"Thus seen, what men call Nature, thou surveyest,120
But matter boundeth not the still one's power;
In every deed its presence thou displayest.
It prompts each impulse, guides each wingèd hour,
It spells the Valkyrs to their gory loom,
It calls the blessing from the bane they doom:
"It rides the steed, it saileth with the bark,121
Wafts the first corn-seed to the herbless wild,
Alike directing through the doom of dark,
The age-long nation and the new-born child;
Here the dread Power, yet loftier tasks await,
And Nature, twofold, takes the name of Fate.
"Nature or Fate, Matter's material life.122
Or to all spirit the spiritual guide,
Alike with one harmonious being rife,
Form but the whole which only names divide;
Fate's crushing power, or Nature's gentle skill,
Alike one Good—from one all-loving Will."
While thus the Shade benign instructs the King,123
Near the dark cloud the still brows bended o'er,
They come: a soft wind with continuous wing
Sighs through the gloom and trembles through the door,
"Hark to that air," the gentle Phantom said,
"In each faint murmur flit unseen the dead,—
"Pass through the gate, from life the life resume,124
As the old impulse flies to heaven or hell."
While spoke the Ghost, stood forth amidst the gloom,
A lucent Image, crown'd with asphodel,
The left hand bore a mirror crystal-bright,
A wand star-pointed glitter'd in the right.
"Dost thou not know me?—me, thy second soul?"125
Said the bright Image, with its low sweet voice,
"I who have led thee to each noble goal,
Mirror'd thy heart, and starward led thy choice?
To teach thee wisdom won in Labour's school,
I lured thy footsteps to the forest pool,
"Show'd all the woes which wait inebriate power,126
And woke the man from youth's voluptuous dream;
Glass'd on the crystal—let each stainless hour
Obey the wand I lift unto the beam;
And at the last, when yonder gates expand,
Pass with thine angel, Conscience, hand in hand."
Spoke the sweet Splendour, and as music dies127
Into the heart that hears, subsides away;
Then Arthur lifted his serenest eyes
Towards the pale Shade from the celestial day,
And said, "O thou in life belov'd so well,
Dream I or wake?—As those last accents fell,
"So fears that, spite of thy mild words, dismay'd,128
Fears not of death, but that which death conceals,
Vanish;—my soul that trembled at thy shade,
Yearns to the far light which the shade reveals,
And sees how human is the dismal error
Thad hideth God, when veiling death with terror.
"Ev'n thus some infant, in the early spring,129
Under the pale buds of the almond-tree,
Shrinks from the wind that with an icy wing
Shakes showering down white flakes that seem to be
Winter's wan sleet,—till the quick sunbeam shows
That those were blossoms which he took for snows.