One noble stroke with a whole life may glow, Or deify the canvas till it shine With beauty so surpassing all below, That they who kneel to idols so divine Break no commandment, for high heaven is there Transfused, transfigurated: and the line Of poesy which peoples but the air With thought and beings of our thought reflected, Can do no more: then let the artist share The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected Faints o'er the labor unapproved Despair and genius are too oft con- [From Childe Harold.] THE MISERY OF EXCESS. NAY, smile not at my sullen brow, And dost thou ask, what secret woe It is not love, it is not hate, Nor low ambition's honors lost, That bids me loathe my present state, And fly from all I prize the most! It is that weariness which springs From all I meet, or hear, or see; To me no pleasure Beauty brings: Thine eyes have scarce a charin for me. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll ! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin - his control Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war; These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar azure brow Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed-in breeze or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime The image of eternity - the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy [to be Of youthful sports was on thy breast Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers- they to me | sea Were a delight; and if the freshening Made them a terror-'twas a pleas [From Childe Harold.] CALM AND TEMPEST AT NIGHT ON LAKE LEMAN (GENEVA). CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wide world I dwelt in is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, [spring. to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou That I with stern delights should e'er rollest now. have been so moved. |