a soul with God!
Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye.
He who the vanishing point of Human things
Lifts from the landscape, lost amidst the sky,
Has found the Ideal which the poet sings,
Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown,
And is himself a poet, though unknown.

IX.

APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PREFIXED.--THE
RHINE,--ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS.

Eno'!--my song is closing, and to thee,
Land of the North, I dedicate its lay;
As I have done the simple tale to be
The drama of this prelude!
Faraway
Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray;
But to my ear its haunted waters sigh;
Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye;
On wave, on marge, as on a wizard's glass,
Imperial ghosts in dim procession pass;
Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men,
Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen;
Frowning they fade; a bridge of steel appears
With frank-eyed Caesar smiling through the spears;
The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings
The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings
Vanished alike! The Hermit rears his Cross,
And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss,
While (knighthood's sole sweet conquest from the Moor)
Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour.
Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades,
Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades,
Still from her rock I hear the Siren call,
And see the tender ghost in Roland's mouldering hall!

X.

APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.--THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST
FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.--FICTION COMPARED TO
SLEEP,--IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES.

Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom,
(Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?)
But fiction draws a poetry from grief,
As art its healing from the withered leaf.
Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth,
Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch!
When death the altar and the victim youth,
Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch.
As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail,
Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale;
With childlike lore the fatal course beguile,
And brighten death with Love's untiring smile.
Along the banks let fairy forms be seen
"By fountain clear, or spangled starlike s