Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Where is Alastor gone,—
The fairy queen's own latest born,
Where is he gone?
Has the far-scenting roe-buck at the time
Appointed, shed his antlers? does the pride
Of the wide solitary forests lie
Moss-overgrown in slimy lizard's nook?
Has the swift ostrich of the desert lost
The long limb of her strength, and laid her down
On the hard earth, which erewhile her feet spurned,
Where mole and burrowing owl,
And red-eyed weazel, prowl?

Must he too die like other men,
Who lived not like them? He who knew no world
Outside the heart;—
The spirit whose home was the adytum lit
By phantasies as by the stars in their
Blueness of wondrous height; each thought a world

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As are the stars, pursuant of its end
Of being; speculating, working, strong,
Having its rayings wrought
Around its brother thought.

An earthless garden grew
Around him, aromatic laurel boughs
Waved twining there:
Flowers of Arcadian nature strengthened there,
Transplanted from the wizard's world of dream,
Yea, the old wizard's wand itself did shoot
Like the high priest's, and gave strange blossoming,
And fruit intoxicating mightily.
And a bright rainbow'd shower fell glitteringly
From the most holy font of his clear soul,
Upon this gardened plain
Where Fancy held her reign.

A shrine was in the midst
Luxuriously bedecked in its own fire,
As is the sun.
And his heart beat, and his brain whirled, when he
Turned to it; and words leaped forth from his tongue
As its light glorified him, Memnon-like;
And the words were, as pundit, sanscrit-learned,
Revivifies from times of demi-gods,
Drawn from the deepest wells of consciousness,
The world received not; but he proudly passed

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The world, and carol'd to
Himself as prophets only do.

The goddess of that shrine
No man hath e'er held commune with, nor seen
With mortal eye,
But thou, wild wingless angel, didst not pause,
But entered to the blaze where spirits alone
Can worship; and didst make libations till
Thou wast so purified, men knew thee not.
Would I could trace thy footsteps up the porch
And to the altar there, so that I too
Would sacrifice in ruth
To thee who worshipped truth.

Few mourners have appeared:
And meet it is; for he was ever grieved
By others' grief:
Few staves are lifted for the pilgrimage
To follow him; few of the busy world
Can go up to the realms where he did go;
Or breathe the atmosphere he breathed; or cast
The old shell off, and come forth cleansed as he;
Few, few have striven
To make earth heaven.

Men say that he fell blind
By daring to approach this source of Light;
That he fell lame

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By travelling far in desperate paths: even so—
Yet reverence we not the martyr? None
Are left us like him; none are left to tune
The cythera, as he did tune it o'er
The white spring flowers on Adonais' grave:
Lone Adonais and Alastor lone!
Their spirits went together; and their earths
Resolved each to the elements they loved,—
One to sunshine and storm,
One flowers and fruits to form.

Sage follows sage afar;
Dark lapse of time between, now marked alone
By their advent.
As star by star arises on the night,
Up through the shades of time past they appear
In lambent haloes burning steadily.
Revolving onward, the eternal wheel
Circles; and still a shine from these wan flames,
God-kindled, follows on. Another flame,
Subtle as lightning,
Is added to the brightening.

Still poets reappear,
And still the glow doth thicken to the dawn.
Redness of morn
Gilds our horizon soon! Alastor, thou
Shalt be our guide into the unknown time;

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And we will bind about thy cenotaph
The laurel and the olive, and the rose,
The poppy and perennial ivy too;
Glow-worms shall glimmer through the dark green leaves,
And great sphynx-moths fly round it evermore.
And when our many chains are burst,
We'll say, ‘Alastor, thou wast first.’