"And if I love not now, while woman is
All bosom to the young, when shall I love?
Who ever paused on passion's fiery wheel?
Or trembling by the side of her he loved,
Whose lightest touch brings all but madness, ever
Stopped coldly short to reckon up his pulse?
The car comes—and we lie—and let it come;
It crushes—kills—what then! It is joy to die.
Woman! Old people may say what they please,
The heart of age is like an emptied wine-cup.
Oh for the young heart like a fountain playing!
Flinging its bright fresh feelings up to the skies
It loves and strives to reach—strives, loves in vain:
It is of earth and never meant for Heaven.
Let us love—and die.
And when we have said, and seen, and done, and had,
Enjoyed and suffered, all we have wished and feared—
From fame to ruin, and from love to loathing—
There can come but one more change—try it—death.
Oh! it is great to feel we care for nothing—
That hope, nor love, nor fear, nor aught of earth
Can check the royal lavishment of life;
But like a streamer strown upon the wind,
We fling our souls to fate and to the future.
And to die young is youth's divinest gift—
To pass from one world fresh into another
Ere change hath lost the charm of soft regret,
And feel the immortal impulse from within
Which makes the coming life cry alway—On!
There is a fire-fly in the southern clime
Which shineth only when upon the wing;
So is it with the mind: when once we rest
We darken."
We have not yet given any favourable specimen of those more hardy and adventurous flights of imagination—those shadowy grandeurs—which may be said to be peculiarly characteristic of Festus. Selection is not easy. As, in illustrating the exaggerations and deformities of the work, it is difficult to quote many lines together without encountering something really fine, and which would be felt as such, if it could be removed from its unfortunate neighbourhood; so also it is equally difficult to cite any moderately long passage, for the purpose of justifying admiration, without being suddenly arrested by something very grotesque and absurd. We shall, however, make two selections from these bolder portions of the drama: the first shall be his description of Hell; the second, one of those dreams or visions in which our poet so much delights:—
"Lucifer. Behold my world! Man's science counts it not
Upon the brightest sky. He never knows
How near it comes to him: but, swathed in clouds
As though in plumed and palled state, it steals
Hearse-like and thief-like round the universe,
For ever rolling and returning not—
Robbing all worlds of many an angel soul—
With its light hidden in its breast, which burns
With all concentrate and superfluent woe.
Nor sun nor moon illume it, and to those
Which dwell in it, not live, the starry skies
Have told no time since first they entered there.
Be sure
That this is Hell. The blood which hath imbrued
Earth's breast, since first men met in war, may hope
Yet to be formed again and reascend,
Each drop its individual vein; the foam bubble,
Sun-drawn out of the sea into the clouds,
To scale the cataract down which it fell;
But for the lost to rise to or regain
Heaven,—or to hope it,—is impossible."