[An eagle passes.] Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well mayst thou swoop so near me; -I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision. - Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit With the blest tone which made me! Ye toppling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things that still would live; On the young flourishing forest, or the hut And hamlet of the harmless villager. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell, Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, Heaped with the damned like pebbles. I am giddy. THE APPARITION. BYRON. I SEE a dusk and awful figure rise Like an infernal god from out the earth; His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form Robed as with angry clouds; he stands between Thyself and me- but I do fear him not. Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him? Ah! he unveils his aspect; on his brow The thunder-scars are graven; from his eye Glares forth the immortality of hell. Avaunt! BYRON. It's no in titles or in rank; If happiness hae not her seat And centre in the breast, Nae treasures, nor pleasures, FAITH. BURNS. BETTER trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart that if believed Had blessed one's life with true believing. Oh! in this mocking world too fast The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth; Better be cheated to the last |