CXXII.
Vision unwelcome, of familiar things,
Why force, I cried, your fantasies on my mind?
Your aspect shadows gloom with fouler wings;
Could I some refuge from your varying find!
I look’d, and, eminent, o’er that ghastly round,
And, quite diffusive, through its sad precincts,
Uncertain shapings based on steadfast ground,
The light of myriad suns made dark those tints:
Transfixed, I stand, inhaling joy and wonder;
Then nearer gaze, that effluence divine
Stream’d ever on, and burst the pores asunder,
Whose ignorance scorn’d such treasure for their mine:
When uncongenial homes rebuked that power,
Its lightning flight bless’d some more grateful bower.
CXXIII.
Such visions, poised upon entrancing notes,
May waft some waif toward congenial ports;
Poised on the wind, ineffable music floats,
In the enchantress face holding her courts;
In the harmonious pants of drunken joy;
In the traitorous interchange of random vows;
In the commutual wave of forest boughs;
In thought, whose arbitrary response wakes,
Fashioning the melody to peculiar laws;
In passion, surging, by its own quick shakes,
Wresting aside the unapprehensive cause;
Swift-winged ideas waft her from her throne;
Music scarce knows the offspring for her own.
CXXIV.
Thou starting-place to a goal yet undefined;
Thou limit clasp’d in no circumference;
Thou tell-tale, in a castle undermined;
Strange tongue, of an uncertain prescience;
Foundation-stone supporting piles of thought;
Thou, Proteus, differing in a self-same soul;
Discoverer of joy, with sorrow fraught;
Thou lively fire, flung from the sullen coal;
The sacred marble shows but one indent
Of penitential kisses, thousandfold,
Yet towers memorial, of sad pilgrims spent,
Of pomps, of pride, of broken hearts and gold:
Like frescoes, born in marble, from one sound,
Lo! multitudinous living shapes abound.