Classic Poem

Scene — A Woodland by Moonlight. A distant bell sounds, and ceases .

Enter MYSTIC .

MYSTIC .

A Y — Peaceful! — Still! —

The sullen acclamation of the time
Yon Moon ascended to her midnight throne,
Hath died upon the gentle pulse of night;
And borne amid the thronging courts of Heav'n,
Where lessening stars grow pale before the Queen,
Their saffron cheeks turn'd to cinereous white,
She rules supreme o'er all their singular fires.
High and sublime the radiant Empress treads
Her nightly bourne. With step too light to print
The starry wilderness, and far too soft
To wake rude clamour i' the tender air
Impress'd, she fleets in silent glory on,
Whilst the mute Heav'ns are hush'd beneath her foot,
And drowsy earth fore-plays the final doom.

'Tis a brave scene to fill a poet's eye.
Look how yon lordly pile of granite stands!
Heaving his monstrous shoulders at the moon,
Which she, the pale and melancholy Queen,
Smiling at earthly pride, scatters with tears
Of light; and shedding her unequall'd gems,
In barren flow'rs to ope their starry eyes,

She leads the blaze down from the mountain-side
To the broad lake; where shines a second Moon,
The formal mimic of her symmetry;
More than her image; lesser than herself;
Real apparency, acting up to life;
Each fleeting passion, answering to the time
The sympathetic spectre in the flood —
Smiles as she smiles, and saddens as she frowns.

A double moon! and double every spark
That burns the out-blown curtain of the sky!
Methinks, one now might leap into the moon,
And scan the headlong altitude o' th' air,
Through the bright bosom of this hollow flood,
Where counterfeited heav'n looks blue and clear,
In the reflective mirror of its breast.

Hush! hush! speak low — we'll rouse the buried world —
How deep this total falling off from life!
No vital respiration shakes the air,
To tell suspensive wonder 'tis deceived;
No motion marks the bare similitude
Of sleep to death; nor fancy turns, to truth;
But imitation drugs the visual sense
Up to diseased credulity, to think
That what it seems, it is. No forest nods,
Nor flower winks at the moon; but cold and still,
The slumb'rous landscape, shrouded in the pale
And sheeted volume, sinks in visible death.

Through dusky glens now peeps the zenith Queen,
Raining her light upon the glittering turf;
White hoods are thick upon the dale; the fir
Lights all its prickly spires; and the tall reeds,
Sharpen'd with visionary cusps of steel,
In scatter'd groups, gleam down the silver vales.

Hist! — not a sound — the dead sleep not as sure. —
Ev'n tremulous herbs that sigh'd in summer gales,
And bow'd to every breeze that crept the lea,
Grow stark — and through their indulcedinous leaves
The clear wind sweeps in silent passage by,
Nor dares to ruffle the light thistle-down,

The sear moss, nor the flimsy gossamer;
Or meeting with some arrogant promontory,
Some resty pine, the cradle of the blast,
That erst might waken its tempestuous breath,
And with contending and alternate arms,
Which borrow their behaviour from the winds,
Nurse up a violent and racking storm —
The crouching breeze its dreadful anger hides,
And scarce constrain'd to smother sweet revenge,
Breathes a low murmur and then dies away.

Such is the sovereign stillness of the time!
Such is the grand ovation of the Moon!
Her footsteps strown with heaps of glittering flowers,
She walks beneath the sublime arch o' the world,
In calm, and bright, and deep serenity.

The curtain's fall'n; the busy scene is done;
Actors and audience quit the tiresome play;
And life's sad pageantry forgets to move.
Silence and vacancy possess the stage;
Peace and Tranquillity sit mute around.

Why then, when all is still, wilt thou not rest,
My soul, and drink th' oblivion of the scene?
Is't not the type of man's eternal state?
The symbol of futurity — that safe retreat,
Which pitiful Mercy gave for all our woes?
Why then not taste anticipative joy?

Joy! — joy! — what joy? — Is joy, defect of woe,
Such as vacuity of sense affords? —
What joy — if sleep indeed be temporal death,
Its symbol and its type? Sleep is not joy!
'Tis impercipient! Certainly. Nor woe!
What is it then? Mental annihilation —
And death, its antitype, is nothing more.

Annihilation! — dark! — and everlasting! —
Why this were well! I could exchange for this.
O! how I long to throw this passion off! —
And what so prompt? so near? The pilfering breeze,
That robs the scented valley of its sweets,
And ravishes the poor, defenceless flowers,
Wing'd by velleity, can scarce o'ersweep
A few poor measures of the earth, i' the hour
'Tis swift'st; while I — by a little, little step,
And shrewd addition of the coffin-sheet,
To keep me from the shivering touch of earth,
Can pass — from world to world! This is most well.

To stand — thus pinion'd, on the outside brink
Of the fool's horror, the dull cave of death,
That hides away the fleering heav'ns — the gaze
Of pitiless-hearted pitiers; — to stand —
Loaden with weighty griefs and sallow cares,
Press'd by misfortunes innate and acquired,
And ere youth's rose hath summer'd on its stalk,
Turn'd to a wretched weed, wither'd and pale,
Stung by a venomous blast that bites my core,
Sickness — which binds me with an aching crown,
Encircling with its drowsy weight my head;
Last, Poverty, upon a carrion steed,
Cheering his bleak dogs, Hunger and Nakedness,
With slaughter-red mouths, and sharp remorseless fangs,
To tear my flesh, to strip my houseless form,
Lap my cold blood, and hunt me to my grave —
To stand, I say — this world upon my back,
Galling my un-atlantic shoulders; these fell dogs
Close at my heels pursuing — and the next
Small fluxion of the longitude of time,
My burthen hurl'd, back to th' injurious skies,
My grim tormentors baffled in the teeth,
To rest in senseless quiet, joyless ease,
In the short compass that a corpse can measure,
Laid stretch'd upon th' eternal bed of silence,
Pent up in futile boards or chok'd with clay.
Excellent! Ha! ha! ha! ha!
I'll do't! I'll do't —

— Why what a fool was I
To whine and weep, and play with tribulation,
When th' cure lies in a phial or a pill!
Now, now ye hideous band, ye coward crew,
That bend your horrors on a wretch like me,
Where's your dominion now? Your terrors where?
Down with that sceptre, thou tyrannic fool,
That sways it o'er my health! Stand back — stand back,
Yellow-eyed Melancholy and black Despair,
The gulf is at your foot! And thou, thin Poverty,
Charm off thy dogs, and pull thy courser's neck
Down to his knee! Insatiate! What? Wilt follow me
From yon dread cliff that breaks the midway air
Into yon gorge? Perdition gapes beneath,
And stretches wider its immoderate jaws
For thee and these.

Ha! ha! ha! ha!
Have I appall'd thee, fiend?
Dar'st thou not follow me?
'Tis well! Begone!
There is your cease. There my redemption lies.
I'll leap 't! though sooty hell should grin beneath,
Or thunder roll above, to shake the Mercy-seat!

Ha! What a chain was there! Hell — Thunder — God! —
Yes. God! God! The calculating atheist
Who reckons on the sleeping bolts of Heav'n,
Under the tremour of whose cloudy bed
Minor impiety doth walk unblasted,
Whispers " There is no God " — and trembles.
There is a God! This truth, the gilded heav'ns,
Where numberless immensurable bodies roll,
Systems on systems, universe on universe,
Each comprehending an ubiquity,
And all swung round the centre of infinity
By the dread impulse of Omnipotence —
Omnipotence declare! This truth, dumb Earth
Speaks out! and Ocean, o'er its undulant flood,
O'er roaring eddies swallowing the mad billows,
And hollow rocks beaten with resonant echoes,
This truth — borne on the plural voice o' the waves —
Mountain-back'd Ocean, heaving to the shout,
Prolongs in doubling thunders round its vasty shores.

If, then, God is — and else, we, conscients, are not —
The question's double-tongued. First: are we sole
Proprietors of our lives, or debtors to His will?
Then: is futurity seen as a dark dream,
Barely a dream? or prescience of a truth?
This, this is the hinge of doubt. Decided —
The former falls to naught. For who can moot,
If we shall live hereafter, that we owe
God our determination? But if not,
Annihilation chops us from our bond,
Whether 'tis due to God, or to ourselves.

Futurity! — to live for ever — ay —
Why that were to be God! It cannot be
The attributes of God are His alone,
And one, Eternity. It cannot be.
Yet — is not Reason one? — and we are rational! —
Certainly. 'Tis but equality in 's attributes,
Which is impartible to nothing second;
We may be both eternal, yet not equal
Ev'n in that quality — False! — false! — Eternities
Are infinite, and therefore not unequal —
Yet soft — Infinity's sophistical —
Eternity henceforward, cannot equal
That , and eternity behind. That's ours;
The sum of both is His — O! whither, whither,
Will metaphysic meditation lead me?
Perplexity! Confusion! Contradictions!
Doubts that would puzzle deity itself,
A Chaos in the intellectual World!

Ah! why is this? ah! wherefore — why is this?
If I am disregarded of sweet Charity,
If Heav'n has let me down the winds of Chance,
The rack and light leaf of its termagant blasts,
Whilst Mercy flies my deprecating arms,
And ruthless Pity laughs at all my tears;
Since Hope — who first my young ambition led,
Following with eager step her protean form
Through every permutation of variety —
Since Hope, ev'n Hope, deserts me, and recedes
Into the frail material of the air
Mid dying hues and melancholy signs,
With her last finger pointing to the grave —
Since thus I am — why should I be at all?
Why should I breathe superfluous existence?
And wherefore these indefinite terrors fling
O'er the sole act which can absolve me now?
I am the wretched'st thing beneath the moon!
O! hast thou no quiescent for the mind?
Sweet Exorcist! thy bland rebuke, erewhile
Was wont to lay my rebel spirits deep
I' the liquid o' thy vast diffusion!
Come! I will gaze my state into a dream.

I seem like one lost in a deep blue sea,
Down, down beneath the billows many a mile,
Where nought of their loud eloquence is heard,
Save a dead murmur of the rushing waves
Fleeting above, more silent than no sound.
Over my head, as high as to the moon,
The tall, insuperable waters rise,
Pure and translucent; through whose total depth
The imminent stars shoot unrefracted rays,
And whiten all the bottom of the flood.
The sea-bed hath a scenery of its own,
And nought less wondrous than the realms of air:
Hills, dells, rocks, groves, sea-flow'rs, and sedgy caves,
In crystal armour lock'd — scatter'd around!
Here, like a mortal tenant of the sea,
Or fabulous merman, hermit o' the wave,
I stand, the sad surveyor of the scene,
Alone, amid the deserts of the deep. —

Hist! — Ocean hath no sadness equal this;
It calls me up to life — — [ A nightingale sings .

O God! O God! Such notes might turn to tears.
Promethean eyes of clay — O piteous! piteous! [ Weeps .
Soft! — Dead again — then Music's i' the grave!
Like a nocturnal requiem it hath pass'd
Or spiritual adoration of the Moon.
Let me take up the melancholy strain
Of worship, which th' harmonious bird hath left;
Sweet! shall I be thy nightingale,
Weetless albeit of melody so rare?
Come now! I'll woo thee in such latter strains,
Thine own Endymion could not wake before.

Nymph o' the lily brow! on whose pale cheek
Th' unrighteous rose — —

MOON .

Endymion!

MYSTIC .

Ha! — Did'st call? —
Who? Who? —
Some voice! — some melancholy voice! —

An angel sings i' the Moon! —
'St! 'st! —
No more. —
Is't possible? —
No, no. — Plato's a dreamer! — no —
What then? —
Are trees grown vocative, or do the reeds
Publish the secret whispers of the breeze
So verbally? —

O — 'twas but Memory
Re-echoing through the chambers of the brain
My own late words. —
The woodland's lock'd in sleep —
Or if ought breaks the universal quiet,
'Tis when the mutable and soft-wing'd palms,
Grown pendulous with the silvery breath o' the moon,
Trickle from leaf to leaf. —
Perchance 'tis now,
Those dubious voices o' the canorous vault,
Perishing in their softness — come; they, who
Tuning seraphic viols undefined,
Sing nightly i' th' involuntary air?

No, no — their music hath no syllables;
Dumb sweetness, without sense; mere euphony;
Articulation swims upon the ear,
Touching but not impressing; as the light
Silk feather doth the wave. —
'Twas fancy — ay —
Nothing but fancy — fancy — fancy — ay. —

MOON .

My nightingale!

MYSTIC .

I dream! I dream!

MOON .

No dream
Had ever such coherency, to make
The visionary sleeper lend his ear
To phantom whisp'rers, fleeting ere they tell
Their endless stories out.
Art thou not he, by name implicative
Mystic, the darkly-thinking son of Mystery?

MYSTIC .

Here! —
I am call'd! — and by a sound
Of more immediate excitation
Than the pungent'st " Hail "
Ere breath'd by mortal man. —

Yes — yes, dread summoner!

I have heard of this. —
They say, when the vex'd spirit hath fulfill'd
The utmost plenitude of human woe,
The Heav'ns in pity oft revoke their gift,
And send their repetition by the breath
Of airy-footed messengers.
It chimes well with my first purpose
Changed through terrors; now
Uncertainty's mad certain.

I render me, angelical!

MOON .

Enthusiast!
Wilt listen to me? Say?

MYSTIC .

Sweet sound! sweet sound!
Listen? O! ay,
If ecstasie will down.
Listen? Such notes,
So melancholy, grand,
'Tween dirge and anthem, play
When all the heav'nly minstrels do attend
The burial of an angel!

MOON .

O — thy fantasie, thy fantasie indeed
Takes liberty beyond all bourne of licence.

MYSTIC .

Sweet seraph! Charm my soul
Out through the latent channels of mine ear.
'Twill follow fascination such as this,
Up to the top of infinite altitude.

MOON .

Still
Thou deal'st in wild transcendencies of leave
But come! Wilt answer without parody
Of poetry; itself a parody
Of plain propriety?

MYSTIC .

Gordius, bind my tongue from slipp'riness!
Come on, sweet Spirit! Come!
Thou tremulant dictator o' sweet syllables!
Hosann'er!

MOON .

Poor errant worm! that sparklest i' the dusk
Of a most gloomy vale;
What dost thou here, amid th' unwholesome damps
O' the breathing earth?

MYSTIC .

'Tis as I feign'd.
Thou fair Attraction, take me to thy sphere,
Where sages say most blessed spirits dwell;
This dark, material world is all too rough,
Too full o' painful ways and ruggedness,
For tender-natured souls.

MOON .

Seek not to lay
The accusation of thine own neglect
In mastering passions much o'er-sensitive,
To guiltless things.
The wailing reed that blows i' the gusty vale,
Sighs not more piteously, than thou
At every breath of woe.

MYSTIC .

Ev'n thus.
Yet say, thou bright Communicant!
Whose spacious path doth span this circular air,
Doth not thine eye, though haply circumscribed
By partial vision, yet brim o'er with tears,
At sight of this most miserable world?

MOON .

Alas! Alas! Mine eye hath oft been dimm'd
Indeed, with lamentable drops. I've seen
Such piteous acts, that I have sought to vail,
And blest the dark transgression of the clouds
Which hid me from such woes.
Partial! Oh, no!
Mine eye hath seen too much.
I deck the pall,
Which Night spreads over many a tombless corse,
Stretch'd on the desert sands, or distant shores,
With all my best of brightness.
O, I weep,
Weep ev'n to dissolution, when I see
Wand'ring near some lone monument, far, far
From his poor maiden, her dear lover lorn;
(My memory wears the scarf of sorrow yet,
And paints in tears his image on my brain);
Down sits he on th' uncomfortable stone,
His breast uncased to th' acrimonious winds,
Thinking on her he loves; speaks not, but sits
Filling his gentle bosom with his tears;
Kisses the wind that seems to blow to home,
Loads it, a faithless messenger, with sighs;
Then looks he in my face, endeavouring
To catch some false resemblance of his love —
I smile, he sighs; I brighten, and he droops;
Then, hopeless, heartless, bitterly lies down,
And all his burial lamentations are my tears.
Each hour I mourn some wretchedness like this —
Mercy! —
Ev'n now amid th' Italian wave
There plunged a reckless, white-invested thing! —
She sinks — alas! — and o'er the heedless waves
Roll silently; now — now again she floats —
But stretch'd and senseless, like a sheet of foam,
And screaming sea-fowl pluck her dainty form.

MYSTIC .

O misery! O misery!

MOON .

But yet I deem those most notorious deeds
Spring rather from th' uncircumscribed range
Of individual passion; thine own woes
Seem but th' effect of voluntary fault,
Neglecting thy more active energies,
Which fill the cup and spread the board of life,
To follow vain, seducive Meditation.

MYSTIC .

The Heav'ns have cursed me with a poet's eye!
An ear that will find an audience for sweet sounds
Though the soul pay in sad, compensate tears;
The portion of divinity within
(If such it be, by dark prescription old)
Much turn'd to contemplative sadness; which
Can find a further to most thoughts, and views
All, through the dark glass of its melancholy.

I'm framed, the fool of Sensibility!
I cannot see a young flow'r i' the grass
Smile at my foot which kills it in its prime,
And yet not think of undeserved death;
I cannot look ascaunt the mighty deep,
Shaking the firm strand with its plangent waves,
And cry, " 'tis good in faith, " or " sooth 'tis fair, "
But my whole spirit rushes through my eyes,
And mingles with the motion of the flood,
The blind tumultuations of the main;
Nor yet subsides, with the subsiding sea,
But tasks invention to out-measure nature,
And puts imagination to the stretch
In framing vast ideas of the Deluge.

MOON .

Ay! there the error cries
Like to the blood of Abel, from the ground,
For Heav'n to punish him who gave it out

MYSTIC .

Veil'd spirit! must I then untune my soul,
Or make it vibrate with unnatural pulse?
What! shall I tell the nightingale, " Be dumb!
Thou speak'st not sweeter language than the jay,
Or any other ruffian-throated bird
Which strangles sound in noise " ?
Shall I apostrophize the busy stream,
That, quarrelling with its testy pebbles, brings
Such liquid modulations out of stones
As might ashame the lutes of seraphim,
With " Cease, thou babbler! Prithee, grate no more
Upon thy file-fraught bed; the stridulous saw
Shatters the ear with lesser dissonance " ?

MOON .

Ah! thou fantastical!

MYSTIC .

No — let the Heav'ns, which gave me constitution
As passible as dust or fluency,
Answer its evil tendency; not I.
I cannot shut my senses if I would;
And when sense feels, reflection comes perforce,
For sense is but the motive of the mind.

MOON .

Thou o'er-contemplative!
Lost in a labyrinth of Ecstasie,
More intricate and perilous to the mind,
To 'scape its mesh, than Crete's was to the body.
Ecstasie, rash production of the thoughts
To what right sanity would never lead,
Doth spread a dark confusion o'er the brain
Of false creations, wild and fabulous,
Vain dreams, perplexities inexplicable,
Misty conceits, and phantom imagery;
From one poor thought, conjures a host of forms,
Irrelevancies sur-exaggerates,
And lost in such fantastic combinations,
Differs from madness scarcely by a line.

MYSTIC .

Fair monitress! is Genius nothing more?
Yet Genius is exalted feeling —

MOON .

Yes,
Exalted, but not sightless.
Builds not presumptuous Babels, out of size,
Till reason topple down. Seeks not, to climb
The unraught heav'n of infinite Conception
Intangible, like Titan's phrenetic son,
Piled mountain tottering on unstable hill,
The site of eminent Jove; the fable's pat
For those who will to profit, and apply
Its moral to the brain.
There is a scale
Of intellectual feeling, graduate
Through indivisible and invisible parts,
Each different yet partaking of the next,
From apathetic dulness to insanity;
The common-sense o' th' world poaches i' th' former,
But Ecstasie's near neighbour to the last;
Genius, or Fancy its more passionate name,
Lies equally between. Here, thou 'st transgress'd;
And, here transgressing, thou dost pay the penalty:
Dulness itself is happier than thou.

MYSTIC .

Why then I'll pray the Heav'ns to strike me surd!
To paralyze the techy nerves o' the brain,
Dry up the tubes and organs of sensation,
And turn my heart to preferable stone!
I'll rob the ditch-roots of their lazy pith,
The green ores of their nocuous potency,
Mix the narcotic juices for a drink,
To kill the fine vibrations of the brain,
And dull the vigilant sense to lethargy;
I'll rid their keen perceptions from each nerve,
Choke up their pores with unctuous pharmacies,
Grow fat and fatuate, heartless and heart-free!
Since to be dull is surely to be happy.

MOON .

Still in extremes!

MYSTIC .

Hear me, sweet Spirit!
Though I stand
A pensive, poor, and visionary boy,
With bloodless cheek, in shudd'ring attitude,
The bitter salutation of the night,
Thus; like a rigid statue — or, more like,
A living representative in stone,
A wretched mockery of the human form,
Wishing for some impetuous thunderbolt
To scatter me beyond the ken of God,
Beyond the hope or pow'r of resurrection,
The chance of future bliss appropriate,
I would not change the temper of my blood
For that which stagnates in an idiot's veins,
To gain the sad salvation of a fool.

MOON .

Thou wilful, passionate, and eccentric boy!
With faculties, if well applied, sufficient
To make ev'n thy most sensitive nature happy,
Yet by perverse and wilful overdoings,
Turning thy gifts to utter damnatives.
How in thy " metaphysic meditations, "
Thy shrewd refinements on Eternal Justice,
And holding subtle commune with thy thoughts
On death, futurity, annihilation,
How hast thou 'scaped from stumbling on this truth,
A by-word with the most unthinking clowns,
E XTREMES ARE EVER WRONG ?
Is't wise,
When Winter pinches with too sharp a nail,
And binds the sinews in its rigorous grasp,
To forthwith tread the metal of a furnace?
Doth it become the counsel of a fool,
Or headlong petulance of infancy,
When Summer kisses with a strumpet's lip,
And shoots intemperate ardour through the veins,
To plunge in Cydnus' floods incontinent,
And cure by deadly contrariety?
Wouldst thou not call a very dog unwise,
Who thus could shame mere instinct by such folly?
Speak! Answer!
MYSTIC .

Lose my blushes in thy pale.

MOON .

Is there no mean, no golden mean of action,
Which kept, leads on to happiness and joy?
Are you not made with Passions and with Reason,
One to incite, the other to restrain,
And both necessitous to ordinate Liberty?
If Man was nought but mortal mechanism,
Turn'd at the will and pleasure of the artist,
Where lies his liberty? If he was left
To the rough domination of his passions,
What would the emblem of its spirit be?

Go, stand upon the turbid water's edge,
And view the hideous figure in the stream
Made by its quivering mirror. Obvious starts
A horrid face, in shadowy channels torn;
Its flickering features, varying types of fiends,
Work through the several fashions of deform;
The hair flies tortuous, like a knot of snakes
In restless agitation of their kind;
Whilst the drawn optics, darting oblique flames,
Fright the abused spectator from the scene.
O! how unlike, the beauteous image smiles,
In yon pure, motionless, and peaceful lake!
This, is the model of a healthful mind;
That, the less terrible spectre of th' insane.

But wherefore seek for parables abroad,
When the reality is found at home?
Look at thyself, the plaything of thy Will,
Mad in thy ecstasies, a fool in tenderness,
Fantastical beyond all reach of rule,
Romantic ev'n to very girlishness,
And impious too, in spite of " Meditation " ;
Giving to Passion such imperial sway,
As turns thy Reason's sceptre to a straw,
And makes him the dishonour'd satellite of Fancy.
Hence comes thy misery. Answer, if you can.

MYSTIC .

Confession takes the best half of my words.
My sorrows are my sins. I've oped my breast
Unheedingly to Virtue's combatants,
Ransom'd my feelings at the price of Reason,
To Vice betray'd the bulwarks of my rest.
Heav'n leaves the citadel it cannot save,
And Hell lets loose its minions to destroy.

MOON .

Not so, not so. Thou art not just the fiend
Thy own, yet hyper-ordinate Fancy, makes thee.
Thy passions may be evil in degree,
And yet not so in very quality.
A Poet (thus, for comfort, let me call thee,)
Is never such a devilish friend to vice,
Mistaken, but not utterly malignant.
Neither will Heav'n desert him at the need.

MYSTIC .

Dear inspiration of my better thoughts!
Is't not desertion, total casting-off,
When I am thus a debtor to such shreds
For covering, that the shroud looks comfortable?
When the crackling skin scarce keeps the skeleton,
And the famish'd blood grows thin and ichorous?
When the rootless hair drops from the skull —
Look here! —
Give me a dart and grave-cloth in my hand,
For I am Death's pale vicar upon earth!
Methinks this dell's a mighty sepulchre,
And I the grim memento i' the midst;
Yon moon hath come to light the general vault,
Whilst miserable torches gleam on high;
The dead sleep fast below —

MOON .

Now this is Ecstasie,
Not wise —

MYSTIC .

Ah! villanous — damn'd — Satanic error!
Yes! But I'll curb this hellish spirit, till
It rides i' the ring, strait —
Moloch gorge me else!
Yet say, dark Brightness! in mere, repent prose,
Must not Heav'n alienate the hearts of men,
When Charity apostatizes thus,
To pamper Knavery in the common streets,
Whilst real Misery hides?

MOON .

Didst thou not quit,
Most rash, most unadvised, and most vain,
No proferable cause asserted why,
The track which sober Wisdom pointed out,
And plain Experience 'stablish'd as the true,
Th' ascent to riches, happiness, and fame,
Didst thou not barter Science for a song?
Thy gown of Learning for a sorry mantle?
The student's quiet for the city's din?
At once — thy social duty, to assist,
By rational pursuits, the common good,
Bound in thine own — for selfish Fantasie
Useless to others, fatal to thyself?

If this thou didst, why slander Providence?
Is Heav'n obliged to pander to thy faults?
You have deserted Heav'n; you sought for Woe;
Bit by vermicular Ambition, you —
You — with the grub of Poesy in your brain,
Citing you on with insane avarous tooth
To sate cupiety of praise — you left yourself;
Or in thy own mad, monster-making language,
You left Philosophy i' the mire; dismiss'd
Prudence, to keep companions with the dull;
Leagued with Ambition, Poetry, and Pain;
Chose Misery out of hell, and call'd him Brother.

MYSTIC .

Bright Truth! I grew aweary of the dull,
Undeviating, dusty road of Science,
Vacant o' beauty, barren o' sweetness;
I thought — deceptible, ah! too deceptible —
The true Elysium lay within the mind
Fill'd with th' amaranthian flow'rs of Fantasie
O! could'st thou feel, as Poets only feel,
In such retreat of spirit from the body,
Thou'dst spurn a habitation in the sky,
To share beatitude beyond divine!

MOON .

What! and pay Poet's price, in consequence?

MYSTIC .

There lies the Heathen's Shadowy Vale of Bliss!
There fiction turns to authenticity!
Eternal murmuring of soft hidden rills,
Eternal low susurring of warm winds
Puffing amid the flow'ry finger'd groves,
Sound in the deeply-listening ear of Fancy;
Eternal viridant vesture i' the fields,
Eternal bloom of bright-complexion'd flow'rs
Breathing their souls of fragrancy around,
Fill the capacious measure of an eye,
Companion to th' imaginative soul.

These are the dear creations of the brain,
Which copy in mere thought substantial things,
And stand most credibly for all their joys;
Till stern Reality returns again
Ev'n in the very summit of belief,
Bursts the poor veil of fond forgetfulness,
And with its cruel dissipation
Scatters the lovely dream.
Thus am I sadly, sadly undeceived.

MOON .

Too late, too late for preterite occasion!
Thy Fortune's past amid thy sleep of Reason.
But yet, droop not, Young Latter-Love of mine!
(For I am not so heedless of sweet praise
Ev'n in my eminent divinity,
But I could list thy amorous adoration
Of this pale cheek, and thy most legal scorn
Of that same strumpet-flow'r, " th' unrighteous rose, "
Whose bloom I love not. At thy plaintive call
Wept in such winning breath, I bow'd and came)

Though present life afford no chance of joy,
This be thy consolation and thy hope:
H EAVEN'S DOORS STAND OPEN FOR THE MISERABLE ,
Mercy SHALL REIGN, AND J USTICE SHALL BE DONE !

No more! My words are past, my lips are seal'd.

MYSTIC .

Not thus! not thus! Ah! do not leave me thus.

MOON .

See'st thou not yon red cloud upon thy plane,
Just in the eye o' the east? The van of day
Burns on its brow. Th' ascension's in its prime,
And soon shall see my fall. I fade! I fade!

MYSTIC .

O stay! — one moment yet — O render me
One poor response —

MOON .

Haste then. I fade! I fade!
The flow'rets are rathe risers; curious ears —
I would not have them blow my words adown
Th' intelligent, tell-tale winds awaken'd.
Yare!

MYSTIC .

Pale Sister of the flagrant God of Day!
More sweet than that intemperate Lord of Fire,
Shaking redundant radiance from his hair!
Say, shall I die, when I do die? Shall Fame
Breathe no proud anthem over me?

MOON .

Farewell!
I must not speak — Morn comes — Earth wakes — Farewell!

MYSTIC .

Ah! yet — ah! cruel — say —

MOON .

Farewell! Farewell!
MYSTIC .

One word! one little word! ah! say —

MOON .

Farewell!