Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side,
Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide,90
Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear,
Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear;[1]
Invites, when Hieroglyphics[2] are a theme
For sages' labours, or the student's dream;
Attracts, when History's volumes are a toil,—
The first, the freshest bud of Feeling's soil.
Such was this rude rhyme—rhyme is of the rude—
But such inspired the Norseman's solitude,
Who came and conquered; such, wherever rise
Lands which no foes destroy or civilise,100
Exist: and what can our accomplished art
Of verse do more than reach the awakened heart?[3]
VI.
And sweetly now those untaught melodies
Broke the luxurious silence of the skies,
The sweet siesta of a summer day,
The tropic afternoon of Toobonai,
When every flower was bloom, and air was balm,
And the first breath began to stir the palm,
The first yet voiceless wind to urge the wave
All gently to refresh the thirsty cave,110
Where sat the Songstress with the stranger boy,
Who taught her Passion's desolating joy,
Too powerful over every heart, but most
O'er those who know not how it may be lost;
O'er those who, burning in the new-born fire,
Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstacy,
That Life knows no such rapture as to die:
And die they do; for earthly life has nought
- ↑ Than all the records History's annals rear.—[MS. D. erased.]
- ↑ [Jean François Champollion (1790-1832), at a meeting of the Académie des inscriptions, at Paris, September 17, 1822, announced the discovery of the alphabet of hieroglyphics.]
- ↑ [So, too, Shelley, in his Preface to the Revolt of Islam, speaks of "that more essential attribute of Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom."]
