CXVIII

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover.
The purple Midnight veil'd that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy; and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befell?

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamour'd Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love the earliest oracle!

CXIX

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? Could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart

The purity of heaven to earthly joys,

Expel the venom and not blunt the dart

The dull satiety which all destroys

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

CXX

Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert; whence arise

But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,

Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies,

And trees whose gums are poison; — such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies. O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

CXXI

O Love! no habitant of earth thou art
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee,
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven,
Even with its own desiring phantasy,

And to a thought such shape and image given,

As haunts the unquench'd soul - parch'd-wearied — wrung - and riven.

CXXII

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation: - where,

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? —

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreach'd Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

"The steep Tarpeian, fittest goal of Treason's race, The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap Cured all ambition."

- Childe Harold, Canto IV, stanza cxii, p. 90.

CXXIII

Who loves, raves - 't is youth's frenzy ; but the cure Is bitterer still. As charm by charm unwinds

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure

Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,

Reaping the whirlwind from the oftsown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize,

wealthiest when most undone.

CXXIV

We wither from our youth, we gasp away·

Sick-sick; unfound the boon-unslaked the thirst,

Though to the last, in verge of our decay,

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first —
But all too late, so are we doubly curst.

Love, fame, ambition, avarice - 't is the same,

Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst

For all are meteors with a different name,

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

Few

none

CXXV

find what they love or could have loved,

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed