n aspect of old days:
'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years,
And looks as with the wild-bewilder'd gaze
Of one to stone converted by amaze,
Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands,
Making a marvel that it not decays,
When the coeval pride of human hands,
Levell'd Aventicum, hath strew'd her subject lands.

But the most remarkable quality in the third canto is the deep, low
bass of thought which runs through several passages, and which gives
to it, when considered with reference to the circumstances under
which it was written, the serious character of documentary evidence
as to the remorseful condition of the poet's mind. It would be,
after what has already been pointed out in brighter incidents,
affectation not to say, that these sad bursts of feeling and wild
paroxysms, bear strong indications of having been suggested by the
wreck of his domestic happiness, and dictated by contrition for the
part he had himself taken in the ruin. The following reflections on
the unguarded hour, are full of pathos and solemnity, amounting
almost to the deep and dreadful harmony of Manfred:

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind;
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
'Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
To those who walk in darkness: on the sea,
The boldest steer but where their ports invite;
But there are wanderers o'er eternity,
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be.

These sentiments are conceived in the mood of an awed spirit; they
breathe of sorrow and penitence. Of the weariness of satiety the
pilgrim no more complains; he is no longer despondent from
exhaustion, and the lost appetite of passion, but from the weight of
a burden which he cannot lay down; and he clings to visible objects,
as if from their nature he could extract a moral strength.

I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and t