LXXXV.

In their full tides arrested as they rolled,

Fixed in their fluctuation by one word,

The Mountain Altars reared by God behold,

Sphered in his heaven of heavens ! then, Nature heard, And the pure snows, her firstling gifts, preferred; The Clouds her frankincense, her priests the Woods, That, circling round, those shrines for ever gird; Her choral-hymn the Winds and rushing Floods, Sole Voices raised in these eternal solitudes!

LXXXVI.

Doubt'st thou her inspirations? lo, yon peaks
Titanic, burying their spears in heaven!

As if they dared the thunder, when it wreaks

Its heaviest vengeance; look-all headlong driven,

Yon Waters hurled o'er precipices riven;

Hark, to their roar in yon black fathomless dell!

The ravings of the tortured unforgiven;

Doth not thy mind their types already tell?

Behold the Powers opposed-the war of Heaven and Hell!

LXXXVII.

Lo! round the Mountain's scathed sides, like a wall,

Pines, lightning-blasted, wear such forms as wore

The Angels of the damned! while, like a pall,

The up-seething mists rise, shrouding white and hoar, Shapes that lie buried, crushed for evermore, Writhing beneath, and covering their bier

Thick as the weeds on Ocean's surf-heaped shore;

This is the Vale of Shade thou should'st revere, This was the Prophet's shrine-thy pilgrimage ends here.

LXXXVIII.

Oh! while these Autumn leaves are round me lying,
While thy"Etrurian shades o'erarched" ensphere;
While the Wind seems thy Voice to mine replying,
On thee I call! I sought thee, Prophet, here,
And I have found thee; thou wilt not appear
Athwart the bourne unpassed since time began,
But I would feel thy mighty Spirit near:

Here-where this crag no foot has dared to scan,

Here do I call thee, thou who walked on earth with man!

TO JOHN MILTON.

Mightiest of Poets !from a boy, my heart
Turned to thee; yea, of thee became a part,
As of the Earth I worshipped, and though I
Then darkly comprehended thee, yet now,
By thought, and imaging the forms which thou
Hast brought before my Vision, and that are,
By dwelling on them, made familiar,

Thy Mind's sublimest heights I can descry.
The Harp of Heaven was given thee to strike
The chords of Melody; thy Voice was like
The Deep that calleth unto Deep; thy Spirit
Saw Past and Future; yea, and did inherit
Both, for it was itself Infinity!

Thou stoodest like some Mountain on the earth,
Apart and hidden; deep Clouds rolled between
Thee and the forms beneath, which were unseen,
Veiled from thy ken; but inner rays were given
Purer than from the Morning-gates have birth!
Thy head was sphered in the serene above,
And, while in visions rapt of God and love,

Irradiated with His light from heaven!

Oh! if I sought to approach thee, be 't forgiven;

For thou wert not of earth, a Prophet sent

To turn the age from sins on which it leant.
Thou struck'st the Rock of Poesy, which heard;

And the deep Waters, bursting at thy word,
Pure, heavenly emanation! full and free,

Told that they came from God-though called by thee!

LXXXIX.

Minster of Vallombrosa! not those halls

Where the worn traveller is hailed with smiles
Of placid ignorance, that name recals;

But thou thyself, that art, midst these defiles,
Nature's own Minster! who, thy arching aisles,

Dark Vallombrosa! hath in silence trod,

And seen thy rock-reared shrines, where the Cloud

piles

Its frankincense, and heard the Winds abroad

Swell up their choral hymn, nor felt thee built by God?

XC.

How reverentially are left behind

The precincts of thy solemn Solitude!
Again to Nature and to peace consigned,
Until a newer footstep shall intrude,
To wile, in thoughtful or fantastic mood,
Those hours away that never shall return

In such inspiring scenes to be renewed;

We part-from thy grey heights mine eye did yearn

To the blue Adriatic, from the rays that burn,

XCI.

Making life here a solitude;-away !

The sail gleams o'er yon far-off wave beneath;
Let us enjoy the sea-breeze free as they ;

Borne on, we list not where, so from the heath
Scorched by the heats of Summer's fiery breath,
Where Nature wears the hue of Autumn sear;
Where the beams, scathing, dart the stroke of death,
Where the night's rising dews make earth a bier

To him who dares repose in feverish slumbers here.