III.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,[70] To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, 40 In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine,[71] A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; 50 His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself--an equal to all woes--[m][72] And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can descry Its own concentered recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory.

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]

A FRAGMENT.[73]

Could I remount the river of my years To the first fountain of our smiles and tears, I would not trace again the stream of hours Between their outworn banks of withered flowers, But bid it flow as now--until it glides Into the number of the nameless tides.

* * * * *

What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart? The whole of that of which we are a part? For Life is but a vision--what I see Of all which lives alone is Life to me, 10 And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrancers our hours of rest. The absent are the dead--for they are cold, And ne'er can be what once we did behold; And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet The unforgotten do not all forget, Since thus divided--equal must it be If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea; 20 It may be both--but one day end it must In the dark union of insensate dust. The under-earth inhabitants--are they But mingled millions decomposed to clay? The ashes of a thousand ages spread Wherever Man has trodden or shall tread? Or do they in their silent cities dwell Each in his incommunicative cell? Or have they their own language? and a sense Of breathless being?--darkened and intense 30 As Midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth! Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth? The dead are thy inheritors--and we But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the Grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold[74] Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more. 40

* * * * *

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 36.]

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.

Rousseau--Voltaire--our Gibbon--and De Staël-- Leman![75] these names are worthy of thy shore, Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall: To them thy banks were lovely as to all, But they have made them lovelier, for the lore Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Of human hearts the ruin of a wall Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by _thee_ How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,[76] The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the Heirs of Immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of Glory real!

Diodati, _July_, 1816.

[First published, _Prisoner of Chillon_, etc., 1816.]

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA.[n][77]