Of time and conscious nature disappear,
Lost in unsearchable eternity!
A pause ensued; and with minuter care We scanned the various features of the scene: And soon the Tenant of that lonely vale With courteous voice thus spake—
"I should have grieved
Hereafter, not escaping self-reproach,
If from my poor retirement ye had gone
Leaving this nook unvisited: but, in sooth,
Your unexpected presence had so roused
My spirits, that they were bent on enterprise;
And, like an ardent hunter, I forgot,
Or, shall I say?— disdained, the game that lurks
At my own door. The shapes before our eyes
And their arrangement, doubtless must be
deemed
The sport of Nature, aided by blind Chance
Rudely to mock the works of toiling Man.
And hence, this upright shaft of unhewn stone,
From Fancy, willing to set off her stores
By sounding titles, hath acquired the name 130
Of Pompey's pillar; that I gravely style
My Theban obelisk; and, there, behold
A Druid cromlech !-thus I entertain
The antiquarian humour, and am pleased
T'o skim along the surfaces of things,
Beguiling harmlessly the listless hours.
But if the spirit be oppressed by sense
Of instability, revolt, decay,
And change, and emptiness, these freaks of
Nature
Fancy's names for Nature's works
Where Him, as we entered from the open glen, shall the You might have noticed, busily engaged, soaring soul find Heart, soul, and hands,-in mending the defects rest? Left in the fabric of a leaky dam
Raised for enabling this penurious stream
To turn a slender mill (that new-made plaything)
For his delight the happiest he of all !"
"Far happiest," answered the desponding
Man,
"If, such as now he is, he might remain !
Ah! what avails imagination high
Or question deep? what profits all that earth, 210
Or heaven's blue vault, is suffered to put forth
Of impulse or allurement, for the Soul
To quit the beaten track of life, and soar
Far as she finds a yielding element
In past or future; far as she can go
Through time or space if neither in the one,
Nor in the other region, nor in aught
That Fancy, dreaming o'er the map of things,
Hath placed beyond these penetrable bounds,
Words of assurance can be heard; if nowhere
A habitation, for consummate good,
Or for progressive virtue, by the search
Can be attained,-
—a better sanctuary
From doubt and sorrow, than the senseless grave?"
"Is this," the grey-haired Wanderer mildly
said,
"The voice, which we so lately overheard,
To that same child, addressing tenderly
The consolations of a hopeful mind?
His body is at rest, his soul in heaven.'
These were your words; and, verily, methinks
Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop 231
Than when we soar.'
The Other, not displeased,
Promptly replied " My notion is the same.
And I, without reluctance, could decline
All act of inquisition whence we rise,
And what, when breath hath ceased, we may
become.
Here are we, in a bright and breathing world.
Our origin, what matters it? In lack
Of worthier explanation, say at once
With the American (a thought which suits 240
The place where now we stand) that certain men
Leapt out together from a rocky cave;
And these were the first parents of mankind :
Or, if a different image be recalled
By the warm sunshine, and the jocund voice
Of insects chirping out their careless lives
On these soft beds of thyme-besprinkled turf,
Choose, with the gay Athenian, a conceit
As sound-blithe race! whose mantles were
bedecked
With golden grasshoppers, in sign that they 250
Had sprung,
like those bright creatures, from
Whereon their endless generations dwelt.
But stop!—these theoretic fancies jar
On serious minds: then, as the Hindoos draw
Their holy Ganges from a skiey fount,
Even so deduce the stream of human life
Faith and From seats of power divine; and hope, or
That our existence winds her stately course
Beneath the sun, like Ganges, to make part
Of a living ocean; or, to sink engulfed,
Like Niger, in impenetrable sands
And utter darkness: thought which may be
Such acquiescence neither doth imply,
In me, a meekly-bending spirit soothed
By natural piety; nor a lofty mind,
By philosophic discipline prepared
For calm subjection to acknowledged law;
Pleased to have been, contented not to be.
Such palms I boast not;-no! to me, who
find,
Reviewing my past way, much to condemn,
Little to praise, and nothing to regret,
(Save some remembrances of dream-like joys
That scarcely seem to have belonged to me)
If I must take my choice between the pair
That rule alternately the weary hours,
Night is than day more acceptable; sleep
Doth, in my estimate of good, appear
A better state than waking; death than sleep:
Feelingly sweet is stillness after storm,
Though under covert of the wormy ground!
Yet be it said, in justice to myself,
That in more genial times, when I was free
To explore the destiny of human kind
(Not as an intellectual game pursued
With curious subtilty, from wish to cheat
Irksome sensations; but by love of truth
Urged on, or haply by intense delight
In feeding thought, wherever thought could feed)
I did not rank with those (too dull or nice, 290
For to my judgment such they then appeared,
Or too aspiring, thankless at the best)
Who, in this frame of human life, perceive
An object whereunto their souls are tied
In discontented wedlock; nor did e'er,
From me, those dark impervious shades, that
hang
Upon the region whither we are bound,
Exclude a power to enjoy the vital beams
Of present sunshine.-Deities that float
On wings, angelic Spirits! I could muse
O'er what from eldest time we have been told
Of your bright forms and glorious faculties,
And with the imagination rest content,
Not wishing more; repining not to tread
The little sinuous path of earthly care,
By flowers embellished, and by springs refreshed.
Blow winds of autumn!-let your chilling
breath
• Take the live herbage from the mead, and strip
'The shady forest of its green attire,-
'And let the bursting clouds to fury rouse
The gentle brooks!-Your desolating sway, 'Sheds,' I exclaimed, no sadness upon me, 'And no disorder in your rage I find.. 'What dignity, what beauty, in this change From mild to angry, and from sad to gay,
The Solitary had
once known
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