field,
Fame, power, and deep-thought plans; and with thy sword beside thee
Within a regiment's ranks, alone, obscure, to hide thee,
And there, a veteran chief, like some young sentinel,
When first upon his ear rings the ball's whistling knell,
Thou rushedst 'mid the fire, a warrior's death desiring--
In vain!--

* * * * *

O men! O wretched race! O worthy tears and laughter!
Priests of the moment's god, ne'er thinking of hereafter!
How oft among ye, men! a mighty one is seen,
Whom the blind age pursues with insults mad and mean,
But gazing on whose face, some future generation
Shall feel, as I do now, regret and admiration!

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS; BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH
OPIUM-EATER.

PART II.

The Oxford visions, of which some have been given, were but
anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse opened of childhood,
(as being its reaction.) In this SECOND part, returning from that
anticipation, I retrace an abstract of my boyish and youthful days so
far as they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences in
worlds more shadowy.

Upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and twenties over every
thousand years, fell too powerfully and too early the vision of life.
The horror of life mixed itself already in earliest youth with the
heavenly sweetness of life; that grief, which one in a hundred has
sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect of life in its
closing stage, for me shed its dews as a prelibation upon the fountains
of life whilst yet sparkling to the morning sun. I saw from afar and
from before what I was to see from behind. Is this the description of an
early youth passed in the shades of gloom? No, but of a youth passed in
the divinest happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have) the
passion, without which there is no reading of the legend and
superscription upon man's brow, if he is not (as most are) deafer than
the grave to every _deep_ note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves
of human life, he will know that the rapture of life (or any thing which
by approach can merit that name) does not arise, unless as perfect music
arises--music of Mozart or Beethoven--by the confluence of the mighty
and terrific discords with the subtle concords. Not by contrast, or as
reciprocal foils do these elements act, which is the feeble conception
of many, but by union. They are the sexual