Since all, that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning
HT! that liv'st but in the brain?
Call to the
RS, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day----Fond
HT! not one of all that shining
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say--'Ah! loveliest Friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home, and thee!'Vain repetition!
Home and Thou are one.
The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the Thrush and wakened by the Lark,
Without thee were but a becalméd Bark,
Whose Helmsman on an Ocean waste and
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
And art thou nothing?
Such thou art, as
The woodman winding westward up the
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!
An image with a glory round its head...:
This phaenomenon, which the Author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passages of the
DS TO
ON:'Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius: as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated.
The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as a
DS TO
ON, p. 220.
