e, extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake.

XIV.

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,[gw]
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,
And human frailties, were forgotten quite:
Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink
Its spark immortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink.[gx]

XV.

But in Man's dwellings he became a thing[gy]
Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome,
Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,
To whom the boundless air alone were home:
Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat
His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage--so the heat
Of his impeded Soul would through his bosom eat.

XVI.

Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,[286]
With nought of Hope left--but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though 'twere wild,--as on the plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck,--
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check.

XVII.

Stop!--for thy tread is on an Empire's dust!
An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below!
Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?[287]
Nor column trophied for triumphal show?
None; but _the moral's truth_ tells simpler so.--[gz][288]
As the ground was before, thus let it be;--[ha]
How that red rain hath made the harvest grow!
And is this all the world has gained by thee,
Thou first and last of Fields! king-making Victory?

XVIII.

And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,
The grave of France, the