archangelic intellect, shut out by a mighty shadow of eclipse from the bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in "Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. And _how_? Is it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems to sway the movements of destruction? No; it is only through the gloomy mystery of the ruin itself,--ruin revealed upon a scale so vast and under conditions of terror the most appalling,--ruin wrought under the semblance of an almighty passion for revenge directed against the human race. Thus, as an expression of the attitude which the sea maintains toward man, we have the following passage of Æschylian grandeur, but also of Æschylian gloom:-- "Thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy _playful_ spray, And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay!" Who but this dark spirit, forever wooing the powers of darkness, and of darkness the most sullen, praying to Nemesis alone, could, with such lamentable lack of faith in the purity and soundness of human affections, have given utterance to a sentiment like this:-- "O love! no habitant of earth thou art,-- An _unseen_ seraph we believe in thee"? or the following:-- "Who loves, raves,--'tis youth's frenzy," etc.? and again:-- "Few--_none_--find what they love or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving having removed Antipathies"? This, then, is the nearest approach to human love,--the removal of all antipathies! But even these "recur erelong, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong: And circumstance--that unspiritual god And miscreator--makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust,--the dust which all have trod."