BOOK X.

Spring on the Polar Seas!— not violet-crown'd

By dewy Hours, nor to cerulean halls

Melodious hymn'd, yet Light itself around

Her stately path, sheds starry coronals.

Sublime she comes, as when, from Dis set free,

Came, through the flash of Jove, Persephone:

She comes — that grand Aurora of the North!

By steeds of fire her glorious chariot borne,

From Boreal courts the meteors flaming forth,

Ope heav'n on heav'n, before the mighty Morn:

And round the rebel giants of the night

On earth's last confines bursts the storm of light.

Wonder and awe! lo, where against the Sun

A second Sunhis lurid front uprears!

As if the first-born lost Hyperion,

Hurl'd down of old, from his Uranian spheres,

Rose from the hell-rocks on his writhings pil'd,

And glared defiance on his Titan child.

Now life, the polar life, returns once more,

The reindeer roots his mosses from the snows;

The whirring sea-gulls shriek along the shore;

Through oozing rills the cygnet gleaming goes;

And, where the ice some happier verdure frees,

Laugh into light frank-eyed anemones.

Out from the seas still solid, frown'd a lone

Chaos of chasm and precipice and rock,

There, while the meteors on their revels shone,

Growling hoarse glee, in many a grauly flock,

With their huge young, the sea-bears sprawling play'd

Near the charr'd crater some mute Hecla made.

Sullen before that cavern's vast repose,

Like the lorn wrecks of a despairing race

Chased to their last hold by triumphant foes,

Darkness and Horror stood! But from the space

Within the cave, and o'er the ice-ground wan,

Quivers a Shadow vaguely mocking man.

Like man's the Shadow falls, yet falling loses

The shape it took, each moment changefully;

As when the wind on Runic waves confuses

The weird boughs toss'd from some prophetic tree.

Fantastic, goblin-like, and fitful thrown,

Comes the strange Shadow from the drear Unknown.

It is not man's — for they, man's savage foes,

Whose sense ne'er fails them when the scent is blood,

Sport in the shadow the Unseen One throws,

Nor hush their young to sniff the human food;

But, undisturbed as if their home were there,

Pass to and fro the light-defying lair.

So the bears gamboll'd, so the Shadow play'd,

When sudden halts the uncouth merriment.

Now man, in truth, draws near, man's steps invade

The men-devourers!— Snorting to the scent,

Lo, where they stretch dread necks of shaggy snow,

Grin with white fangs, and greed the blood to flow!

Grotesquely undulating, moves the flock,

Low grumbling as the grisly ranks divide;

Some heave their slow bulk peering up the rock,

Some stand erect, and shift from side to side

The keen quick ear, the red dilating eye,

And steam the hard air with a hungry sigh.

At length unquiet and amazed — as rings

On to their haunt direct, the dauntless stride,

With the sharp instinct of all savage things

That doubt a prey by which they are defied,

They send from each to each a troubled stare;

And huddle close, suspicious of the snare.

Then a huge leader, with concerted wile,

Creeps lumbering on, and, to his guidance slow

The shagged armies move, in cautious file;

Till one by one, in ambush for the foe,

Drops into chasm and cleft,— and vanishing

With stealthy murther girds the coming King!

He comes,— the Conqueror in the Halls of Time,

Known by his silver herald in the Dove,

By his imperial tread, and front sublime

With power as tranquil as the lids of Jove,—

All shapes of death the realms around afford:—

From Fiends God guard him!— from all else his sword

For he, with spring the huts of ice had left

And the small People of the world of snows:

Their food the seal, their camp, at night, the cleft,

His bold Norwegians follow where he goes;

Now in the rear afar, their chief they miss,

And grudge the danger which they deem a bliss.

Ere yet the meteors from the morning sky

Chased large Orion,— in the hour when sleep

Reflects its ghost-land stillest on the eye,

Had stol'n the lonely King; and o'er the deep

Sought, by the clue the dwarfmen-legends yield,

And the Dove's wing — the demon-guarded Shield.

The Desert of the Desolate is won.

Still lurks, unseen, the ambush horrible —

Nought stirs around beneath the twofold sun

Save that strange Shadow, where before it fell,

Still falling;— varying, quivering to and fro,

From the black cavern on the glaring snow.

Slow the devourers rise, and peer around:

Now crag and cliff move dire with savage life,

And rolling downward,— all the dismal ground

Shakes with the roar and bristles with the strife:

Not unprepared — ( when ever are the brave? )

Stands the firm King, and bares the diamond glaive.

Distinct through all the meteors, streams the brand,

Light'ning along the air, the sea, the rock,

Bright as the arrow in that heavenly hand

Which slew the Python! Blinded halt the flock,

And the great roar, but now so rough and high,

Sinks into terror wailing timidly.

Yet the fierce instinct and the rabid sting

Of famine goad again the check'd array;

And close and closer in tumultuous ring,

Reels on the death-mass crushing towards its prey.

A dull groan tells where first the falchion sweeps —

When into shape the cave-born Shadow leaps!

Out from the dark it leapt — the awful form!

Manlike, but sure not human! on its hair

The ice-barbs bristled: like a coming storm

The breath smote lifeless every wind in air;

Dread form deform'd, as ere the birth of Light,

Some son of Chaos and the Antique Night!

At once a dwarf and giant — trunk and limb

Knit in gnarl'd strength as by a monstrous chance,

Never chimera more grotesque and grim,

Paled AEgypt's priesthood with its own romance,

When, from each dire delirium Fancy knows,

Some Typhon-type of Powers destroying rose.

At the dread presence, ice a double cold

Conceived; the meteors from their dazzling play

Paused; and appall'd into their azure hold

Shrunk back with all their banners; not a ray

Broke o'er the dead sea and the doleful shore,

Winter's steel grasp lock'd the dumb world once more.

Halted the war — as the wild multitude

Left the King scatheless, and their leaders slain;

And round the giant dwarf the baleful brood

Came with low howls of terror, wrath, and pain,

As children round their father. They depart,

But strife remains; Fear and the Human Heart;

For Fear was on the bold! Then spoke aloud

The horrent Image: “Child of hateful Day,

What madness snares thee to the glooms that shroud

The realms abandon'd to my secret sway?

Why on mine air first breathes the human breath?

Hath thy far world no fairer path to Death?”

“All ways to Death, but one to Glory leads,

That which alike through earth, or air, or wave,

Bears a bold thought to goals in noble deeds,”

Said the pale King. “And this, methinks, the cave

Which hides the Shield that rock'd the sleep of one

By whom ev'n Fable shows what deeds were done!

“I seek the talisman which guards the free,

And tread where erst the Sire of freemen trod. "

“Ho!” laugh'd the dwarf, “Walhalla's child was He!

Man gluts the fiend when he assumes the god.” —

“No god, Deceiver, though man's erring creeds

Make gods of men when godlike are their deeds;

“And if the Only and Eternal One

Hath, ere his last illuminate Word Reveal'd,

Left some grand Memory on its airy throne,

Nor smote the nations when to names they kneel'd —

It is that each false god was some great truth!—

To races Heroes are as Bards to youth!”

Thus spoke the King, to whom the Enchanted Lake,

Where from all sources Wisdom ever springs,

Had given unknown the subtle powers that wake

Our intuitions into cloudiest things,

Won but by those, who, after passionate dreams,

Taste the sharp herb and dare the solemn streams.

The Demon heard; and as a moon that shines,

Rising behind Arcturus, cold and still

O'er Baltic headlands black with rigid pines,—

So on his knit and ominous brows a chill

And livid smile, revealed the gloomy night,

To leave the terror sterner for the light.

Thus spoke the Dwarf, “Thou wouldst survive to tell

Of trophies wrested from the halls of Lok,

Yet wherefore singly face the hosts of Hell?

Return, and lead thy comrades to the rock;

Never to one, on earth's less dreadful field,

The prize of chiefs do War's fierce Valkyrs yield.”

“War,” said the King, “is waged on mortal life

By men with men;— that, dare I with the rest:

In conflicts awful with no human strife,

Mightiest methinks, that soul the loneliest!

When starry charms from Afrite caves were won,

No Judah march'd with dauntless Solomon!”

Fell fangs the demon gnash'd, and o'er the crowd

Wild cumbering round his feet, with hungry stare

Greeding the man, his drooping visage bow'd;

“Go elsewhere, sons — your prey escapes the snare:

Yours but the food which flesh to flesh supplies;

Here not the mortal but the soul defies.”

Then striding to the cave, he plunged within;

“Follow,” he cried, and like a prison'd blast

Along the darkness, the reverberate din

Roll'd from the rough sides of the viewless Vast;

As goblin echoes, through the haunted hollow,

‘ Twixt groan and laughter, chimed hoarse-gibbering, “Follow!”

The King, recoiling, paused irresolute,

Till through the cave the white wing went its way;

Then on his breast he sign'd the cross, and mute,

With solemn prayer, he left the world of day.

Thick stood the night, save where the falchion gave

Its clear sharp glimmer lengthening down the cave.

Advancing; flashes rush'd irregular

Like subterranean lightning, fork'd and red:

From warring matter — wandering shot the star

Of poisonous gases; and the tortured bed

Of the’ old Volcano show'd in trailing fires,

Where the numb'd serpent dragg'd its mangled spires.

Broader and ruddier on the Dove's pale wings

Now glow'd the lava of the widening spaces;

Grinn'd from the rook the jaws of giant things,

The lurid skeletons of vanish'd races,

They who, perchance, ere man himself had birth,

Ruled the moist slime of uncompleted earth.

Enormous couch'd fang'd Iguanodon,

To which the monster-lizard of the Nile

Were prey too small,— whose dismal haunts were on

The swamps where now such golden harvests smile

As had sufficed those myriad hosts to feed

When all the Orient march'd behind the Mede.

There the foul, earliest reptile spectra lay,

Distinct as when the chaos was their home;

Half plant, half serpent, some subside away

Into gnarl'd roots ( now stone ) — more hideous some,

Half bird — half fish — seem struggling yet to spring,

Shark-like the maw, and dragon-like the wing.

But, life-like more, from later layers emerge

With their fell tusks deep-stricken in the stone,

Herds,that through all the thunders of the surge,

Had to the Ark which swept relentless on

( Denied to them ) — knell'd the despairing roar

Of sentenced races time shall know no more.

Under the limbs of mammoths went the path,

Or through the arch immense of Dragon jaws,

And ever on the King, in watchful wrath,

Gazed the attendant Fiend, with artful pause

Where dread was deadliest; had the mortal one

Falter'd or quail'd, the Fiend his prey had won,

And rent it limb by limb; but on the Dove

Arthur look'd steadfast, and the Fiend was foil'd.

Now, as along the skeleton world they move,

Strange noises jar, and flit strange shadows. Toil'd

The Troll'sswart people, in their inmost home

At work on ruin for the days to come.

A baleful race, whose anvils forge the flash

Of iron murder for the limbs of war;

Who ripen hostile embryos, for the crash

Of earthquakes rolling slow to towers afar;

Or train from Hecla's fount the lurid rills,

To cities sleeping under shepherd hills;

Or nurse the seeds, through patient ages rife

With the full harvest of that crowning fire,

When for the sentenced Three — Time, Death, and Life —

Our globe itself shall be the funeral pyre;

And, awed, in orbs remote some race unknown

Shall miss one star, whose smile had lit their own!

Through the Phlegraean glare, innumerous eyes,

Fierce with the murther-lust, scowl ravening,

And forms on which had never look'd the skies

Stalk near and nearer, swooping round the King,

Till from the blazing sword the foul array

Shrink back, and wolf-like follow on the way.

Now through waste mines of iron, whose black peaks

Frown o'er dull Phlegethons of fire below,

While, vague as worlds unform'd, sulphureous reeks

Roll on before them huge and dun,— they go.

Abrupt the vapours vanish, and the light

Bursts like a flood and rushes o'er the night.

A mighty cirque with lustre belts the mine;

Its walls of iron glittering into steel;

Wall upon wall reflected flings the shrine

Of armour! Vizorless the Corpses kneel,

Their glazed eyes fix'd upon a couch where, screen'd

With whispering curtains, sleeps the Kingly Fiend:

Corpses of giants, who perchance had heard

The tromps of Tubal, and had leapt to strife

Whose guilt provoked the Deluge: sepulchred

In their world's ruins, still a frown like life

Hung o'er vast brows,— and spears like turrets shone

In hands whose grasp had crush'd the Mastodon.

Around the couch, a silent solemn ring,

They whom the Teuton call the Valkyrs sate.

Shot through pale webs their spindles glistening;

Dread tissues woven out of human hate

For heavenly ends!— for there is spun the woe

Of every war that ever earth shall know.

Below their feet a bottomless pit of gore

Yawn'd, where each web, when once the woof was done,

Was scornful cast. Yet rising evermore

Out of the surface, wander'd airy on

( Till lost in upper space ), pale winged seeds,

The future heaven-fruit of the hell-born deeds;

For out of every evil born of time,

God shapes a good for his eternity.

Lo where the spindles, weaving crime on crime,

Form the world-work of Charlemains to be;—

How in that hall of iron lengthen forth

The fates that ruin, to rebuild, the North!

Here, one stern Sister smiling on the King,

Hurries the thread that twines his Nation's doom;

And, farther down, the whirring spindles sing

Around the woof which from his Baltic home

Shall charm the avenging Norman, to control

The shatter'd races into one calm whole.

Already here, the hueless lines along,

Grows the red creed of the Arabian horde;

Already here, the arm'd Chivalric Wrong

Which made the cross the symbol of the sword,

Which thy worst idol, Rome, to Judah gave,

And worshipp'd Mars upon the Saviour's grave!

Already the wild Tartar in his tents,

Dreamless of thrones — and the fierce Visigoth

Who on Colombia's golden armaments

Shall loose the hell-hounds,— nurse the age-long growth

Of Desolation — as the noiseless skein

Clasps in its web, thy far descendants, Cain!

Already, in the hearts of sires remote

In their rude Isle, the spell ordains the germ

Of what shall be a Name of wonder, wrought

From that fell feast which Glory gives the worm,

When Rome's dark bird shall shade with thunder wings

Calm brows that brood the doom of breathless kings!

Already, though the sad unheeded eyes

Of Bards alone foresee, and none believe,

The lightning boarded from the farthest skies

Into the mesh the race-destroyers weave,

When o'er our marts shall graze a stranger's fold,

And the new Tarshish rot, as rots the old.

Yea, ever there, each spectre hand the birth

Weaves of a war — until the angel-blast

( Peal'd from the tromp that knells the doom of earth )

Shall start the livid legions from their last;

And man, with arm uplifted still to slay,

Reel on some Alp that rolls in smoke away!

Fierce glared the dwarf upon the silent King,

“There is the prize thy visions would achieve!

There, where the hush'd inexorable ring

Murder the myriads in the webs they weave,

Behind the curtains of Incarnate War,

Whose lightest tremour topples thrones afar,—

“Which ev'n the Valkyrs with their bloodless hands

Dare never draw aside,— go seek the Shield!

Yet be what follows known!— yon kneeling bands

Whose camps were Andes, and whose battle-field

Left plains, now empires, rolling seas of gore,

Shall near the clang and heap to life once more.

“Roused from their task, revengeful shall arise

The never-baffled‘ Choosers of the Slain;’

The Fiend thy hand shall wake, unclose the eyes

That flash'd on heavenly hosts their storms again,

And thy soul wither in the mighty frown

Before whose night an earlier sun sunk down.

“The rocks shall close all path for flight save one,

Where now the Troll-fiends wait to rend their prey,

And each malign and monster skeleton,

Reclothed with life as in the giant day

When yonder seas were valleys, scent thy gore,

And grin with fangs that gnash for food once more.

“Ho, dost thou shudder, pale one? Back and live.”

Thrice strove the King for speech, and thrice in vain;

For he was man, and till our souls survive

The instincts born of flesh, shall Horror reign

In that Unknown beyond the realms of Sense,

Where the soul's darkness seems the man's defence.

Yet as when through uncertain troublous cloud

Breaks the sweet morning star, and from its home

Smiles lofty peace, so through the phantom crowd

Of fears the Eos of the world to come,

FAITH, look'd — revealing how earth-nourish'd are

The clouds, and how beyond their reach the star!

Mute on his knee, amidst the kneeling dead

He sank — the dead the dreaming fiend revered,

And he, the living God! Then terror fled,

And all the king illumed the front he rear'd.

Firm to the couch on which the fiend reposed

He strode;— the curtains, murmuring, round him closed.

Now while this chanced, without the tortured rock

Raged fierce the war between the rival might

Of beast and man; the dwarf king's ravenous flock

And Norway's warriors led by Cymri's knight.

For by the foot-prints through the snows explored,

On to the rock the bands had track'd their lord.

Repell'd, not conquer'd, back to crag and cave,

Sullen and watchful still, the monsters go;

And solitude resettles on the wave,

But silence not; around, aloft, alow

Roar the couch'd beasts, and answering from the main,

Shrieks the shrill gull and booms the dismal crane.

And now the rock itself from every tomb

Of its dead world within, sends voices forth,

Sounds direr far, than in its rayless gloom

Crash on the midnight of the farthest North.

From beasts our world hath lost, the strident yell,

The shout of giants and the laugh of hell.

Reels all the isle; and every ragged steep

Hurls down an avalanche;— all the crater-cave

Glows into swarthy red, and fire-showers leap

From rended summits, hissing to the wave

Through its hard ice; or in huge crags, wide-sounding

Spring where they crash — on rushing and rebounding.

Dizzy and blind, the staggering Northmen fall

On earth that rocks beneath them like a bark;

Loud and more loud the tumult swells with all

The Acheron of the discord. Swift and dark

From every cleft the smoke-clouds burst their way,

Rush through the void, and sweep from heaven the day.

Smitten beneath the pestilential blast

And the great terror, senseless lay the band,

Till the arrested life, with throes at last,

Gasp'd back: and holy over sea and land

Silence and light reposed. They look'd above

And calm in calmed air beheld the Dove!

And o'er their prostrate lord was poised the wing;

And when they rush'd and reach'd him, shouting joy,

There came no answer from the corpse-like King;

And when his true knight raised him, heavily

Droop'd his pale front upon the faithful breast,

And the closed lids seem'd leaden in their rest.

And all his mail was dinted, hewn, and crush'd,

And the bright falchion dim with foul dark gore;

And the strong pulse of the strong hand was hush'd;

Like a spent storm, that might, which seem'd before

Charged with the bolts of Jove, now from the sky

Drew breath more feeble than an infant's sigh.

And there was solemn change on that fair face,

Nor, whatsoe'er the fear or scorn had been,

Did the past passion leave its haggard trace;

But on the rigid beauty awe was seen,

As one who on the Gorgon's aspect fell

Had gazed, and freezing, yet survived the spell!

Not by the chasm in which he left the day,

But through a new-made gorge the fires had cleft,

As if with fires themselves were forced the way,

Had rush'd the King;— and sense and sinew left

The form that struggled till the strife was o'er:

So faints the swimmer when he gains the shore.

But on his arm was clasp'd the wondrous prize:

Dimm'd, tarnish'd, grimed, and black with gore and smoke,

Still the pure metal, through each foul disguise,

Like starlight scatter'd on dark waters, broke;

Through gore, through smoke it shone — the silver Shield,

Clear as dawns Freedom from her battle-field!

Days follow'd days, ere from that speechless trance

( Borne to green inlets isled amid the snows

Where led the Dove ), the King's reviving glance

Look'd languid round on watchful, joyful brows;

Ev'n while he slept, new flowers the earth had given,

And on his heart brooded the bird of heaven!

But ne'er as voice and strength and sense return'd,

To his good knight the strife that won the Shield

Did Arthur tell; deep in his soul inurn'd

( As in the grave its secret ) nor reveal'd

To mortal ear that mystery which for ever

Flow'd through his thought, as through the cave a river;

Whether to Love, how true soe'er its faith,

Whether to Wisdom, whatsoe'er its skill,

Till his last hour the struggle and the scath

Remain'd unutter'd and unutterable;

But aye, in solitude, in crowds, in strife,

In joy, that memory lived within his life:

It made not sadness, though the calm, grave smile

Never regain'd the flash that youth had given,—

But as some shadow from a sacred pile

Darkens the earth from shrines that speak of heaven,

That gloom the grandeur of religion wore,

And seem'd to hallow all it rested o'er.

Such Freedom is, O Slave, that would be free!

Never her real struggles into life

Hath History told! As it hath been shall be

The Apocalypse of Nations; nursed in strife

Not with the present, nor with living foes,

But where the centuries shroud their long repose.

Out from the graves of earth's primaeval bones,

The shield of empire, patient Force must win:

What made the Briton free? not crashing thrones

Nor parchment laws. The charter must begin

In Scythian tents, the steel of Nomad spears;

To date the freedom, count three thousand years!

Neither is Freedom mirth! Be free, O slave,

And dance no more beneath the lazy palm.

Freedom's mild brow with noble care is grave,

Her bliss is solemn as her strength is calm;

And thought mature each childlike sport debars

The forms erect whose look is on the stars.

Now as the King revived, along the seas

Flow'd back, enlarged to life, the lapsing waters;

Kiss'd from their slumber by the loving breeze,

Glide, in light dance, the Ocean's silver daughters —

And blithe and hopeful o'er the sunny strands,

Listing the long-lost billow, rove the bands.

At length, O sight of joy!— the gleam of sails

Bursts on the solitude! more near and near

Come the white playmates of the buxom gales.—

The whistling cords, the sounds of man, they hear.

Shout answers shout;— light sparkles round the oar —

And from the barks the boat skims on to shore.

It was a race from Rugen's friendly soil,

Leagued by old ties with Cymri's land and king,

Who, with the spring-time, to their wonted spoil

Of seals and furs had spread the canvas wing

To bournes their fathers never yet had known;—

And found, amazed, hearts bolder than their own.

Soon to the barks the Cymrian and their bands

Are borne: Bright-hair'd, above the gazing crews,

Lone on the loftiest deck, the leader stands,

To whom the King ( his rank made known ) renews

All that his tale of mortal hope and fear

Vouchsafes from truth to thrill a mortal's ear;

And from the barks whose sails the chief obey,

Craves one to waft where yet the fates may guide.—

With rugged wonder in his large survey,

That calm grand brow the son of AEgireyed,

And seem'd in awe, as of a god, to scan

Him who so moved his homage, yet was man.

Smoothing his voice, rough with accustom'd swell

Above the storms, and the wild roar of war,

The Northman answer'd, “Skalds in winter tell

Of the dire dwarf who guards the Shield of Thor,

For one whose race, with Odin's blent, shall be,

Lords of the only realm which suits the Free,

“Ocean!— I greet thee, and this strong right hand

Place in thine own to pledge myself thy man.

Choose as thou wilt for thee and for thy band,

Amongst the sea-steeds in the stalls of Ran.

Need'st thou our arms against the Saxon foe?

Our flag shall fly where'er thy trumpets blow!”

“Men to be free must free themselves,” the King

Replied, proud-smiling. “Every father-land

Spurns from its breast the recreant sons that cling

For hope to standards winds not theirs have fann'd.

Thankful through thee our foe we reach;— and then

Cymri hath steel eno’ for Cymrian men!”

While these converse, Sir Gawaine, with his hound,

Lured by a fragrant and delightsome smell

From roasts — not meant for Freya,— makes his round,

Shakes hands with all, and hopes their wives are well.

From spit to spit with easy grace he walks,

And chines astounded vanish while he talks.

At earliest morn the bark to bear the King,

His sage discernment delicately stores,

Rejects the blubber and disdains the ling

For hams of rein-deers and for heads of boars,

Connives at seal, to satisfy his men,

But childless leaves each loud-lamenting hen.

And now the bark the Cymrian prince ascends,

The large oars chiming to the chanting crew,

( His leal Norwegian band ) the new-found friends

From brazen trumpets blare their loud adieu.

Forth bounds the ship, and Gawaine, while it quickens,

The wind propitiates — with three virgin chickens.

Led by the Dove, more brightly day by day,

The vernal azure deepens in the sky;

Far from the Polar threshold smiles the way —

And lo, white Albion shimmers on the eye,

Nurse of all nations, who to breasts severe

Takes the rude children, the calm men to rear.

Doubt and amaze with joy perplex the King:

Not yet the task achieved, the mission done,

Why homeward steers the angel pilot's wing?

Of the three labours rests the crowning one;

Unreach'd the Iron Gates — Death's sullen hold —

Where waits the Child-guide with the locks of gold.

Yet still the Dove cleaves homeward through the air;

Glides o'er the entrance of an inland stream;

And rests at last on bowers of foliage, where

Thick forests close their ramparts on the beam,

And clasp with dipping boughs a grassy creek,

Whose marge slopes level with the brazen beak.

Around his neck the shield the Adventurer slung;

And girt the enchanted sword. Then, kneeling, said

The young Ulysses of the golden tongue,

“Not now to phantom foes the dove hath led:

For, if I err not, this a Mercian haven,

And from the dove peeps forth at last the raven!

“Not lone, nor reckless, in these glooms profound,

Tempt the sure ambush of some Saxon host;

If out of sight, at least in reach of sound,

Let our stout Northmen follow up the coast;

Then if thou wilt, from each suspicious tree

Shake laurels down, but share them, Sire, with me!”

“Nay,” answer'd Arthur, “ever, as before,

Alone the Pilgrim to his bourne must go;

But range the men conceal'd along the shore;

Set watch, from these green turrets, for the foe;

Moor'd to the marge where broadest hangs the bough,

Hide from the sun the glitter of the prow:—

And so farewell!” He said; to land he leapt;

And with dull murmur from its verdant waves,

O'er his high crest the billowy forest swept.

As towards some fitful light the swimmer cleaves

His stalwart way,— so through the woven shades

Where the pale wing now glimmers and now fades.

With strong hand parting the tough branches, goes

Hour after hour the King; till light at last

From skies long hid, in ambient silver flows

Through opening glades, the length of gloom is past,

And the dark pines receding stand around

A silent hill with antique ruins crown'd.

Day had long closed; and from the mournful deeps

Of old volcanoes spent, the livid moon

Which through the life of planets lifeless creeps

Her ghostly way, deaf to the choral tune

Of spheres rejoicing, on those ruins old

Look'd down, herself a ruin,— hush'd and cold.

Mutely the granite wrecks the King survey'd,

And knew the work of hands Cimmerian,

What time in starry robes, and awe array'd,

Grey Druids spoke the oracles of man —

Solving high riddles to Chaldean Mage,

Or the young wonder of the Samian Sage.

A date remounting far beyond the day

When Roman legions met the scythed cars,

When purer founts sublime had lapsed away

Through the deep rents of unrecorded wars,

And bloodstain'd altars cursed the mountain sod,

Where the first faith had hail'd the Only God.

For all now left us of the parent Celt,

Is of that later and corrupter time,—

Not in rude domeless fanes those Fathers knelt,

Who lured the Brahman from his burning clime,

Who charm'd lost science from each lone abyss,

And wing'd the shaft of Scythian Abaris.

Yea, the grandsires of our primaeval race

Saw angel tracks the earlier earth upon,

And as a rising sun, the morning face

Of Truth more near the flush'd horizon shone;

Filling ev'n clouds with many a golden light,

Lost when the orb is at the noonday height.

Through the large ruins ( now no more ), the last

Perchance on earth of those diviner sires,

With noiseless step the lone descendant pass'd;

Not there were seen BAL-HUAN'S amber pyres;

No circling shafts with barbarous fragments strewn,

Spoke creeds of carnage to the spectral moon.

But Art, vast, simple, and sublime, was there

Ev'n in its mournful wrecks,— such Art foregone

As the first Builders, when their grand despair

Left Shinar's tower and city half undone,

Taught where they wander'd o'er the newborn world.—

Column, and vault, and roof, in ruin hurl'd,

Still spoke of hands that founded Babylon!

So in the wrecks, the Lord of young Romance

By fallen pillars laid him musing down.

More large and large the moving shades advance,

Blending in one dim silence sad and wan

The past, the present, ruin and the man.

Now, o'er his lids life's gentlest influence stole,

Life's gentlest influence, yet the likest death!

That nightly proof how little needs the soul

Light from the sense, or being from the breath,

When all life knows a life unknown supplies,

And airy worlds around a Spirit rise.

Still through the hazy mist of stealing sleep,

His eyes explore the watchful guardian's wing,

There, where it broods upon the moss-grown heap,

With plumes that all the stars are silvering.

Slow close the lids — reopening with a start

As shoots a nameless terror through his heart.

That strange wild awe which haunted Childhood thrills,

When waking at the dead of Dark, alone,

A sense of sudden solitude which chills

The blood;— a shrinking as from shapes unknown;

An instinct both of some protection fled,

And of the coming of some ghastly dread.

He look'd, and lo, the Dove was seen no more,

Lone lay the lifeless wrecks beneath the moon,

And the one loss gave all that seem'd before

Desolate,— twofold desolation!

How slight a thing, whose love our trust has been,

Alters the world, when it no more is seen!

He strove to speak, but voice was gone from him.

As in that loss new might the terror took,

His veins congeal'd; and, interfused and dim,

Shadow and moonlight swam before his look;

Bristled his hair; and all the strong dismay

Seized as an eagle when it grasps its prey.

Senses and soul confused, and jarr'd, and blent,

Lay crush'd beneath the intolerable Power;

Then over all, one flash, in lightning, rent

The veil between the Immortal and the Hour;

Life heard the voice of unembodied breath,

And Sleep stood trembling face to face with Death.