Ah, lost! lost!

I would love infinitely . . .

O ye who armed me at such cost,

Your faces shall I bear to see

With your gifts even yet on me?—

Par. (Ah, 'tis some moonstruck creature after all! Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den:

They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he seemed
To echo one foreboding of my heart

So truly,

that . no matter! How he stands
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair
Which turns to it, as if they were akin :
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue
Nearly set free, so far they rise above
The painful fruitless striving of that brow

And enforced knowledge of those lips, firm-set

In slow despondency's eternal sigh!

Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?)

Be calm, I charge thee, by thy fealty!

Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am.

Apr. I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth. No ancient hunter, raised
Up to the gods by his renown; no nymph
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree,
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king,
Regal with his white locks; no youth who stands
Silent and very calm amid the throng,

His right hand ever hid beneath his robe

Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver;

No swan-soft woman, rubbed with lucid oils,
Given by a god for love of her-too hard!

Each passion sprung from man, conceived by inan,
Would I express and clothe it in its right form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form.
For, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit
With a fit frame to execute his will—
Ay, even unconsciously to work his will-

You should be moved no less beside some strong,
Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it, and inform it

With its own splendour! All this I would do,

And I would say, this done, "God's sprites being made,

"He grants to each a sphere to be its world,

66

'Appointed with the various objects needed

"To satisfy its spiritual desires;

"So, I create a world for these my shapes

Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!”

And, at the word, I would contrive and paint

Woods, valleys, rocks, and plains, dells, sands, and wastes, Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed, Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun;

And ocean-isles so small, the dogfish tracking

A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice
Around them, and fare onward-all to hold

The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone-
Bronze labyrinths, palace, pyramid, and crypt,

Baths, galleries, courts, temples, and terraces,
Marts, theatres, and wharfs-all filled with men !
Men everywhere! And this performed, in turn,
When those who looked on, pined to hear the hopes,
And fears, and hates, and loves which moved the crowd,-

I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,

And I would speak: no thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold; no passions,
No soft emotions, from the turbulent stir
Within a heart fed with desires like mine-
To the last comfort, shutting the tired lids
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away
Beneath the tent-tree by the way-side well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious notions of the soul, no way

To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
And having received all love bestowed on it,

I would die so preserving through my course

God full on me, as I was full on men:

And He would grant my prayer-"I have gone through "All loveliness of life; make more for me,

"If not for men—or take me to thyself,

'Eternal, infinite Love!"

If thou hast ne'er

Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire,
Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art
No king of mine.

Par.

Apr.

Ah me!

But thou art here!

Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end
Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss
Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to grasp
At once the prize long patient toil should claim;
Nor spurn all granted short of that. And I
Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen-
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief,-'tis clear if we refuse
The means so limited, the tools so rude

To execute our purpose, life will fleet,

And we shall fade, and leave our task undone.
Rather, grow wise in time: what though our work
Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? 'Twere little praise
Did full resources wait on our good will
At every turn. Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so contrived
That tree, and flower, a vesture gay, conceal
A bare and skeleton framework: had we means
That answered to our mind! But now I seem
Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear thereon
My palace? Branching palms the props shall be,
Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the east ;

Who heeds them? I can waive them. Serpert's scales,

Birds' feathers, downy furs, and fishes' skins
Must help me; and a little here and there
Is all I can aspire to: still my art

Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime.

"Had I green jars of malachite, this way

"I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above,
"Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set
"The purple carpets, as these mats are laid,
"Woven of mere fern and rush and blossoming flag."
Or if, by fortune, some completer grace

Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight sample
Of my own land's completer workmanship,
Some trifle little heeded there, but here
The place's one perfection-with what joy
Would I enshrine the relic-cheerfully
Foregoing all the marvels out of reach!
Could I retain one strain of all the psalm
Of the angels-one word of the fiat of God-
To let my followers know what such things are!
I would adventure nobly for their sakes:
When nights were still, and still, the moaning sea,
And far away I could descry the land

Whence I departed, whither I return,

I would dispart the waves, and stand once more
At home, and load my bark, and hasten back,
And fling my gains before them, rich or poor—
IS Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them,
'Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds