sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,
Or joy that ends in agony or faintness-- 170
In all the days of past and future--for
In life there is no present--we can number
How few--how less than few--wherein the soul
Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back
As from a stream in winter, though the chill[ba]
Be but a moment's. I have one resource
Still in my science--I can call the dead,
And ask them what it is we dread to be:
The sternest answer can but be the Grave,
And that is nothing: if they answer not-- 180
The buried Prophet answered to the Hag
Of Endor; and the Spartan Monarch drew
From the Byzantine maid's unsleeping spirit
An answer and his destiny--he slew
That which he loved, unknowing what he slew,
And died unpardoned--though he called in aid
The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused
The Arcadian Evocators to compel
The indignant shadow to depose her wrath,
Or fix her term of vengeance--she replied 190
In words of dubious import, but fulfilled.[138]
If I had never lived, that which I love
Had still been living; had I never loved,
That which I love would still be beautiful,
Happy and giving happiness. What is she?
What is she now?--a sufferer for my sins--
A thing I dare not think upon--or nothing.
Within few hours I shall not call in vain--
Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare:
Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze 200
On spirit, good or evil--now I tremble,
And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart.
But I can act even what I most abhor,
And champion human fears.--The night approaches.
[_Exit._

SCENE III.--_The summit of the Jungfrau Mountain._

_Enter_ FIRST DESTINY.

The Moon is rising broad, and round, and bright;
And here on snows, where never human foot[139]
Of common mortal trod, we nightly tread,
And leave no traces: o'er the savage sea,
The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam,
Frozen in a moment[140]--a dead Whirlpool's image:
And this most steep fantastic pinnacle,
The fretwork of some earthquake--where the clou