ch turns Hope to dust,--the dust we all have trod.

CXXVI.

Our life is a false nature--'tis not in
The harmony of things,--this hard decree,
This uneradicable taint of Sin,
This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,
Whose root is Earth--whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--
Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see,
And worse, the woes we see not--which throb through
The immedicable soul,[503] with heart-aches ever new.

CXXVII.

Yet let us ponder boldly--'tis a base
Abandonment of reason[504] to resign
Our right of thought--our last and only place
Of refuge; this, at least, shall still be mine:
Though from our birth the Faculty divine
Is chained and tortured--cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness,[505] lest the Truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in--for Time and Skill will couch the blind.

CXXVIII.

Arches on arches![506] as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands;[507] the moonbeams shine
As 'twere its natural torches--for divine
Should be the light which streams here,--to illume
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of Contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

CXXIX.

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of Heaven,
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,
A Spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the Palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till Ages are its dower.

CXXX.

Oh, Time! the Beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin[508]--Comforter
And only Healer when the heart hath bled;
Time! the Corrector where our judgments err,
The test of Truth, Love--sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists--from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer--
Time, the Avenger