He from the Heaven of heavens of old forthrode,
In the paternal chariot did pursue,
And hurled Rebellion from that high abode—
I heard his last prayer, the last sigh he drew,
And I beheld him bow his holy head,
Whose locks were humid with ambrosial dew.
Chief Warrior, and chief Victor, bravely sped—
I conquer conquerors-all revenges wreak-
Thou, my last Foe, transfixed, suspended, dead!"
Within that shadowy vault a short shrill shriek,
Like an east gust in crannies of old tower,
There multiplies itself,... of what to speak?
. Writhed as a woman in her travail hour,
Spectral, and yet in pain majestical,
How ghastly in her beauty's fatal dower,
The Phantasm of pale Earth! Amidst the Hall
She weeps,.. anon, into a fading wreath,
Dissolved; like mountain-mist that borrows all
Shapes vague and void, and melts upon the heath.
Cold lightning gleams, an ice-bolt rives--they sweep
That region like a storm-And where is Death?
E'en as the pageant of a haunted sleep
Of dreams whence the flesh quakes, that CentaurWraith,
With those huge Shapes, and that Sepulchral Deep,
Have vanished from the eye of Fancy and of Faith.
O SPIRIT of the Universe! whereby
Things have intelligible entity,
And are arrayed in glory to man's eye,
And Nature is, because perceived to be;
O thou, unto sad Earth as soul to sense,
Life-giving Light! her graves even yearn for thee...
Strange echoes in the dreamy gloom commence,
Ancestral ages are unsepulchred,
Old oracles awaken from suspense.
The Life-the Light of men is darkened
Dark is the lustre of the Seraphim
The Word is silent,-lo, the Heavens are dead.
From heaven surcharged, but kindling, as it may, About my secret place, where royally
Dwelleth the hiding of my power, whose sway,
Felt only, doth abide invisibly,
And is in that it is, like to a god
Which lives but in his proper energy.
The floods leap under me, and foam aloud,
And bear me onward, gathering as I go,
And armies come unto me from the cloud.
I triumph in my chariöt of snow...
Forth utter I my voice,... the thunder peals:
Forth from my sanctuary I rush, and, lo,
Forests confess me, nor the vale conceals
My presence,... and the village vanisheth;
Ruin to my pleased ear man's Shriek reveals,
Silence, Depopulation.-I am Death!
A home in Air have I. Winds hear my voice, The four winds answer it with all their breath.
-Lo! the Tornado doth aloud rejoice
In his ubiquity, and cometh out
With sudden and exaggerated noise;
Scattering his hurtling arrows all about
Amid the sky, the while his iron shoon
Cottage and Palace trample;.. with a shout,
Then whirls him in his dusty car aboon,
As with the ruin he would blot out heaven,
And quench the glorious sun, as I shall soon.
And men are hurled into the clouds, and driven
As in a witch-dance, round, and aye around,
And perish in the flashes of the leven;
swoop, and strangle them in that dire swound, For sport;-and thus I gambol merrily.
My way is on the Waters. Of the Drowned
The last spasm makes the globule, wherewith I
Take innocent delight, and think when this
Strong hand shall, with the same facility,
Confound in one disruption, one abyss,
A bubble and a Universe. I dance
Around the circles of the Vortices,
And see the ship go down in a strong trance,
And hear the shriek,-one, yet how manifold!
There, where the steeds o' the Tempest foam and
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