University of Virginia Library

CANTO FIRST.

Methought I lived through ages, and beheld
Their generations pass so swiftly by me,
That years were moments in their flight, and hours
The scenes of crowded centuries reveal'd;
While Time, Life, Death, the world's great actors, wrought
New and amazing changes:—these I sing.
Sky, sun, and sea, were all the universe;—
The sky, one blue interminable arch,
Without a breeze, a wing, a cloud: the sun
Sole in the firmament, but in the deep
Redoubled; where the circle of the sea,
Invisible with calmness, seem'd to lie
Within the hollow of a lower heaven.
I was a Spirit in the midst of these,
All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoyment;
Light was an element of life, and air
The clothing of my incorporeal form,—
A form impalpable to mortal touch,
And volatile as fragrance from the flower,
Or music in the woodlands. What the soul
Can make itself at pleasure, that I was;
A child in feeling and imagination,
Learning new lessons still, as Nature wrought
Her wonders in my presence. All I saw
(Like Adam when he walk'd in Paradise)
I knew and named by secret intuition.
Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn,
I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sail'd,
And now I soar'd; anon expanding, seem'd
Diffused into immensity, yet bound
Within a space too narrow for desire;
The mind, the mind, perpetual themes must task,
Perpetual power impel, and hope allure.
I and the silent sun were here alone,
But not companions; high and bright he held
His course; I gazed with admiration on him,—
There all communion ended; and I sigh'd,
In loneliness unutterable sigh'd,
To feel myself a wanderer without aim,
An exile amidst splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.
The sun descended, dipp'd, and disappear'd;
Then sky and sea were all the universe,
And I the only being in existence!
So thought I, and the thought, like ice and fire,
Went freezing, burning, withering, thrilling through me;
Annihilation then had been deliverance,
While that eternity of solitude
Lay on my heart, hard struggling to break free,
As from a dream when mountains press the sleeper.
Darkness, meanwhile, disguised in twilight, crept
O'er air and ocean; drearier gloom involved
My fainting senses, till a sudden ray
Of pensile lustre sparkled from the west;
I flew to meet it, but drew never nearer,
While, vanishing and re-appearing oft,
At length it trembled out into a star.
My soul revived, and could I then have wept
(Methought I did), with tears of fond delight,
How had I hail'd the gentle apparition,
As second life to me; so sweetly welcome
The faintest semblance of society,
Though but a point to rest the eye upon,
To him who hath been utterly bereaved!
—Star after star, from some unseen abyss,
Came through the sky, like thoughts into the mind,
We know not whence; till all the firmament
Was throng'd with constellations, and the sea
Strown with their images. Amidst a sphere
Of twinkling lights, like living eyes, that look'd
At once on me from every side, I stood
(Motion and rest with me were mere volition),
Myself perhaps a star among the rest!
But here again I found no fellowship;
Sight could not reach, nor keenest thought conceive
Their nature or their offices. To me
They were but what they seem'd, and yet I felt
They must be more; the mind hath no horizon,
It looks beyond the eye, and seeks for mind
In all it sees, or all it sees o'erruling.
Low in the east, ere long, the morning dawn
Shot upward, onward, and around the pole,
With arrowy glimpses traversing the shade.
Night's train, as they had kindled one by one,
Now one by one withdrew, reversing order,
Where those that came the latest, earliest went:
Day rose triumphant, and again to me
Sky, sun, and sea were all the universe;
But ah! the glory had departed, and I long'd
For some untried vicissitude:—it came.
A breeze sprang up, and with careering wing
Play'd like an unseen being on the water.
Slowly from slumber 'woke the unwilling main,
Curling and murmuring, till the infant waves
Leap'd on his lap, and laugh'd in air and sunshine.
Then all was bright and beautiful emotion,
And sweet accordance of susurrant sounds.
I felt the gay delirum of the scene;
I felt the breeze and billow chase each other,
Like bounding pulses in my human veins:
For, though impassive to the elements,
The form I wore was exquisitely tuned
To Nature's sympathies; joy, fear, hope, sorrow,
(As though I yet were in the body,) moved,
Elated, shook, or tranquillised my soul.
Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm,
Looking around for comfort, I descried,
Far on the green horizon's utmost verge,
A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery,
For each new image sprang a new idea,
The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.
The little vapour rapidly expanded,
Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun,
And threw a starless night upon the sea.
Eagerly, tremblingly, I watch'd the end.
Faint gleam'd the lightning, follow'd by no peal;
Dreary and hollow moans foretold a gale;
Nor long the issue tarried: then the wind,
Unprison'd, blew its trumpet loud and shrill;
Out flash'd the lightnings gloriously; the rain
Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder
Roll'd in grand harmony throughout high heaven;
Till ocean, breaking from his black supineness,
Drown'd in his own stupendous uproar all
The voices of the storm beside: meanwhile
A war of mountains raged upon his surface;
Mountains each other swallowing, and again
New Alps and Andes, from unfathom'd valleys
Upstarting, join'd the battle; like those sons
Of earth,—Giants, rebounding as new-born
From every fall on their unwearied mother.
I glow'd with all the rapture of the strife:
Beneath, was one wild whirl of foaming surges;
Above, the array of lightnings, like the swords
Of cherubim, wide-brandish'd to repel
Aggression from heaven's gates; their flaming strokes
Quench'd momentarily in the vast abyss.
The voice of Him who walks upon the wind,
And sets his throne upon the floods, rebuked
The headlong tempest in its mid-career,
And turn'd its horrors to magnificence,
The evening sun broke through the embattled clouds,
And threw round sky and sea, as by enchantment,
A radiant girdle, binding them to peace,
In the full rainbow's harmony of beams;
No brilliant fragment, but one sevenfold circle,
That spann'd the horizon, meted out the heavens,
And underarch'd the ocean. 'Twas a scene
That left itself for ever on my mind.
Night, silent, cool, transparent, crown'd the day;
The sky receded further into space,
The stars came lower down to meet the eye,
Till the whole hemisphere, alive with light,
Twinkled from east to west by one consent.
The constellations round the arctic pole,
That never set to us, here scarcely rose,
But, in their stead, Orion through the north
Pursued the Pleiads; Sirius, with his keen
Quick scintillations, in the zenith reign'd.
The south unveil'd its glories;—there the Wolf,
With eyes of lightning, watch'd the Centaur's spear;
Through the clear hyaline the Ship of Heaven
Came sailing from eternity; the Dove,
On silver pinions, wing'd her peaceful way:
There, at the footstool of Jehovah's throne,
The Altar, kindled from His presence, blazed;
There, too, all else excelling, meekly shone
The Cross, the symbol of redeeming love:
The Heavens declared the glory of the Lord,
The firmament display'd his handy-work.
With scarce inferior lustre gleam'd the sea,
Whose waves were spangled with phosphoric fire,
As though the lightnings there had spent their shafts,
And left the fragments glittering on the field.
Next morn, in mockery of a storm, the breeze
And waters skirmish'd; bubble-armies fought
Millions of battles on the crested surges,
And where they fell, all cover'd with their glory,
Traced, in white foam on the cerulean main,
Paths, like the milky-way among the stars.
Charm'd with the spectacle, yet deeply touch'd
With a forlorn and not untender feeling—
“Why,” said my thoughts within me, “why this waste
Of loveliness and grandeur unenjoy'd?
Is there no life throughout this fair existence?
Sky, sun, and sea; the moon, the stars, the clouds;
Wind, lightning, thunder,—are but ministers;
They know not what they are, nor what they do:
O for the beings for whom these were made!”
Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell,
Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is fill'd;
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark
Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appear'd this lonely Nautilus,
My fellow-being, like myself alive.
Entranced in contemplation vague yet sweet,
I watch'd its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.
It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing:
While the last bubble crown'd the dimpling eddy
Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air,—
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,
On long light wings, that flung a diamond shower
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure,—on the surge,
A shoal of Dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,
Glow'd with such orient tints, they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy o'er these I hung,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colours came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes,—
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan
Look'd forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.
These were but preludes to the revelry
That reign'd at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,
As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners; aloof,
On wing-like fins, in bow-and-arrow figures,
The flying fishes darted to and fro;
While spouting Whales projected wat'ry columns,
That turn'd to arches at their height, and seem'd
The skeletons of crystal palaces
Built on the blue expanse, then perishing,
Frail as the element which they were made of:
Dolphins, in gambols, lent the lucid brine
Hues richer than the canopy of eve,
That overhung the scene with gorgeous clouds,
Decaying into gloom more beautiful
Than the sun's golden liveries which they lost:
Till light that hides, and darkness that reveals,
The stars,—exchanging guard, like sentinels
Of day and night,—transform'd the face of nature:
Above was wakefulness, silence around,
Beneath repose,—repose that reach'd even me.
Power, will, sensation, memory, fail'd in turn;
My very essence seem'd to pass away,
Like a thin cloud that melts across the moon,
Lost in the blue immensity of heaven.