From every line shall fresh instruction stream: The cottage-hearth thy pensive plaint shall hear ; In regal hall thy glittering harp shall gleam; The dark cold breast of lonely sorrow chear; And start from phrenzy's lid conviction's frozen tear.

Heavens! can I stoop to aught of mortal mould, Whom shapes fantastic beck to bliss unknown? Say, can I glote on rayless heaps of gold, When yon ethereal landscape is my own? Where its pure sov'reign plants his fiery throne; Are not his aureate shafts elanced round, "Till, by her twinkling train distinctly known, His sister meek, with paler glories crown'd, Uprears her maiden front, with argent fillet bound ?

Hence the deep gloom that wraps in central shade

The struggling splendours of th' immortal mind!
Hence ev'ry black surmise that would invade
The breast by charming sympathies refin'd!
Ye felon doubts, I give you to the wind:
Fortune benign now blows her gentlest airs,
To aid my vent'rous flight too long confin'd;
And Fancy her undaunted plume prepares,

To sail the highest heav'n:-avaunt ye scowling cares!

THE

ENTHUSIAST.

WITH hurrying finger smite the fervid wire:
Th' intolerable rapture tears my soul;

I burn with inspiration's fiercest fire ;
In lawless liberty my senses roll

Beyond demurer reason's coy control,
Beyond the sapient bounds by prudence laid;
And while unwonted fantasies inspire,

Amid th' interminable waste of shade,
In mad delirium lost, my daring tour is made.

Carr'd in a cloud of hyacinthine hue,
Pluck'd from the lunar shrine, aloft I rise;
And wond'rous sights, unutterable view,

Ting'd with a thousand strange aye-shifting dyes,
Such as astound the weak and daunt the wise,
But often by th' ecstatic gaze are seen,
When Fancy animates th' enamel'd skies
With radiant hosts minute, of wayward mien,
And dusky moonlight clothes the fay encircled green.

High o'er the headlong torrents' foamy fall,
Whose waters howl along the rugged steep,
On the loose-jutting rock, or mould'ring wall,
See where gaunt Danger lays him down to sleep!
The piping winds his mournful vigil keep;
The lightnings blue his stony pillow warm;
Anon, incumbent o'er the dreary deep,

The fiend enormous strides the lab'ring storm, And mid the thund'rous strife expands his giant form.

The vital stream, propell'd from every part,
Tumultuous leaves each veiny channel dry:
The purple flood flows heavy on my heart,
As startled Madness meets my blasted eye.
How lamentable now his loaded sigh,
Of horrible intent, and fix'd despair!
And now again, with agonizing cry,

He beats his boxen cheek, he rends his hair, 'Till in hot tears is quench'd his eyeball's fiery glare.

The sudden light that flash'd athwart his brain, Dread interval! but more augments his woe; Oft has that bare head brav'd the dashing rain, Its brown locks oft been silver'd o'er with snow.

Ye savage tempests, cease awhile to blow;

Ye angry heavens: upfurl your sheeted flame :
From love's deluding cup the poisons flow

That drench in anguish his distracted frame, That leave him man's fair form without the boasted

name.

Ah! who is she, of dark unsettled brow, That bleeding drags an angel-shape behind, And quaffs the living gore ?—I know her now : 'Tis Jealousy, that monster of the mind, In whom are thousand contraries combin'd: Now moping, melancholy, o'er the wild; Now fretful, rash, unreas'ning, unconfin'd ; In constancy's best blood her hands defil'd, And strangling in its birth her own devoted child.

From thee, severe, insinuative pest,

Such crimes terrific tragically spring, As in some tale, by fear's pale lip exprest, Bid the babe closer to the bosom cling, And breathe amazement o'er the shudd'ring ring. Ne'er may thy stealing serpents, that devour The roses wove in love's purpurcal wing, With cureless venom taint affection's flow'r, Or coil thy latent deaths in my Anthemoe's bow'r!

Where is thy magic pencil, to pourtray This scene so fraught with shadows of surprise, Oh thou who, fir'd by one eccentric ray Of Shakspeare, bad'st thy wild creation rise, Revealing mystic rites to mortal eyes?* For lo! from darkness' unexhausted womb, Spectres of horrid feature, hideous size, Or unimagin'd pow'r, inform the gloom With motion and effect, and cheat the hungry tomb.

Here bat-like portents cleave the murky air, And flap with strident scream the leathern wing; Some, like the tyger rushing from his lair, Start from the dense profound with furious spring; Some in shrill tone their doleful dirges sing; Some with their iron fangs prepare for prey; Hiss the fell snakes; the rusty fetters ring; Groans the rack'd wretch his stubborn soul away; Or mid th' insatiate blaze balf-figur'd goblins play.

Oh for the sprig of sacred misletoe,
Spell-breaking vervain, or as potent rue,

To scare those imps malign who work me woe!
Oh for nine drops of cold nocturnal dew,

* Alluding to Mr. Fuzeli's picture from the Midsummer Night's Dream.