
The playthings of its childhood; — kingly glare
Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority
Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,    135
Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable
As that of truth is now.
Where is the fame
Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth
Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound    140
From Time’s light footfall, the minutest wave
That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing
The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! today
Stern is the tyrant’s mandate, red the gaze
That flashes desolation, strong the arm    145
That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!
That mandate is a thunder-peal that died
In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash
On which the midnight closed, and on that arm
The worm has made his meal.
The virtuous man,    150
Who, great in his humility, as kings
Are little in their grandeur; he who leads
Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon depths
More free and fearless than the trembling judge,    155
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove
To bind the impassive spirit; — when he falls,
His mild eye beams benevolence no more:
Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;
Sunk Reason’s simple eloquence, that rolled    160
But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave
Hath quenched that eye, and Death’s relentless frost
Withered that arm: but the unfading fame
Which Virtue hangs upon its votary’s tomb;
The deathless memory of that man, whom kings    165
Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance
With which the happy spirit contemplates
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,
Shall never pass away.

‘Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;    170
The subject, not the citizen: for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other’s hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.    175
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton.
When Nero,    180
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy
Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
The frightful desolation spread, and felt
A new-created sense within his soul    185
Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound;
Think’st thou his grandeur had not overcome
The force of human kindness? and, when Rome,
With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down,
Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood    190
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
Nature’s suggestions?
Look on yonder earth:
The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
Arise in due succession; all things speak    195
Peace, harmony, and love. The universe,
In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares
That all fulfil the works of love and joy, —
All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates
The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth    200
The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up
The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe,
Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,
Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,
Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch    205
Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth
A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn
Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;
A mother only to those puling babes
Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men    210
The playthings of their babyhood, and mar,
In self-important childishness, that peace
Which men alone appreciate?

‘Spirit of Nature! no.
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs    215
Alike in every human heart.
Thou, aye, erectest there
Thy throne of power unappealable:
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod
Man’s brief and frail authority    220
Is powerless as the wind
That passeth idly by.
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
The show of human justice,
As God surpasses man.