CXV.

Egeria sweet creation of some heart 1 Which found no mortal resting-place so fair As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art Or wert, a young Aurora of the air, The nympholepsy of some fond despair; Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, Who found a more than common votary there Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

CXVI.

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face

Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,
Prison'd in marble, bubbling from the base
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap

The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep

CXVII.

Fantastically tangled: the green hills

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass; Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems colour'd by its skies.

1 See Appendix, "Historical Notes," No. XXVII.

CXVIII.

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple Midnight veil'd that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy, and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamour'd Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love-the earliest oracle!

CXIX.

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart
The purity of heaven to earthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart-
The dull satiety which all destroys—

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

CXX.

Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert; whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI.

Oh Love! no habitant of earth art thou
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,

And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquench'd soul-parch'd-wearied wrung-and riven.

CXXII.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,

And fevers into false creation :

where,

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreach'd Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

CXXIII.

Who loves, raves- 'tis youth's frenzy-but the cure
Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize-wealthiest when most undone.

P

CXXIV.

We wither from our youth, we gasp away--
Sick-sick; unfound the boon-unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first –
But all too late,—so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice—'tis the same,
Each idle-and all ill—and none the worst-
For all are meteors with a different name,

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

CXXV.

Few-none-find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies-but to recur, ere long,
Envenom'd with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns Hope to dust,—the dust we all have trod.

CXXVI.

Our life is a false nature- 't is not in
The harmony of things, this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of sin,

This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree,

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew– Disease, death, bondage-all the woes we see And worse, the woes we see not-which throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII.

Yet let us ponder boldly—'t is a base 1
Abandonment of reason to resign

Our right of thought-our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the faculty divine

Is chain'd and tortured-cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,

The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.

CXXVIII.

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 't were its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation; and the azure gloom

Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

1 "At all events," says the author of the Academical Questions, "I trust, whatever may be the fate of my own speculations, that philosophy will regain that estimation which it ought to possess. The free and philosophic spirit of our nation has been the theme of admiration to the world. This was the proud distinction of Englishmen, and the luminous source of all their glory. Shall we then forget the manly and dignified sentiments of our ancestors, to prate in the language of the mother or the nurse about our good old prejudices? This is not the way to defend the cause of truth. It was not thus that our fathers maintained it in the brilliant periods of our history. Prejudice may be trusted to guard the outworks for a short space of time, while reason slumbers in the citadel; but if the latter sink into a lethargy, the former will quickly erect a standard for herself. Philosophy, wisdom, and liberty support each other: he who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave."— Vol. i. pref. p. 14, 15.