Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline, which is fair

As breathing marble, perish? Must putrefaction's breath Leave nothing of this heavenly sight But loathsomeness and ruin? Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning

Chaseth into darkness?
Will lanthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life and rapture from her smile?

Yes! she will wake again, Although her glowing limbs are motionless, And silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence, That might have soothed a tiger's rage, Or thaw'd the cold heart of a conqueror.

Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,

The baby Sleep is pillow'd:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Curling like tendrils of the parasite
Around a marble column.

Hark! whence that rushing sound?

'T is like the wondrous strain That round a lonely ruin swells, Which, wandering on the echoing shore, The enthusiast hears at evening: "T is softer than the west wind's sigh; 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes Of that strange lyre whose strings The genii of the breezes sweep:

Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall Through some cathedral window, but the teints Are such as may not find Comparison on earth.

Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light:
These the Queen of spells drew in,
She spread a charm around the spot,
And leaning graceful from the etherial car,
Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid.

Oh! not the vision'd poet in his dreams,
When silvery clouds float through the wilder'd brain,
When every sight of lovely, wild and grand,
Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,

When fancy at a glance combines

Stars! your balmiest influence shed!
Elements! your wrath suspend!
Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds
That circle thy domain !

Let not a breath be seen to stir
Around yon grass-grown ruin's height,
Let even the restless gossamer
Sleep on the moveless air!
Soul of Ianthe! thou,
Judged alone worthy of the envied boon

That waits the good and the sincere; that waits
Those who have struggled, and with resolute will
Vanquish'd earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains,
The icy chains of custom, and have shone

The day-stars of their age :-Soul of Ianthe!

Awake! arise!

Sudden arose

Janthe's Soul; it stood

All beautiful in naked purity,

Upon the couch the body lay
Wrapt in the depth of slumber :
Its features were fix'd and meaningless,
Yet animal life was there,

And every organ yet perform'd
Its natural functions: 't was a sight
Of wonder to behold the body and soul.
The self-same lineaments, the same
Marks of identity were there;

Yet, oh how different! One aspires to Heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,

And ever-changing, ever-rising still,

Wantons in endless being.

The other, for a time the unwilling sport
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
Then like a useless and worn-out machine,
Rots, perishes, and passes.

FAIRY.

Spirit! who hast dived so deep; Spirit! who hast soar'd so high; Thou the fearless, thou the mild, Accept the boon thy worth hath earn'd, Ascend the car with me.

SPIRIT.

Do I dream? is this new feeling
But a vision'd ghost of slumber?
If indeed I am a soul,
A free, a disembodied soul,
Speak again to me.

FAIRY.

I am the Fairy MAB: to me 't is given
The wonders of the human world to keep;
The secrets of the immeasurable past,
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find :
The future, from the causes which arise
In each event, I gather: not the sting
Which retributive memory implants
In the hard bosom of the selfish man;
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
Are unforeseen, unregister'd by me:

And it is yet permitted me, to rend
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
For which it hath its being, and may taste
That peace, which in the end all life will share.
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,

Ascend the car with me!

The chains of earth's immurement

Fell from lanthe's spirit;

They shrank and brake like bandages of straw

Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems roll'd, (2)
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.

It was a sight of wonder: some
Were horned like the crescent moon;
Some shed a mild and silver beam

Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;
Some dash'd athwart with trains of flame,
Like worlds to death and ruin driven;

Some shone like suns, and as'the chariot pass'd,
Eclipsed all other light.

Spirit of Nature! here!

In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple.

Yet not the slightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee:

Yet not the meanest worm That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead Less shares thy eternal breath. Spirit of Nature! thou! Imperishable as this scene, Here is thy fitting temple.

II.

IF solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the wild ocean's echoing shore,
And thou hast linger'd there,
Until the sun's broad orb
Seem'd resting on the burnish'd wave,
Thou must have mark'd the lines

Of purple gold, that motionless

Hung o'er the sinking sphere:

Thou must have mark'd the billowy clouds
Edged with intolerable radiancy,

Towering like rocks of jet

Crown'd with a diamond wreath.

And yet there is a moment,

When the sun's highest point

Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery gold,

Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark blue sea;
Then has thy fancy soar'd above the earth,
And furl'd its wearied wing
Within the Fairy's fane.

Yet not the golden islands
Gleaming in yon flood of light,

Nor the feathery curtains
Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,
Nor the burnish'd ocean waves

Paving that gorgeous dome,

So fair, so wonderful a sight

As Mab's etherial palace could afford.

Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall!

As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
Its floors of flashing light,
Its vast and azure dome,
Its fertile golden islands
Floating on a silver sea;

Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
Through clouds of circumambient darkness,
And pearly battlements around
Look'd o'er the immense of Heaven.

The magic car no longer moved.
The Fairy and the Spirit
Enter'd the Hall of Spells:
Those golden clouds
That roll'd in glittering billows
Beneath the azure canopy

With the etherial footsteps, trembled not:

The light and crimson mists, Floating to strains of thrilling melody

Through that unearthly dwelling, Yielded to every movement of the will. Upon their pensive spell the spirit lean'd,

And, for the varied bliss that press'd around, Used not the glorious privilege

Of virtue and of wisdom.

Spirit! the Fairy said,

And pointed to the gorgeous dome,
This is a wondrous sight
And mocks all human grandeur;
But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell
In a celestial palace, all resign'd
To pleasurable impulses, immured
Within the prison of itself, the will

Of changeless nature would be unfulfill'd.
Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!
This is thine high reward:-the past shall rise;
Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach
The secrets of the future.

The Fairy and the Spirit

Approach'd the overhanging battlement.-
Below lay stretch'd the universe!
There, far as the remotest line
That bounds imagination's flight,
Countless and unending orbs
In mazy motion intermingled,
Yet still fulfill'd immutably
Eternal nature's law.
Above, below, around

The circling systems form'd

A wilderness of harmony;
Each with undeviating aim,

In eloquent silence, through the depths of space

Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light

That twinkled in the misty distance:

None but a spirit's eye

Might ken that rolling orb;
None but a spirit's eye,

And in no other place

But that celestial dwelling, might behold
Each action of this earth's inhabitants.
But matter, space and time,
In those aërial mansions cease to act;
And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps
The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds
Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul
Fears to attempt the conquest.

The Fairy pointed to the earth.
The Spirit's intellectual eye

Its kindred beings recognized.

The thronging thousands, to a passing view, Seem'd like an ant-hill's citizens.

How wonderful! that even

The passions, prejudices, interests,
That sway the meanest being, the weak touch
That moves the finest nerve,

And in one human brain

Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link In the great chain of nature.

Behold, the Fairy cried, Palmyra's ruin'd palaces !——

Behold! where grandeur frown'd; Behold! where pleasure smiled; What now remains?-the memory Of senselessness and shameWhat is immortal there? Nothing-it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently

The remnant of its fame.

Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trodThe earthquakes of the human race; Like them, forgotten when the ruin

That marks their shock is past.

Beside the eternal Nile

The Pyramids have risen.

Nile shall pursue his changeless way:

Those pyramids shall fall;
Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell

The spot whereon they stood;
Their very scite shall be forgotten,
As is their builder's name!

Behold yon sterile spot; Where now the wandering Arab's tent Flaps in the desert-blast.

There once old Salem's haughty fane Rear'd high to heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory.

Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father,
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,
And spare his children the detested task
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning
The choicest days of life,

To soothe a dotard's vanity.

There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howl'd hideous praises to their Demon-God;
They rush'd to war, tore from the mother's womb
The unborn child,-old age and infancy
Promiscuous perish'd; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:
But what was he who taught them that the God
Of nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales

Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself into forgetfulness.

Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
There is a moral desert now:

The mean and miserable huts,
The yet more wretched palaces,
Contrasted with those ancient fanes,

Now crumbling to oblivion;

The long and lonely colonnades,

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, Seem like a well-known tune,

Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
Remember'd now in sadness.

But, oh! how much more changed,
How gloomier is the contrast

Of human nature there!

Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,

A coward and a fool, spreads death around-
Then, shuddering, meets his own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
A cowl'd and hypocritical monk
Prays, curses and deceives.

Metropolis of the western continent:
There, now, the mossy column-stone,
Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,

Which once appear'd to brave
All, save its country's ruin;
There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness

Of gardens long run wild,

Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps
Chance in that desert has delay'd,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is
Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
Whither, as to a common centre, flock'd
Strangers, and ships, and merchandize :

Once peace and freedom blest
The cultivated plain :

But wealth, that curse of man,
Blighted the bud of its prosperity:
Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
Fled, to return not, until man shall know
That they alone can give the bliss
Worthy a soul that claims-

Its kindred with eternity.

There's not one atom of yon earthr
But once was living man;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flow'd in human veins :
And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread

Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.

How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon,

Is an unbounded world;

I tell thee that those viewless beings,
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel and live like man;
That their affections and antipathies,
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their moral state;
And the minutest throb

That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fix'd and indispensable

As the majestic laws

That rule yon rolling orbs.

The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstacy of admiration, felt
All knowledge of the past revived;

the events

Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; Yet dim from their infinitude. The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.

III.

FAIRY! the Spirit said,

And on the Queen of spells
Fix'd her etherial eyes,

I thank thee. Thou hast given

A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearn'd. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors, and derive
Experience from his folly:
For, when the power of imparting joy
Is equal to the will, the human soul
Requires no other heaven.

MAB.

Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
Much yet remains unscann'd.
Thou knowest how great is man,
Thou knowest his imbecility:
Yet learn thou what he is;
Yet learn the lofty destiny
Which restless Time prepares
For every living soul.

Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid

Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers