Forsook His former city, what could be,
Of earthly structures, in His honor piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled

In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CLV.

Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; And why? it is not lessen'd; but thy mind, Expanded by the genius of the spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of immortality; and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, See thy God, face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow.

Deceived by its gigantic elegance,

Vastness which grows - but grows to harmonize

All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles richer paintings

where flame

The lamps of gold — and haughty dome w vies

In air with Earth's chief structures, the their frame

Sits on the firm-set ground and this clouds must claim.

CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou break,

To separate contemplation, the great who And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye - so here condense thy To more immediate objects, and control Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got heart

Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did dart,

CLVIII.

Not by his fault but thine: Our outy

sense

Is but of gradual grasp — and as it is

That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice

Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature's littleness,

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

CLIX.

Then pause and be enlightened; there is

more

In such a survey than the sating gaze

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place, or the mere praise Of art and its great masters, who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan;

The fountain of sublimity displays

Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of

man

Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can.

CLX.

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-
A father's love and mortal's agony

With an immortal's patience blending: -Vain

The struggle; vain, against the coiling st And gripe, and deepening of the drag

grasp,

The old man's clench; the long envend chain

Rivets the living links, - the enormous as Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp

gasp.

CLXI.

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light-
The Sun in human limbs array'd, and bro
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot the ar
bright

With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity.

CLXII.

But in his delicate form a dream of Lov Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose br Long'd for a deathless lover from above, And madden'd in that vision

All that ideal beauty ever bless'd

are expres

The mind within its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guest

A ray of immortality. and stood,

Starlike, around, until they gather'd to a god.

CLXIII.

-

And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven The fire which we endure, it was repaid By him to whom the energy was given Which this poetic marble hath array'd With an eternal glory — which, if made By human hands, is not of human thought; And Time himself hath hallow'd it, nor laid One ringlet in the dust — nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought.

CLXIV.

But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more these breathings are his last;
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing: - - if he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd