Then pause and be enlightened; there is more In such a survey than the sating gaze Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place, or the mere praise Of art and its great masters, who could raise What former time, nor skill, nor thought could plan; The fountain of sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. CLX. Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain-- A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. CLXI. Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and light-- The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight; The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. CLXII. But in his delicate form--a dream of Love, Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast Longed for a deathless lover from above, And maddened in that vision--are expressed All that ideal beauty ever blessed The mind within its most unearthly mood, When each conception was a heavenly guest-- A ray of immortality--and stood Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god? CLXIII. And if it be Prometheus stole from heaven The fire which we endure, it was repaid By him to whom the energy was given Which this poetic marble hath arrayed With an eternal glory--which, if made By human hands, is not of human thought And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid One ringlet in the dust--nor hath it caught A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 'twas wrought. CLXIV. But where is he, the pilgrim of my song, The being who upheld it through the past? Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. He is no more--these breathings are his last; His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, And he himself as nothing:--if he was Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed With forms which live and suffer--let that pass-- His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, CLXV. Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all That we inherit in its mortal shroud, And spreads the dim and universal pall Thro' which all things grow phantoms; and the cloud Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays A melancholy halo scarce allowed To hover on the verge of darkness; rays Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze, CLXVI.