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But the wild prospect when the soul reviews ··
All rushing through their thousand avenues.
Ambition's dreams expiring, love's regret,
Endangered glory, life itself beset;

The joy untasted, the contempt or hate
'Gainst those who fain would triumph in our fate;
The hopeless past, the hasting future driven

Too quick y on to guess if hell or heaven;

Deeds, thoughts, and words, perhaps remembered not
So keenly till that hour, but ne'er forgot;
Things light or lovely in their acted time,
But now to stern reflection each a crime;
The withering sense of evil unrevealed,

Not cankering less because the more concealed —
All, in a word, from which all eyes must start,
That opening sepulchre - the naked heart
Bares with its buried woes, till Pride awake,
To snatch the mirror from the soul

and break.

273. FROM "THE PRISONer of ChillON.”

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:

A thousand feet in depth below

Its massy waters meet and flow;

Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,
Which round about the wave inthralls ·

A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake

The dark vault lies wherein we lay,

We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knocked;
And I have felt the winter's spray

Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rocked,

And I have felt it shake, unshocked,

Because I could have smiled to see

The death that would have set me free.

FROM "MANFRED."

274, MANFRED'S SOLILOQUY ON THE JUNGFRAU.

My mother Earth!

And thou, fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.

And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
That open'st over all, and unto all

Art a delight thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest forever - wherefore do I pause?

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I feel the impulse - yet I do not plunge;
I see the peril - yet do not recede;

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And my brain reels

and yet my foot is firm: There is a power upon me which withholds, And makes it my fatality to live;

If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of spirit, and to be

My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself —
The last infirmity of evil. Ay,

Thou wingéd and cloud-cleaving minister,

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[An eagle passes

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well mayst thou swoop so near me
I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,
With a pervading vision. Beautiful!

How beautiful is all this visible world!

How glorious in its action and itself!

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are

what they name not to themselves, And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,

[The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard

The natural music of the mountain reed

For here the patriarchal days are not

A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air,

Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;
My soul would drink those echoes.

O that i were

The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment― born and dying
With the blest tone which made inc!

275. THE COLISEUM.

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains. - Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the Night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language cf another world.

I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering- upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt th' horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;

But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,

A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,

While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls, Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon

All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,

As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old,

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

276. THE ISLES OF GREECE.

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo farther west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

The mountains look on Marathon

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Grecce might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

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On my arrival at Venice, in the year 1816, I found my mind in a state which required study, and study of a nature which should leave little scope for the imagination, and furnish some difficulty in the pursuit.

At this period I was much struck-in common, I believe, wit every other traveller-with the society of the Convent of St Lazarus, which appears to unite all the advantages of the monastic institution. without any of its vices.

The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion, he accomplishments, and the virtues of the brethren of the order, are well fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction tha "there is another and a better" even in this life.

These men are the priesthood of an oppressed and a noble nation, which has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, without the sullenness of the former or the servility o: the latter. This people has attained riches without usury, and all the

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