CXIV. Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, The forum's champion, and the people's chief- CXV. Egeria! sweet creation of some heart 67 Who found a more than common votary there Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth, Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. CXVI. The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep CXVII. Fantastically tangled: the green hills Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems colour'd by its skies. CXVIII. Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting CXIX. And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, The purity of heaven to earthly joys, Expel the venom and not blunt the dart The dull satiety which all destroys And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? CXX. Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert; whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. CXXI. Oh Love! no habitant of earth art thou And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquench'd soul-parch'd, wearied, wrung, and riven. CXXII. Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreach'd Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? CXXIII. Who loves, raves—' The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Seems ever near the prize-wealthiest when most undone. CXXIV. We wither from our youth, we gasp away— Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first— And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. CXXV. Few-none-find what they love or could have loved, Whose touch turns Hope to dust,-the dust we all have trod. CXXVI. Our life is a false nature: 'tis not in The harmony of things,-this hard decree, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew— Disease, death, bondage-all the woes we see, And worse, the woes we see not-which throb through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. CXXVII. Yet let us ponder boldly-'tis a base 68 Our right of thought—our last and only place Is chain'd and tortured-cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind. CXXVIII. Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume |