20
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,
Catching new life from transitory death,—­
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
And dies on the creation of its breath, 25
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits: 
Was the pure stream of feeling
That sprung from these sweet notes,
And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 30

Joy to the Spirit came,—­
Such joy as when a lover sees
The chosen of his soul in happiness,
And witnesses her peace
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 35
Sees her unfaded cheek
Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
Thrills with her lovely eyes,
Which like two stars amid the heaving main
Sparkle through liquid bliss. 40

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen: 
’I will not call the ghost of ages gone
To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;
The present now is past,
And those events that desolate the earth 45
Have faded from the memory of Time,
Who dares not give reality to that
Whose being I annul.  To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep,
Space, matter, time, and mind.  Futurity 50
Exposes now its treasure; let the sight
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal
Where virtue fixes universal peace,
And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 55
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
A lighthouse o’er the wild of dreary waves.

’The habitable earth is full of bliss;
Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, 60
Where matter dared not vegetate or live,
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 65
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves
And melodize with man’s blest nature there.

’Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 70
Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love
Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 75
Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness beheld
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,