THE poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magniticence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his de sires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and selfpossessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse He imwith an intelligence similar to itself. Conages to himself the Being whom he loves versant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginaties unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet,

the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disag pointment, he descends to an untimely grave.

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influ ences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tenderhearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those who constitute, tounforeseeing multitudes

gether with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

And cherished these my kindred; then forgive

This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw

No portion of your wonted favor now!

Mother of this unfathomable world! Favor my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched

Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,

And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed

In charnels and on coffins, where black death

Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,

Hoping to still these obstinate questionings

Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,

Thy messenger, to render up the tale

Of what we are.

In lone and silent

hours, When night makes a weird sound of its

own stillness,

Like an inspired and desperate alchy

mist

Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

With my most innocent love, until strange tears

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

Such magic as compels the charmed night

To render up thy charge: . . and, though ne'er yet

Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,

Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,

Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome

Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain

May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns

Of night and day, and the deep heart of

man.

With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps

He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret

caves

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

Of fire and poison, inaccessible

To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrys

olite.

Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

And the green earth lost in his heart its claims

To love and wonder; he would linger

long

In lonesome vales, making the wild his home.

Until the doves and squirrels would

partake

From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,

Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,

And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er

The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own.

His wandering step Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange

Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples

there,

Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble demons watch