Mysterious enthusiasm, Love! The heart's supremest power;--which doth combine Within itself religion, poetry, And heroism. Love, what may befall When destiny has bade us separate From him who has the secret of our soul; Who gave us the heart's life, celestial life. What may befall when absence, or when death Isolate woman on this earth?--She pines, She sinks. How often have these rocks Offer'd their cold support to the forlorn! Those once worn in the heart;--those once sustain'd Upon a hero's arm
Before you is Sorrento:--dwelling there Was Tasso's sister, when the pilgrim came Asking asylum 'gainst the prince unjust From humble friends: long grief had almost quench'd Reason's clear light, but genius still was left. Yet kept he knowledge of the things divine, When earthly images were all obscured. Thus shrinking from the desert spread around. Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds No likeness to itself; no echo given By Nature; and the common crowd but hold As madness that desire of the rapt soul, Which finds not in this world enough of air-- Of high enthusiasm, or of hope. For Destiny compels exalted minds;-- The poet, whose imagination draws Its power from loving and from suffering-- They are the vanish'd from another sphere. For the Almighty goodness might not frame All for the few--th' elect or the proscribed. Why spoke the ancients with such awe of Fate? What had this terrible Fate to do with them, The common and the quiet, who pursue The seasons, and still follow timidly The beaten track of ordinary life? But she, the priestess of the oracle, Shook with the presence of the cruel power. I know not what the involuntary force That plunges Genius into misery. Genius doth catch the music of the spheres, Which mortal ear was never meant to know. Genius can penetrate the mysteries Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts; A power hath entered in the inmost soul, Whose presence may not be contained.
Sublime Creator of this lovely world, Protect us: our exertions have no strength; Our hope's a lie. Tumultuous tyranny Our passions exercise, and neither leave Repose nor liberty. What we may do To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate. We may have said but yesterday some word Which may not be recalled. Still, when our mind Is elevate with noblest thoughts, we feel As on the height of some great edifice, Giddiness blending all things in our sight; But even there, woe! terrible woe! appears. Not lost amid the clouds, it pierces through; It flings the shades asunder; O my God! What doth it herald to us?" L. E. L.