The poem was professedly written to save the memory of the Morgue, then about to be destroyed.
The friend, to whom "WARING" refers, is a restless, aspiring, sensitive person, who has planned great works, though he has completed none: who feels his powers always in excess of his performance, and who is hurt if those he loves refuse them credit for being so. He is gone now, no one knows whither; and the speaker, who is conscious that his own friendship has often seemed critical or cold, vainly wishes that he could recall him. His fancy travels longingly to those distant lands, in one of which Waring may be playing some new and romantic part; and back again to England, where he tries to think that he is lying concealed, while preparing to surprise the world with some great achievement in literature or art. Then someone solves the problem by saying that he has seen him—for one moment—on the Illyrian coast; seated in a light bark, just bounding away into the sunset. And the speaker rejoins
"Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar!" (vol. v. p. 89.)
and, we conclude, takes comfort from the thought.
FOOTNOTES:
Both of these first in "Hood's Magazine."