Who guides the frozen and inconstant | And you fair nymphs looking the love Will look on thy more warm and equal In memory of the tidings it has borne,— Beneath a dome fretted with graven light Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow And love thee. Spirit of the Earth. flowers, Poised on twelve columns of resplendent What; as And open to the bright and liquid sky. Asia loves Prometheus? Asia. Peace, wanton, thou art yet The likeness of those winged steeds will not old enough. mock The flight from which they find repose. Alas, Whither has wandered now my partial tongue When all remains untold which ye would hear? As I have said I floated to the earth: It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, And first was disappointed not to see Such mighty change as I had felt within Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked One with the other even as spirits do, None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear, Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows, No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, "All hope abandon ye who enter here;" None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear Gazed on another's eye of cold command, Until the subject of the tyrant's will Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death. None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak; None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart The sparks of love and hope till there remained Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, And the wretch crept a vampire among men, Infecting all with his own hideous ill; None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk Looking emotions once they feared to feel, And changed to all which once they dared not be, Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride, Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons; wherein, And beside which, by wretched men were borne Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignor ance, Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, The ghosts of a no more remembered fame, Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests, A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide As is the world it wasted, and are now Which makes the heart deny the yes it And emblems of its last captivity, breathes, Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy With such a self-mistrust as has no name. And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms, From custom's evil taint exempt and pure; Amid the dwellings of the peopled Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world; Speaking the wisdom once they could And which the nations, panic-stricken, Of the Father of many a cancelled year! Spectres we Of the dead Hours be, The loathsome mask has fallen, the man We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Strew, oh, strew Hair, not yew! Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nation- Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew! less, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless; no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might over soar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. END OF THE THIRD ACT ACT IV SCENE, A PART OF THE FOREST NEAR Voice of unseen Spirits. Be the faded flowers Of Death's bare bowers Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours! Haste, oh, haste! As shades are chased, Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste. We melt away, From the children of a diviner day, On the bosom of their own harmony! What dark forms were they? Panthea. The past Hours weak and gray, From the conquest but One could foil. Panthea. They have past; They outspeeded the blast, Ione. Whither, oh, whither? Panthea. To the dark, to the past, to the dead. Voice of unseen Spirits. Bright clouds float in heaven, They are gathered and driven Chorus. By the storm of delight, by the panic of Weave the dance on the floor of the glee! They shake with emotion, The pine boughs are singing Once the hungry Hours were hounds Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, Like the notes of a spirit from land and And it limped and stumbled with many from sea; Semichorus II. wounds Through the nightly dells of the desart year. But now, oh weave the mystic measure Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure, Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. A Voice. Unite! Panthea. See, where the Spirits of the human mind Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach. Chorus of Spirits. We join the throng Of the dance and the song, By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; As the flying-fish leap And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep. From the Indian deep, Chorus of Hours. Whence come ye, so wild and so flect, Worse than his visions were! For sandals of lightning are on your feet, |
