Page:Corinne - L. E. L.pdf/14

228

Sighing to reach the other far-off land. Did they not ask in their long solitude Of silence, of all nature, of the sky, Star-shining?—and from the deep sea, one sound. One only tone of the beloved voice They never more might hear.

Mysterious enthusiasm, Love! The heart's supremest power;—which doth combine Within itself religion, poetry, And heroism. Love, what may befall When destiny has bade us separate From him who has the secret of our soul; Who gave us the heart's life, celestial life. What may befall when absence, or when death Isolate woman on this earth?—She pines, She sinks. How often have these rocks Offer'd their cold support to the forlorn! Those once worn in the heart;—those once sustain’d Upon a hero's arm.

Before you is Sorrento:—dwelling there Was Tasso's sister, when the pilgrim came Asking asylum 'gainst the prince unjust From humble friends: long grief had almost quench'd Reason's clear light, but genius still was left. Yet kept he knowledge of the things divine, When earthly images were all obscured. Thus shrinking from the desert spread around Doth Genius wander through the world, and finds No likeness to itself; no echo given By Nature; and the Common crowd but hold As madness that desire of the rapt soul, Which finds not in this world enough of air— Of high enthusiasm, or of hope. For Destiny compels exalted minds:— The poet, whose imagination draws Its power from loving and from suffering,— They are the vanish'd from another sphere. For the Almighty goodness might not frame All for the few—th’ elect or the proscribed. Why spoke the ancients with such awe of Fate? What had this terrible Fate to do with them, The common and the quiet, who pursue The seasons, and still follow timidly The beaten track of ordinary life? But she, the priestess of the oracle, Shook with the presence of the cruel power,