University of Virginia Library

High winds, that vex'd not the still earth, began
To smite the upmost heaven. With fitful light
The stricken moon thro' fleecy cloudlets ran.
The Mountain, from that drift of dark and bright
Which o'er him glimpsed in alternation wan,
Caught mystic motion; and, in spectral flight
Hovering above the melancholy plain,
The spirit that was in him spake again:

“And the Sun, never-resting, forsaken,
And fierce in his anguish of light,
Cries thro' heaven ‘Where art thou? awaken,
And return to me, fugitive Night!’
But she, whose unsatisfied lover
Thus renews his importunate flame,
Where hides she? with what does she cover
Her beauty, her babe, and her shame?
Ask yon quivering splendours, that swim
The blue dark in bright shoals overspread,
If they know in what solitude dim
Night is hiding her desolate head:
And those liveried lackeys of Light
(In the cause of Light's glory enlisted)
Will answer ‘What is it, the Night?
'Tis a myth that has never existed!’
Ask the planet whose golden urn
Flows over with flaming amber
As he, courtier-like, taketh his turn
In the sun's bright antechamber:
He laugheth ‘The Sun is my king:
The fallen are soon forgot:
I follow the conquering:
And the Night? . . . I know her not.’
And the sliding meteor will say,
As he falls in a fiery drop,
‘Who cares? I have miss'd my way,
And can neither retrace it nor stop.’
And, blushing, the Dawn will sigh
‘I awaked ere my dreams were done.
They were fair; but I know not, I,
If I dream'd of the Night . . . or the Sun?’
And, if all things else deny her,
Renounce the Night or ignore,
Go, ask of the ghostly fire
That hovers on that pale shore,
Where, embark'd in its phantom comet,
The wandering embryon waits
God's finger to fashion from it
A world of yet unknown fates:
It will mutter ‘I mark'd her creeping,
By the light of a latent moon,
Between two worlds and weeping,
Like a beggar that asks a boon
At the gates of a rich man's place,
With a shamed and sorrowful mien:
And I think it was to embrace
Her sleeping babe unseen.’

“That babe, is it Bliss? But aloud
Breathe the name of it never! At best
'Tis a treasure that, risk'd if avow'd,
Is in fear and in peril possest:
Whose possessor, as one that encroacheth
Upon ground that's forbidden, by night,
All atremble his treasure approacheth
But to bury it deep out of sight.
And, O thou to whom never before
Hath been utter'd this antique story,
Insult not the shade (tho' no more
Than a shadow it be) of lost glory.
For what it must be at the last
The Present doth ill to scorn.
And the Present shall be the Past
Ere the Future it boasts be born.”