XXIV.
And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The Spectres whom no exorcism can bind,—
The cold—the changed—perchance the dead, anew—
The mourned—the loved—the lost—too many! yet how few![1]
XXV.
But my Soul wanders; I demand it back
To meditate amongst decay, and stand
A ruin amidst ruins; there to track
Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land
Which was the mightiest in its old command,
And is the loveliest, and must ever be
The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,—
The beautiful—the brave—the Lords of earth and sea,
- ↑ [Compare Scott's Lady of the Lake, I. xxxiii. lines 21, 22—
"They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."]
