Dull flats, scream-startled, as the exulting train Thither Walter accompanies him. We subjoin part of a dialogue between him and the "one child," in whom, more than in all his land, old Mr. Wilmott was blest. Walter had been describing his own story under the name of another per son. "Violet. Did you know well that youth of whom you spake? Walter. Know him! Oh yes; I knew him as myself, Two passions dwelt at once within his soul, Violet. Alas! if Love rose never from the dead. Walter. Between him and the lady of his love There stood a wrinkled worldling. And when she died, The rivers of his heart ran all to waste; They found no ocean; dry sands sucked them up. She said she loved him, would be dead in spring As ceremonious as a chapel keeps A relic of a saint. And in the spring The doting idiot went. Walter. Laugh till your sides ache! oh, he went, poor fool, And a dull, sobbing rain. Do you not laugh? Violet. You cannot laugh yourself, sir, nor can I. Her unpolluted corse doth sleep in earth Like a pure thought within a sinful soul. Dearer is Earth to God for her sweet sake. The issue and catastrophe of a new love-adventure here, in this unhappy and distempered period of baffled and disappointed ambition, and power struggling vainly for a vent, may be conjectured from the commencement of a scene, which perhaps might be more distinctly marked as the opening of the third part. [A bridge in a City. Midnight. Walter alone.] God Good men have said, That sometimes God leaves sinners to their sin, - My worst part is insurgent, and my will Three years appear to have gone by, when Walter, like a stag sore-hunted, returns to the home of his childhood. ""Twas here I spent my youth, as far removed As unknown isle asleep in unknown seas. As ghostlike from the dim and trembling sea Here, in this determination, he writes his poem, attains in this spirit the object which had formerly been his ambition. And here, in the last scene, we find him happy, or peaceful at least, with Violet. "Violet. I always pictured you in such a place Writing your book, and hurrying on, as if You had a long and wondrous tale to tell, And felt Death's cold hand closing round your heart. When I was dwelling by the moaning sea, Your name was blown to me on every wind, And I was glad; for by that sign I knew You had fulfilled your heart, and hoped you would Put off the robes of sorrow, and put on The singing crown of Fame." Again, below, she resumes, "Walter! dost thou believe Thou noble soul, Walter. Lifts up a stranded boat upon the beach. I will go forth 'mong men, not mailed in scorn, But in the armor of a pure intent. Great duties are before me, and great songs, So be it, O young Poet; Poet, perhaps it is early to affirm; but so be it, at any rate, O young man. While you go forth in that "armor of pure intent," the hearts of some readers, be assured, will go with you. Empedocles on Etna and other Poems, with its earlier companion volume, The Strayed Reveller and other Poems, are, it would seem, the productions (as is, or was, the English phrase) of a scholar and a gentleman; a man who has received a refined education, seen refined "society," and been more, we dare say, in the world, which is called the world, than in all likelihood has a Glasgow mechanic. More refined, therefore, and more highly educated sensibilities, too delicate, are they, for common service?-a calmer judgment also, a more poised and steady intellect, the siccum lumen of the soul; a finer and rarer aim perhaps, and certainly a keener sense of difficulty, in life; these are the characteristics of him whom we are to call "A." Empedocles, the sublime Sicilian philosopher, the fragments of whose moral and philosophic poems testify to his genius and character, — Empedocles, in the Poem before us, weary of misdirected effort, weary of imperfect thought, impatient of a life which appears to him a miserable failure, and incapable, as he conceives, of doing any thing that shall be true to that proper interior self, "Being one with which we are one with the whole world," wandering forth, with no determined purpose, into the mountain solitudes, followed for a while by Pausanias, the eager and laborious physician, and at a distance by Callicles, the boymusician, flings himself at last, upon a sudden impulse and apparent inspiration of the intellect, into the boiling crater of Etna; rejoins there the elements. "Slave of sense," he was saying, pondering near the verge, "Slave of sense I have in no wise been: but slave of thought? I cannot : But I have not grown easy in these bonds, Yea, I take myself to witness. That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, Allowed no fear. |