Nor lacked the hermit's humble shed Such comforts as our natures ask To fit them for life's daily task. The cheering fire, the peaceful bed, The simple meal in season spread, While by the lone lamp's trembling light, As blazed the hearth-stone, clear and bright, O'er Homer's page he hung, Or Maro's martial numbers scanned-- For classic lore of many a land Flowed smoothly o'er his tongue. Oft with rapt eye, and skill profound, He woke the entrancing viol's sound, Or touched the sweet guitar. For heavenly music deigned to dwell An inmate in his cloistered cell, As beams the solem star, All night, with meditative eyes Where some lone, rock-bound fountain lies. As through the groves, with quiet tread, On his accustomed haunts he sped, The mother-thrush, unstartled, sung Her descant to her callow young, And fearless o'er his threshold prest The wanderer from the sparrow's nest, The squirrel raised a sparkling eye Nor from his kernel cared to fly As passed that gentle hermit by. No timid creature shrank to meet His pensive glance, serenely sweet; From his own kind, alone, he sought The screen of solitary thought. Whether the world too harshly prest Its iron o'er a yielding breast, Or forced his morbid youth to prove The pang of unrequited love, We know not, for he never said Aught of the life he erst had led. On Iris isle, a summer-bower He twined with branch and vine and flower, And there he mused on rustic seat, Unconscious of the noonday heat, Or 'neath the crystal waters lay, Luxuriant, in the swimmer's play. Yet once the whelming flood grew strong. And bore him like a weed along, Though with convulsive grasp of pain And heaving breast, he strove in vain, Then sinking 'neath the infuriate tide, Lone, as he lived, the hermit died. On, by the rushing current swept, The lifeless corse its voyage kept, To where, in narrow gorge comprest, The whirlpool-eddies never rest, But boil with wild tumultuous sway, The Maelstrom of Niagara. And there, within that rocky bound, In swift gyrations round and round, Mysterious course it held, Now springing from the torrent hoarse, Now battling, as with maniac force, To mortal strife compelled. Right fearful, 'neath the moonbeam bright, It was to see that brow so white, And mark the ghastly dead Leap upward from his torture-bed, As if in passion-gust, And tossing wild with agony Resist the omnipotent decree Of dust to dust.