LI

But in that haunt, howe'er in thought secure,
The secret bias of the heart is known,
The pride or vanities that still endure;
Or the mind's first simplicity is shown,
Ere called to ripen rankly on a throne,
Passion and crime that else had been untaught;
So rises then the cell or hall of stone,
True emblem of the mind, its power thus brought
To mate with solitude, and court, or flee from thought.

LII

And Hadrian's vanity the spot endeared;
A city in a villa's walls confined,
All objects from all foreign climes upreared,
In one vast labyrinth confusedly joined,
The theatre, arena, bath, combined.
Through the bright vale the mimic Peneus ran,
Taught through Thessalian Tempe's woods to wind:
Here was meek nature masqued, and mocked by man,
Art toiled, invention racked, to crowd life's fleeting span.

LIII

Lo, where emerging from the depths of shade,
Of wildly tangling woods that round her rise,
The draperies of nature unarrayed
In rude magnificence, Albano lies,
Her lake of beauty opening to the skies,
Bosomed in crags, that, darkening mid air,
Reveal nought but the azure of her eyes,
O'ershadowed by the acacia's golden hair;
A blessing to the eye that lovingly dwells there.

LIV

The mirror of Diana! where, from high
Reflected, her ethereal face she viewed,
Whose beauty tranced, as now, the poet's eye.
There the rich shadows of her sacred wood,
Where, save her starry Nymphs, none dared intrude;
There, while they sped the chase, she, goddess coy,
Enthroned amid her peerless solitude,
Watched in his sleep the unconscious shepherd-boy,
And owned the virgin's love, the deep o'erflowing joy.

LV

Pure, beautiful beliefs! the heart refining
From sensual and dark idolatries,
To every form of nature life assigning;
Allying her with our humanities;
When woodland depths were godheads' sanctuaries;
Where the shy Dryad haunts of man could shun;
Where the swift shadow shaped on fancy's eyes
The Oread, where sequestered from the sun,
The Naiad in her lake spread round her waters dun.

LVI

Then was each fount the altar of a god,
Each gushing streamlet holier, where man traced
Himself reflected as in youth he trod,
The image of the Maker ineffaced;
When the wood's shadows his full heart embraced
With joy and gratitude; his feast was spread
On the green turf with due libations graced,
Reverence to powers avowed that influence shed;
Joy to the living pledged, remembrance to the dead!

LVII

They live no more, those spirits of the mind:
What loftier knowledge hath Prometheus won?
Is not the Ineffable with nature joined,
Imaging all, the multiform in One ?
What were our earth, faith's cherished visions gone,
Blest by no eye, nor hued by the full heart
That feels the life of all it dwells upon?
What were our world should love and faith depart?
A lazar-house of woe where death but whets his dart.

LVIII

But the large gods have vanished out of heaven;
Stars fallen from their places, fables told,
Shadows whose giant fanes, o'erthrown or riven,
Attest the majesty of faiths of old.
The cloud-compelling Zeus whose arm controlled
The Titan host, hath melted on his throne,
Heavy those eyes in sleep that lightnings rolled.
A mightier Power hath hurled the thunder-stone,
The Olympian hill is scaled, the grey tradition flown!

LIX

And he, pure light's divinest harbinger,
With rays far-darting his bright temples bound,
Sun-haired Apollo sinks from his red car.
The soul awaked, and in that circle found
The shadow of the One; Poseidon, crowned
With his great trident storms no longer wrought;
Blue-eyed Athena's name became a sound,
The Aphrodite fled shrines, no longer sought,
The passion of the heart, the idolatry forgot!

LX

Buried in woods, grey Pan with upraised head,
Fixed on broad heaven his unmoved sightless eyes,
The quickening soul of Nature in him dead;
His oaten pipe amid the sedges lies,
Answering no more life's ancient melodies;
The Nymphs had fled, transformed, yet visible;
Through the blue stream the white-armed Naiad plies;
The inconstant Oread flits along the hill;
The sun-lit boughs shape forth the Dryads' shadow still.