I wrapped myself in grandeur then
And donned a visionary crown;
Yet it was not that Fantasy
Had thrown her mantle over me;
But that, among the rabble-men,
Lion ambition is chained down
And crouches to a keeper's hand:
Not so in deserts where the grand,
The wild, the terrible, conspire

With their own breath to fan his fire.

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand!
Is she not queen of Earth? her pride
Above all cities? in her hand

Their destinies? in all beside
Of glory which the world hath known,
Stands she not nobly and alone?
Falling, her veriest stepping-stone
Shall form the pedestal of a throne!

And who her sovereign? Timour - he
Whom the astonished people saw
Striding o'er empires haughtily
A diademed outlaw!

O human love, thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
Which fall'st into the soul like rain
Upon the Siroc-withered plain,
And, failing in thy power to bless,
But leav'st the heart a wilderness!
Idea! which bindest life around
With music of so strange a sound
And beauty of so wild a birth-
Farewell! for I have won the Earth.

When Hope, the eagle that towered, could see
No cliff beyond him in the sky,
His pinions were bent droopingly,

And homeward turned his softened eye.
"T was sunset: when the sun will part,
There comes a sullenness of heart
To him who still would look upon

The glory of the summer sun.

That soul will hate the evening mist

So often lovely, and will list

To the sound of the coming darkness (known

To those whose spirits hearken) as one

Who, in a dream of night, would fly,

But cannot, from a danger nigh.

What though the moon

the white moon

Shed all the splendor of her noon?
Her smile is chilly, and her beam,
In that time of dreariness, will seem
(So like you gather in your breath)
A portrait taken after death.
And boyhood is a summer sun
Whose waning is the dreariest one;
For all we live to know is known,
And all we seek to keep hath flown.
Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall
With the noonday beauty—which is all!

I reached my home, my home no more,
For all had flown who made it so.

I passed from out its mossy door,
And, though my tread was soft and low,

A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known:

Oh, I defy thee, Hell, to show,
On beds of fire that burn below,

An humbler heart a deeper woe.

Father, I firmly do believe

I know, for Death, who comes for me From regions of the blest afar Where there is nothing to deceive, Hath left his iron gate ajar, And rays of truth you cannot see Are flashing through Eternity I do believe that Eblis hath A snare in every human path; Else how, when in the holy grove I wandered of the idol, Love, Who daily scents his snowy wings With incense of burnt offerings From the most unpolluted things, Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven Above with trellised rays from Heaven No mote may shun, no tiniest fly, The lightning of his eagle eye, — How was it that Ambition crept, Unseen, amid the revels there,

Till, growing bold, he laughed and leapt In the tangles of Love's very hair?

SCH

TO SCIENCE

66
A PROLOGUE TO AL AARAAF "

CIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art, Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree?

AL AARAAF

PART I

OH! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,

As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy:
Oh! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill,
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed
That, like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell:
Oh! nothing of the dross of ours,
Yet all the beauty, all the flowers

That list our love, and deck our bowers,
Adorn yon world afar, afar

The wandering star.

"T was a sweet time for Nesace: for there Her world lay lolling on the golden air, Near four bright suns, a temporary rest, An oasis in desert of the blest.

Away-away-'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o'er the unchained soul, —
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destined eminence, -
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favored one of God;

But, now, the ruler of an anchored realm,