Yet o'er that house there hung a solemn gloom; The step fell timid in each gorgeous room, Vast, sumptuous, dreary as some Eastern pile, Where mutes keep watch--a home without a smile; Still as if silence reign'd there, like a law, And left to pomp no attribute but awe; Save when the swell of sombre festival Jarr'd into joy the melancholy hall, So some chance wind in mournful autumn wrings Discordant notes, although from music-strings. Wild were the wealthy master's moods and strange, As one whose humour found its food in change; Now for whole days content apart to dwell With books and thought--his world the student's cell; And now, with guests around the glittering board, The hermit-Timon shone the Athenian lord. There bloom'd the bright ephemerals of the hour, Whom the fierce ferment forces into flower, The gorgeous nurslings of the social life, Sprung from our hotbeds--Vanity and Strife! Lords of the senate, wrestlers for the state, Grey-hair'd in youth, exhausted, worn,--and great; Pale Book-men,--charming only in their style; And Poets, jaundiced with eternal bile;-- All the poor Titans our Cocytus claims, With tortured livers, and immortal names:-- Such made the guests, Amphitryons well may boast, But still the student travail'd in the host;-- These were the living books he loved to read, Keys to his lore, and comments on his creed. From them he rose with more confirm'd disdain Of the thorn-chaplet and the gilded chain. Oft, from such stately revels, to the shed Where Hunger couch'd, the same dark impulse led; Intent, the Babel, Art has built, to trace, Here scan the height, and there explore the base; That structure call'd "The Civilized," as vain As its old symbol on the Shinar plain, Where Pride collects the bricks and slime, and then But builds the city to divide the men; Swift comes the antique curse,--smites one from one, Rends the great bond, and leaves the pile undone. Man will _o'er muse_--when musing on mankind: The vast expanse defeats the searching mind, Blent in one mass each varying height and hue:-- Wouldst thou seize Nature, Artist?--bound the view! But He, in truth, is banish'd from the ties That curb the ardent, and content the wise; From the pent heart the bubbling passions sweep, To spread in aimless circles o'er the deep. Still in extremes--in each was still betray'd A soul at discord with the part it play'd; A soul in social elements misplaced, Bruised by the grate and yearning for the waste, And wearing custom, as a pard the chain, Now with dull torpor, now with fierce disdain. All who approach'd him by that spell were bound, Which nobler natures weave themselves around: Those stars which make their own charm'd atmosphere; Not wholly love, but yet more love than fear, A mystic influence, which, we know not why, Makes some on earth seem portions of our sky.