What master-voice shall from the dim profound Of Thought evoke its fearful, mighty Powers?— Those dread enchanters, whose terrific call May never be gainsaid; whose wondrous thrall Alone the Infinite, the Uncreate, may bound; In whose dark presence e'en the Reason cowers, Lost in their mystery, e'en while her slaves, Doing her proud behests. Ay,...Learn More

How vast, how dread, o'erwhelming, is the thought Of space interminable! to the soul A circling weight that crushes into naught Her mighty faculties! a wondrous whole, Without or parts, beginning, or an end! How fearful, then, on desperate wings to send The fancy e'en amid the waste profound! Yet, born as if all daring to astound, Thy giant hand, O...Learn More

As in that twilight, superstitious age When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind Seemed fraught with meanings of supernal kind, When e'en the learned, philosophic sage, Wont with the stars through boundless space to range, Listened with reverence to the changeling's tale;— E'en so, thou strangest of all beings strange! E'en so thy visionary scenes I...Learn More

A smile!—Alas, how oft the lips that bear This floweret of the soul but give to air, Like flowering graves, the growth of buried care! Then drear indeed that miserable heart Where this last human boon is aye denied! If such there be, it claims in man no part, Whose deepest grief has yet a mirthful bride. For whose so many as the sad man's face? His...Learn More

From one unused in pomp of words to raise A courtly monument of empty praise, Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile, Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile, Accept, O West, these unaffected lays, Which genius claims and grateful justice pays. Still green in age, thy vigorous powers impart The youthful freshness of a blameless heart: For...Learn More

And thou art gone, most loved, most honoured friend! No, never more thy gentle voice shall blend With air of Earth its pure ideal tones, Binding in one, as with harmonious zones, The heart and intellect. And I no more Shall with thee gaze on that unfathomed deep, The Human Soul,—as when, pushed off the shore, Thy mystic bark would through the...Learn More

O, now I feel as though another sense, From heaven descending, had informed my soul; I feel the pleasurable, full control Of Grace, harmonious, boundless, and intense. In thee, celestial Group, embodied lives The subtile mystery, that speaking gives Itself resolved; the essences combined Of Motion ceaseless, Unity complete. Borne like a leaf by...Learn More

The Earth has had her visitation. Like to this She hath not known, save when the mounting waters Made of her orb one universal ocean. For now the Tree that grew in Paradise, The deadly Tree that first gave Evil motion, And sent its poison through Earth's sons and daughters, Had struck again its root in every land; And now its fruit was ripe,—about...Learn More

O Art, high gift of Heaven! how oft defamed When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits, By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed By some who would invoke thee; but not so By him,—the noble Tuscan,*—who gave birth To forms unseen of man, unknown to Earth, Now living habitants; he felt the glow Of...Learn More

Full well, Tibaldi, did thy kindred mind The mighty spell of Buonarroti own. Like one who, reading magic words, receives The gift of intercourse with worlds unknown, 'T was thine, deciphering Nature's mystic leaves, To hold strange converse with the viewless wind; To see the Spirits, in embodied forms, Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and...Learn More

Oh, who can look on that celestial face, And kindred for it claim with aught on earth? If ever here more lovely form had birth— No—never that supernal purity—that grace So eloquent of unimpassioned love! That, by a simple movement, thus imparts Its own harmonious peace, the while our hearts Rise, as by instinct, to the world above. And yet we look...Learn More