Poetry Archives

Mighty magician! who on Torneo’s brow,
  When sullen tempests wrap the throne of night,
  Art wont to sit and catch the gleam of light
That shoots athwart the gloom opaque below;
And listen to the distant death-shriek long
  From lonely mariner foundering in the deep,
  Which rises slowly up the rocky steep,
While the weird sisters weave the horrid song:
  Or, when along the liquid sky
  Serenely chant the orbs on high,
  Dost love to sit in musing trance,
  And mark the northern meteor’s dance
  (While far below the fitful oar
  Flings its faint pauses on the steepy shore),
  And list the music of the breeze,
  That sweeps by fits the bending seas;
  And often bears with sudden swell
  The shipwreck’d sailor’s funeral knell,
  By the spirits sung, who keep
  Their night-watch on the treacherous deep,
  And guide the wakeful helmsman’s eye
  To Helice in northern sky;
  And there upon the rock reclined
  With mighty visions fill’st the mind,
  Such as bound in magic spell
  Him who grasp’d the gates of Hell,
And, bursting Pluto’s dark domain,
Held to the day the terrors of his reign.

Genius of Horror and romantic awe,
  Whose eye explores the secrets of the deep,
  Whose power can bid the rebel fluids creep,
Can force the inmost soul to own its law;
  Who shall now, sublimest spirit,
  Who shall now thy wand inherit,
  From him thy darling child who best
  Thy shuddering images expressed?
  Sullen of soul, and stern, and proud,
  His gloomy spirit spurn’d the crowd,
  And now he lays his aching head
In the dark mansion of the silent dead.

Mighty magician! long thy wand has lain
  Buried beneath the unfathomable deep;
  And oh! for ever must its efforts sleep,
May none the mystic sceptre e’er regain?
  Oh, yes, ’tis his! Thy other son!
  He throws thy dark-wrought tunic on,
  Fuesslin waves thy wand,—again they rise,
  Again thy wildering forms salute our ravish’d eyes.
Him didst thou cradle on the dizzy steep
  Where round his head the vollied lightnings flung,
  And the loud winds that round his pillow rung
Woo’d the stern infant to the arms of sleep.

  Or on the highest top of Teneriffe
Seated the fearless boy, and bade him look
  Where far below the weather-beaten skiff
On the gulf bottom of the ocean strook.
Thou mark’dst him drink with ruthless ear
  The death-sob, and, disdaining rest,
Thou saw’st how danger fired his breast,
And in his young hand couch’d the visionary spear.
  Then, Superstition, at thy call,
  She bore the boy to Odin’s Hall,
  And set before his awe-struck sight
  The savage feast and spectred fight;
  And summoned from his mountain tomb
  The ghastly warrior son of gloom,
  His fabled runic rhymes to sing,
  While fierce Hresvelger flapp’d his wing;
  Thou show’dst the trains the shepherd sees,
  Laid on the stormy Hebrides,
  Which on the mists of evening gleam,
  Or crowd the foaming desert stream;
  Lastly her storied hand she waves,
  And lays him in Florentian caves;
  There milder fables, lovelier themes,
  Enwrap his soul in heavenly dreams,
  There pity’s lute arrests his ear,
  And draws the half reluctant tear;
  And now at noon of night he roves
  Along the embowering moonlight groves,
  And as from many a cavern’d dell
  The hollow wind is heard to swell,
  He thinks some troubled spirit sighs,
  And as upon the turf he lies,
  Where sleeps the silent beam of night,
  He sees below the gliding sprite,
  And hears in Fancy’s organs sound
  Aërial music warbling round.

  Taste lastly comes and smooths the whole,
  And breathes her polish o’er his soul;
  Glowing with wild, yet chasten’d heat,
  The wondrous work is now complete.

  The Poet dreams:—The shadow flies,
  And fainting fast its image dies.
  But lo! the Painter’s magic force
  Arrests the phantom’s fleeting course;
  It lives—it lives—the canvas glows,
  And tenfold vigour o’er it flows.
The Bard beholds the work achieved,
  And as he sees the shadow rise
  Sublime before his wondering eyes,
Starts at the image his own mind conceived.