The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrown'd....
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough....
Yet must I think less wildly:—I have thought
Too long and darkly, till my brain became
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poison'd. 'Tis too late!
Yet I am changed; though still enough the same
In strength to bear what time cannot abate,
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing fate.
.... But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with man, with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell'd,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell'd;
Proud though in desolation, which could find,
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.
.... Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and hearth, and earthborn jars
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his spirits to that flight,
He had been happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.
But in man's dwellings he became a thing
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Droop'd as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barr'd-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat
Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wing expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles
O'er the far time, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged lion's marble piles,
When Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles.
She looks a sea-Cybele fresh from Ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers
At airy distance, with majestic motion,
A ruler of the waters and their powers:
And such she was;—her daughters had their dowers
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East
Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers:
In purple was she robed, and of her feast
Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased....
[326]: Talavera.