One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love’s rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire,—
I pant, I sink, I tremble I expire!’
No words which were ever written ever expressed more truly that infinite and indefinite yearning which exists in all love that is a passion of the soul as well as of the senses; that nameless longing for some still closer union than any which physical and mental union can bestow upon us; that desire for absolute absorption into and extinction within the life beloved, as stars are lost in the light of the sun, which never can find full fruition in life as we know it here.
Keats, Shelley, Savage Landor, Byron, Browning, and Robert Lytton, have been each and all profoundly penetrated by and deeply imbued with the influence of Italy; and it may be said of each and all of them that their genius has been at its highest when under Italian influences, and has been injured and checked and depressed in its development by all English influences brought to bear upon it.