Each astral influence unrevealing shone91
O'er the dark web its solemn thread enwove;
Mars shot no anger from his fatal throne,
No beam spoke trouble in the House of Love;
Their closing path the treacherous smile illumed;
And the stern Star-kings kiss'd the brows they doom'd.—
'Tis morn once more; upon the shelving green92
Of the small isle, alone the Cymrian stood
With his full heart,—when, suddenly, between
Him and the sun, the azure solitude
Was broken by a dark and rapid wing,
And a dusk bird swoop'd downward to the King.
And the King's cheek grew pale, for well to him93
(As now the raven, settling, touch'd his feet),
Was known the mystic messenger:—where, grim
O'er the Black Valley,[17] demon shadows fleet
Glass'd on the lake whose horror scares away
Each harmless wing that skims the golden day.
The Prophet's dauntless childhood stray'd and found94
The weird bird muttering by the waves of dread;
Three days and nights upon the haunted ground
The raven's beak the solemn infant fed:
And ever after (so the legend ran)
The lone bird tended on the lonely man.
O'er the Man's temples fell the snows of age,95
As fresh the lustrous ebon of the Bird,—
Less awe had credulous terror of the sage
Than that familiar by the Fiend conferr'd—
So thought the crowd; nor knew what holy lore
Lives in all things whose instinct is to soar.
Hoarse croaks the bird, and, with its round bright eye,96
Fixes the gaze of the recoiling King;
Slowly the hand, that trembles, cuts the tie
Which binds the white scroll gleaming from the wing,
And these the words, "Weak Loiterer from thy toil,
The Saxon's march is on thy father's soil."
Bounded the Prince!—As when the sudden sun97
Looses the ice-chains on the halted rill,
Smites the dumb snow-mass, and the cataracts run
In molten thunder down the clanging hill,
So from his heart the fetters burst; and strong
In its rough course the great soul rush'd along.
As looks a warrior on the fort he scales,98
His glance darts round the everlasting steeps—
Not there escape!—the wildest fancy quails
Before those heights on which the whitening deeps
Of measureless heaven repose:—below their frown,
Planed as a wall, shears the smooth granite down.
Marvel, indeed, how ev'n the enchanted wing99
Had o'er such rampires won to the abode:
But not for marvel paused the kindled King,
Swift, as Pelides stung to war, he strode;
While the dark herald, with its sullen scream,
Rose, and fled, dismal as an evil dream.
Carved as for Love, a slender boat rock'd o'er100
The ripple with the murmuring marge at play,
He loosed its chain, he gain'd the adverse shore,
Startled the groups that flutter'd round his way,
Awed by the knitted brow and flashing eyes
Of him they deem'd the native of the skies.