Therefore with no far flight, from Tantramar
And my still world of ecstasy, to thee,
Shelley, to thee I turn, the avatar
Of Song, Love, Dream, Desire and Liberty;
To thee I turn with reverent hands of prayer
And lips that fain would ease my heart of praise,
Whom chief of all whose brows prophetic wear
The pure and sacred bays
I worship, and have worshipped since the hour
When first I felt thy bright and chainless power.
XII
About thy sheltered cradle, in the green
Untroubled groves of Sussex, brooded forms
That to the mother’s eye remained unseen,—
Terrors and ardours, passionate hopes, and storms
Of fierce retributive fury, such as jarred
Ancient and sceptred creeds, and cast down kings,
And oft the holy cause of Freedom marred
With lust of meaner things,
With guiltless blood, and many a frenzied crime
Dared in the face of unforgetful Time.
XIII
The star that burns on revolution smote
Wild heats and change on thine ascendant sphere,
Whose influence thereafter seemed to float
Through many a strange eclipse of wrath and fear,
Dimming awhile the radiance of thy love.
But still supreme in thy nativity,
All dark, invidious aspects far above,
Beamed one clear orb for thee,—
The star whose ministrations just and strong
Controlled the tireless flight of Dante’s song.
XIV
With how august contrition, and what tears
Of penitential unavailing shame,
Thy venerable foster-mother hears
The sons of song impeach her ancient name,
Because in one rash hour of anger blind
She thrust thee forth in exile, and thy feet
Too soon to earth’s wild outer ways consigned,—
Far from her well-loved seat,
Far from her studious halls and storied towers
And weedy Isis winding through his flowers.
XV
And thou, thenceforth the breathless child of change,
Thine own Alastor, on an endless quest
Of unimagined loveliness, didst range,
Urged ever by the soul’s divine unrest.
Of that high quest and that unrest divine
Thy first immortal music thou didst make,
Inwrought with fairy Alp, and Reuss, and Rhine,
And phantom seas that break
In soundless foam along the shores of Time,
Prisoned in thine imperishable rhyme.