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, seemed to lie
Within the hollow of a lower heaven.
I was a spirit in the midst of these,
All eye, ear, thought; existence was enjoy-
ment;

Light was an element of life, and air
The clothing of my incorporeal form,-
A form impalpable to mortal touch,
And volatile as fragrance from the flower,
Or music in the woodlands. What the soul
Can make itself at pleasure, that I was;
A child in feeling and imagination,
Learning new lessons still, as nature wrought
Her wonders in my presence. All I saw,
(Like Adam when he walk'd in Paradise,)
I knew and named by secret intuition.
Actor, spectator, sufferer, each in turn,
I ranged, explored, reflected. Now I sail'd,
And now I soared; anon expanding, seem'd
Diffused into immensity, yet bound
Within a space too narrow for desire;
The mind, the mind perpetual themes must
task,

Perpetual power impel, and hope allure.
I and the silent sun were here alone,
But not companions; high and bright he held
His course; I 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 amid splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.

Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm, Looking around for comfort, I descried, Far on the green horizon's utmost verge, A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery, For each new image sprang a new idea, The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.

The little vapour rapidly expanded, Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun, And threw a starless night upon the sea. Eagerly, tremblingly, I watch'd the end. Faint gleam'd the lightning, follow'd by no peal;

| Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder Roll'd in grand harmony throughout high heaven:

Till ocean, breaking from his black supineness, Drown'd in his own stupendous uproar all The voices of the storm beside; meanwhile A war of mountains raged upon his surface, Mountains each other swallowing, and again New Alps and Andes, from unfathom❜d valleys Upstarting, join'd the battle; like those sons Of earth,-giants, rebounding as new-born From every fall on their unwearied mother. I glow'd with all the rapture of the strife: Beneath was one wild whirl of foaming surges;

Above the array of lightnings, like the swords

Of cherubim, wide brandish'd, to repel Aggression from heaven's gates; their flaming strokes

Quench'd momentarily in the vast abyss. The voice of Him who walks upon the wind, And sets his throne upon the floods, rebuked The headlong tempest in its mid-career, | And turn'd its horrors to magnificence. The evening-sun broke through the embattled clouds,

And threw round sky and sea, as by enchant1 ment,

A radiant girdle, binding them to peace, In the full rainbow's harmony of beams; No brilliant fragment, but one sevenfold circle, That spann'd the horizon, meted out the heavens, And underarch'd the ocean.