The gulf! and how the giant element,’ &c. (stanzas 70–72)].
We’ll look no more: such kind of writing is enough to turn the brain of the reader or the author. The repetitions in the last stanza are like interlineations in an imperfect manuscript, left for afterselection; such as, ‘Hope upon a death-bed’—‘Love watching madness,’—‘Unworn its steady dies’—‘Serene its brilliant hues,’—‘the distracted waters’—‘the torture of the scene,’ &c. There is here in every line an effort at brilliancy, and a successful effort; and yet, in the next, as if nothing had been done, the same thing is attempted to be expressed again with the same labour as before, the same success, and with as little appearance of repose or satisfaction of mind.
It is in vain to attempt a regular account of the remainder of this poem, which is a mass of discordant things, incoherent, not gross, seen ‘now in glimmer and now in gloom,’ and ‘moving wild laughter in the throat of death.’ The poem is like the place it describes:—
‘The double night of ages, and of her,
Night’s daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap[[47]]
All round us: we but feel our way to err:
The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desart, where we steer
Stumbling on recollections; now we clap