Were driven within him by some secret power, Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar, Like lights and sounds from haunted tower to tower

O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's

war

Is levied by the night-contending winds

And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;

Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends Which wake and feed on ever living woe,What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds

A mirror found, he knew not-none could know;
But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show

He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look;
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned

The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook

To stir his secret pain without avail;

For all who knew and loved him then perceived That there was drawn an adamantine veil

Between his heart and mind,—both unrelieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad; others believed

That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief

From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his which owned no higher law
Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible

By mortal fear or supernatural awe;

And others," "Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of memory never saw,

"But through the soul's abyss, like some dark

stream

Through shattered mines and caverns underground, Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam

"Of joy may rise but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure; Soon its exhausted waters will have found

“A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase! - in one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure."

So spake they - idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;
This was their consolation; such debate

Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labors with a human woe,
Decline this talk; as if its theme might be

Another, not himself, he to and fro

Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit,
And none but those who loved him best could know

That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit

Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend

Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier

And so his grief remained—let it remain — untold.

PART II

Prince Athanase had one beloved friend,

An old, old man, with hair of silver white,

And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend

With his wise words, and eyes whose arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.

He was the last whom superstition's blight

Had spared in Greece- the blight that cramps and blinds

And in his olive bower at Enoe

Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds

A fertile island in the barren sea,

One mariner who has survived his mates

Many a drear month in a great ship — so he

With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore there fed his lonely being.
"The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'

And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing

Their bright creations, grew like wisest men ;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing

A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen

Was grass-grown, and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honored chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears;

And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with
brief

And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chestnuts, far beneath,

An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
And soon within her hospitable hall

She saw his white hairs glittering in the light

Of the wood-fire, and round his shoulders fall
And his wan visage and his withered mien
Yet calm and gentle and majestical.

And Athanase, her child, who must have been

Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.

Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
When autumn nights have nipped all weaker
kinds,

Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempesttossed,

Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled

From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,

The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.

And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and the master, shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store,

The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill

Strange truths and new to that experienced man; Still they were friends, as few have ever been Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.

41 One, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || An, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
43 through, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || had, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.
49 they, Mrs. Shelley, 1824 || now, Mrs. Shelley, 18391.
51 that, Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || the, Mrs. Shelley, 1824.