VIII.
How fierce contrasts the city's roar
With thy new-conquer'd Quiet!
This stunning hell of wheels that pour
With princes to their riot,—
Loud clash the crowds—the very clouds
With thunder-noise are shaken,
While pale, and mute, and cold, afar
Thou liest, men-forsaken.
Hot Life reeks on, nor recks that One
—The playful, human-hearted—
Who lent its clay less earthiness
Is just from earth departed.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] In his beautiful Ode to Melancholy; originally published in Blackwood's Magazine.
[33] See his Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, a poem perfectly unrivalled for the intimate sense of nature, tender fancy, and pathetic playfulness displayed in it.
"Pity it was to hear the Elfins' wail
Rise up in concert from their mingled dread,
Pity it was to see them all so pale
Gaze on the grass as for a dying bed.
But Puck was seated on a spider's thread
That hung between two branches of a brier,
And 'gan to swing and gambol, heels o'er head,
Like any Southwark tumbler on a wire,
For him no present grief could long inspire."
Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.
[35] Witness the terror of Aram after his victim lies dead before him—(we quote from memory.)
"Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone
That could not do me ill!
And yet I fear'd him all the more
For lying there so still;
There was a manhood in his look
That murder could not kill."
Dream of Eugene Aram.
"For Guilt was my grim chamberlain
Who lighted me to bed,
And drew my midnight curtains round
With fingers bloody red."
Dream of Eugene Aram.