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I. WE saw, but surely, in the motley crowd, | |
| Not one of us has felt the far-famed sight; | |
| How could we feel it? each the other’s blight, | |
| Hurried and hurrying, volatile and loud. | |
| O, for those motions only that invite | 5 |
| The ghost of Fingal to his tuneful cave | |
| By the breeze entered, and wave after wave | |
| Softly embosoming the timid light! | |
| And by one votary, who at will might stand | |
| Gazing, and take into his mind and heart, | 10 |
| With undistracted reverence, the effect | |
| Of those proportions where the Almighty hand | |
| That made the worlds, the sovereign Architect, | |
| Has deigned to work as if with human art! | |
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II. THANKS for the lessons of this spot,—fit school | 15 |
| For the presumptuous thoughts that would assign | |
| Mechanic laws to agency divine; | |
| And, measuring heaven by earth, would overrule | |
| Infinite Power. The pillared vestibule, | |
| Expanding yet precise, the roof embowed, | 20 |
| Might seem designed to humble man, when proud | |
| Of his best workmanship by plan and tool. | |
| Down-bearing with his whole Atlantic weight | |
| Of tide and tempest on that structure’s base, | |
| And flashing to that structure’s topmost height, | 25 |
| Ocean has proved its strength, and of its grace | |
| In calms is conscious, finding for his freight | |
| Of softest music some responsive place. | |
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III. YE shadowy Beings, that have rights and claims | |
| In every cell of Fingal’s mystic grot, | 30 |
| Where are ye? Driven or venturing to the spot, | |
| Our fathers glimpses caught of your thin frames, | |
| And, by your mien and bearing, knew your names; | |
| And they could hear his ghostly song who trod | |
| Earth, till the flesh lay on him like a load, | 35 |
| While he struck his desolate harp without hopes or aims. | |
| Vanished ye are, but subject to recall; | |
| Why keep we else the instincts whose dread law | |
| Ruled here of yore, till what men felt they saw, | |
| Not by black arts but magic natural! | 40 |
| If eyes be still sworn vassals of belief, | |
| Yon light shapes forth a bard, that shade a chief. | |
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