worm is no longer exposed to the washing of the sea. And volatile as fragrance from the flower, Thus a reef rises in the form of a cauliflower, till its Or music in the woodlands. What the soul top has gained the level of the highest tides, above Can make itself at pleasure, that I was; which the worm has no power to advance, and the A child in feeling and imagination, reef of course no longer extends itself upwards. The Learning new lessons still, as Nature wrought other parts in succession reach the surface, and there Her wonders in my presence. All I saw, stop, forming in time a level field with steep sides al! (Like Adam when he walk'd in Paradise), round. The reef, however, continually increases, and I knew and named by secret intuition. being prevented from growing higher, extends itself Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn, laterally in all directions. But the growth being as I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sail'd, rapid at the upper edge as it is lower down, the steep- And now I soar'd; anon expanding, seem'd ness of the face of the reef is still preserved. These Diffused into immensity, yet bound are the circumstances which render coral reefs so Within a space too narrow for desire: dangerous in navigation; for, in the first place, they The mind, the mind perpetual themes must task, are seldom seen above the water; and, in the next, Perpetual power impel, and hope allure. their sides are so steep, that a ship's bow may strike against the rock before any change of soundings has given warning of the danger."

With these brief quotations to explain the two principal circumstances on which the poem is founded, the Author abandons his "Pelican Island" to the judgment of the public, having no hope to conciliate favor by apology or vindication, where he has painfully felt that both would be necessary, if the success or failure of his work did not wholly depend on the manner in which it has been executed. He only requests the reader to bear in mind, that the narrative is supposed to be delivered by the imaginary being who witnesses the series of events, after the whole has happened, and who therefore describes them in such language, and with such illustrations, as the knowledge which he then possessed enabled him to use, whether he be identified with the Author, or (if the latter will so far condescend) with the reader himself, as spectator, actor, thinker, in this masquerade of

Truth severe by fairy-fiction drest. SHEFFIELD, July 19, 1827.

THE PELICAN ISLAND.

CANTO I.

METHOUGHT I lived through ages, and beheld
Their generations pass so swiftly by me,
That years were moments in their flight, and hours
The scenes of crowded centuries reveal'd;
While Time, Life, Death, the world's great actors
wrought

New and amazing changes:-these I sing.

Sky, sun, and sea, were all the universe; The sky, one blue interminable arch, Without a breeze, a wing, a cloud; the sun Sole in the firmament, but in the deep Redoubled; where the circle of the sea, Invisible with calmness, seem'd to lie Within the hollow of a lower heaven.

I was a Spirit in the midst of these,

All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoyment;
Laght was an element of life, and air
The clothing of my incorporeal form,-
A form impalpable to mortal touch,

I and the silent sun were here alone,

But not companions; high and bright he held
His course; gazed with admiration on him,-
There all communion ended; and I sigh'd,
In loneliness unutterable sigh'd,
To feel myself a wanderer without aim,
An exile amidst splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.

The sun descended, dipp'd, and disappear'd;
Then sky and sea were all the universe,
And I the only being in existence!
Went freezing, burning, withering, thrilling through
So thought I, and the thought, like ice and fire,

me.

Annihilation then had been deliverance,
While that eternity of solitude
Lay on my heart, hard struggling to break free,
As from a dream, when mountains press the sleeper.

Darkness, meanwhile, disguised in twilight, crept
O'er air and ocean; drearier gloom involved
My fainting senses, till a sudden ray

Of pensile lustre sparkled from the west:
I flew to meet it, but drew never nearer,
While, vanishing and reappearing oft,
At length it trembled out into a star.
My soul revived, and could I then have wept
(Methought I did) with tears of fond delight,
How had I hail'd the gentle apparition,
As second life to me; so sweetly welcome
The faintest semblance of society,
Though but a point to rest the eye upon,
To him who hath been utterly bereaved!

Star after star, from some unseen abyss,
Came through the sky, like thoughts into the mind,
We know not whence; till all the firmament
Was throng'd with constellations, and the sea
Strown with their images. Amidst a sphere
Of twinkling lights, like living eyes, that look'd
At once on me from every side, I stood
(Motion and rest with me were mere volition),
Myself perhaps a star among the rest!
But here again I found no fellowship;

Sight could not reach, nor keenest thought conceive
Their nature or their offices. To me

They were but what they seem'd, and yet I felt
They must be more: the mind hath no horizon,
It looks beyond the eye, and seeks for mind
In all it sees, or all it sees o'erruling.

Low in the east, ere long, the morning dawn
Shot upward, onward, and around the pole,

Night, silent, cool, transparent, crown'd the day;
The sky receded further into space,
The stars came lower down to meet the eye,
Till the whole hemisphere, alive with light,
Twinkled from east to west by one consent.
The constellations round the arctic pole,
That never set to us, here scarcely rose,

Thus pass'd the day night follow'd, deck'd with But in their stead, Orion through the north

Thus, while bewilder'd with delight I gazed
On life in every shape it here assumed,
Congenial feeling made me follow it,
And try to be whatever I beheld:

By mental transmigration thus I pass'd
Through many a body, and in each assay'd
New instincts, powers, enjoyments, death itself;
Till, weary with the fanciful pursuit,

I started from that idle reverie.

Then grew my heart more desolate than ever;
Here had I found the beings which I sought,
-Beings for whom the universe was made,
Yet none of kindred with myself. In vain
I strove to waken sympathy in breasts
Cold as the element in which they moved,
And inaccessible to fellowship

With me, as sun and stars, as winds and vapors :
Sense had they, but no more; mind was not there.
They roam'd, they fed, they slept; they died, and left
Race after race, to roam, feed, sleep, then die,
And leave their like through endless generation;
-Incessant change of actors, none of scene,
Through all that boundless theatre of strife!
Shrinking into myself again, I cried,
In bitter disappointment,-" Is this all?"

I sent a glance at random from the cloud,
In which I then lay floating through mid-heaven,
To ocean's innermost recess;-when lo!
Another seal of Nature's book was open'd,
Which held transported thought so deep entranced,
That Time, though borne through mightiest revolu-
tions,

Seem'd, like the earth in motion, to stand still.
The works of ages grew beneath mine eye;
As rapid intellect calls up events,
Combines, compresses, moulds them, with such power,
That, in a little page of memory,

An empire's annals lie,-a nation's fortunes
Pass in review, as motes through sunbeams pass,
Glistening and vanishing in quick succession,
Yet each distinct as though there were but one;
-So thrice a thousand years, with all their issues,
Hurried before me, through a gleam of Time,
Between the clouds of two eternities,-
That whence they came, and that to which they tended.

Immeasurable continents beneath

The expanse of animated waters lay,

Not strown,-as I have since discern'd the tracks
Of voyagers, with shipwrecks and their spoils,
The wealth of merchants, the artillery
Of war, the chains of captives, and the gems,
That glow'd upon the brow of beauty; crowns
Of monarchs, swords of heroes, anchors lost,
That never had let go their hold in storms;
Helms, sunk in port, that steer'd adventurous barks
Round the wide world; bones of dead men, that made
A hidden Golgotha where they had fallen,
Unseen, unsepulchred, but not unwept
By lover, friend, relation, far away,
Long waiting their return to home and country,
And going down into their fathers' graves
With their grey hairs or youthful locks in sorrow,
To meet no more till seas give up their dead:
Some too ay thousands-whom none living mourn'd,
None miss'd-waifs in the universe, the last
Lorn links of kindred chains for ever sunder'd.

Not such the spectacle I now survey'd :
No broken hearts lay here; no aching heads,
For whose vast schemes the world was once too small,
And life too short, in Death's dark lap found rest
Beneath the unresting wave:--but skeletons
Of Whales and Krakens here and there were scatter'd,
The prey when dead of tribes, their prey when living:
And, seen by glimpses, but awakening thoughts
Too sad for utterance,-relics huge and strange
Of the old world that perish'd by the flood,
Kept under chains of darkness till the judgment
-Save these, lay ocean's bed, as from the hand
Of its Creator, hollow'd and prepared
For his unfathomable counsels there,
To work slow miracles of power divine,
From century to century,-nor less
Incomprehensible than heaven and earth
Form'd in six days by His commanding word.
With God a thousand years are as one day;
He in one day can sum a thousand years:
All acts with Him are equal; for no more
It costs Omnipotence to build a world,
And set a sun amidst the firmament,
Than mould a dew-drop, and light up its gem.

This was the landscape stretch'd beneath the flood: -Rocks, branching out like chains of Alpine mountains ;

Gulfs intervening, sandy wildernesses,
Forests of growth enormous, caverns, shoals;
Fountains upspringing, hot and cold, and fresh
And bitter, as on land; volcanic fires
Fiercely out-flashing from earth's central heart,
Nor soon extinguish'd by the rush of waters
Down the rent crater to the unknown abyss
Of Nature's laboratory, where she hides
Her deeds from every eye except her Maker's:
-Such were the scenes which ocean open'd to me;
Mysterious regions, the recluse abode

Of unapproachable inhabitants,
That dwelt in everlasting darkness there.
Unheard by them the roaring of the wind,
The elastic motion of the wave unfelt;
Still life was theirs, well-pleasing to themselves,
Nor yet unuseful, as my song shall show.

Here, on a stony eminence, that stood,
Girt with inferior ridges, at the point,
Where light and darkness meet in spectral gloom,
Midway between the height and depth of ocean,
I mark'd a whirlpool in perpetual play,
As though the mountain were itself alive,
And catching prey on every side, with feelers
Countless as sunbeams, slight as gossamer;
Ere long transfigured, each fine film became
An independent creature, self-employ'd,
Yet but an agent in one common work,
The sum of all their individual labors.
Shapeless they seem'd, but endless shapes assumed
Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk
Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions;
Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars,
Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings;
Subtle and variable as flickering flames,
Sight could not trace their evanescent changes,
Nor comprehend their motions, till minute

And curious observation caught the clew
To this live labyrinth,—where every one,
By instinct taught, perform'd its little task;
-To build its dwelling and its sepulchre,
From its own essence exquisitely modell'd;
There breed, and die, and leave a progeny,
Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers,

And falling down in foam-wreaths round its verge.
Steep were the flanks, with precipices sharp,
Descending to their base in ocean-gloom.
Chasms few, and narrow, and irregular,
Form'd harbors, safe at once and perilous,-
Safe for defence, but perilous to enter.
A sea-lake shone amidst the fossil isle,

With heaven itself seen like a lake below.

To frame new cells and tombs; then breed and die Reflecting in a ring its cliffs and caverns,
As all their ancestors had done, and rest,
Hermetically seal'd, each in its shrine,
A statue in this temple of oblivion!
Millions of millions thus, from age to age,
With simplest skill, and toil unweariable,
No moment and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread,
To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound,
By marvellous structure climbing towards the day.
Each wrought alone, yet all together, wrought,
Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments,
By which a hand invisible was rearing
A new creation in the secret deep.

Compared with this amazing edifice,
Raised by the weakest creatures in existence,
What are the works of intellectual man?
Towers, temples, palaces, and sepulchres;
Ideal images in sculptured forms,
Thoughts hewn in columns, or in domes expanded,
Fancies through every maze of beauty shown;
Pride, gratitude, affection turn'd to marble,
In honor of the living or the dead;

What are they?-fine-wrought miniatures of art,
Too exquisite to bear the weight of dew,

Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them; Which every morn lets fall in pearls upon them,

Hence what Omnipotence alone could do

Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend,
The mausoleum of its architects,

Still dying upwards as their labors closed:
Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd
To adamant, by their petrific touch;

Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives,
Their masonry imperishable. All
Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest,
By nice economy of Providence
Were overruled to carry on the process,
Which out of water brought forth solid rock.

Atom by atom thus the burthen grew,
Even like an infant in the womb, till Time
Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth,
-A coral island, stretching east and west,
In God's own language to its parent saying,
-Thus far, nor farther, shalt thou go; and here
Shall thy proud waves be stay'd:" -A point at first
It peer'd above those waves; a point so small,
I just perceived it, fix'd where all was floating;
And when a bubble cross'd it, the blue film
Expanded like a sky above the speck;

Till all their pomp sinks down in mouldering relics,
Yet in their ruin lovelier than their prime!
-Dust in the balance, atoms in the gale,
Compared with these achievements in the deep,
Were all the monuments of olden time,
In days when there were giants on the earth.
-Babel's stupendous folly, though it aim'd
To scale heaven's battlements, was but a toy,
The plaything of the world in infancy
The ramparts, towers, and gates of Babylon,
Built for eternity,-though, where they stood,
Ruin itself stands still for lack of work,
And Desolation keeps unbroken sabbath;-
Great Babylon, in its full moon of empire,
Even when its "head of gold" was smitten off,
And from a monarch changed into a brute;-
Great Babylon was like a wreath of sand,
Left by one tide, and cancell'd by the next:-
Egypt's dread wonders, still defying Time,
Where cities have been crumbled into sand,
Scatter'd by winds beyond the Libyan desert,
Or melted down into the mud of Nile,
And cast in tillage o'er the corn-sown fields,
Where Memphis flourish'd, and the Pharaohs reign'd;-

That speck became a hand-breadth; day and night Egypt's grey piles of hieroglyphic grandeur,

It spread, accumulated, and ere long
Presented to my view a dazzling plain,
White as the moon amid the sapphire sea;
Bare at low water, and as still as death,

But when the tide came gurgling o'er the surface,
"T was like a resurrection of the dead:
From graves innumerable, punctures fine
In the close coral, capillary swarms
Of reptiles, horrent as Medusa's snakes,
Cover'd the bald-pate reef; then all was life,
And indefatigable industry;

The artisans were twisting to and fro,
In idle-seeming convolutions; yet
They never vanish'd with the ebbing surge,
Till pellicle on pellicle, and layer

On layer, was added to the growing mass.
Ere long the reef o'ertopt the spring-flood's height,
And mock'd the billows when they leapt upon it,
Unable to maintain their slippery hold,

That have survived the language which they speak,
Preserving its dead emblems to the eye,

Yet hiding from the mind what these reveal;
-Her pyramids would be mere pinnacles,
Her giant statues, wrought from rocks of granite,
But puny ornaments for such a pile
As this stupendous mound of catacombs,
Fill'd with dry mummies of the builder-worms.