below,
For something loved, yet undefined;
So mourns to mingle with the flow
Of music from the Eternal Mind;
So murmurs, with its childlike sigh,
The melody it learned above,
To which no echo may reply
Save from thy voice, Eternal Love!'

It is to his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the
infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of
Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and
not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed.
Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting
passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven
should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder
became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of
evil, that it seemed rather meant for the foul feet of demons, than for
the elastic tread of the redeemed human soul to God! We quote from him
in proof:

'Blue rolls the water, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining
Nor turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?'

'Oh, thou beautiful
And unimaginable ether! and
Ye multiplying masses of increased
And still increasing lights! what are ye?
What
Is this blue wilderness of interminable
Air, wherein ye roll along as I have seen
The leaves along the limpid streams of
Eden?

Is your course measured for ye? or do ye
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aerial universe of endless
Expansion, at which my soul aches to think--
Intoxicated with eternity?'

'All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
And breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;--
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.

'Then stirs the _feeling infinite_, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purify from self: it is a tone
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eter