"Dost thou, in thy vigil, hail
Arcturus in his chariot pale,
Leading him with a fiery flight
Over the hollow hill of night?"
These are wonderful verses for a lad of twenty-one, living among
anglers, undergraduates, and, if with some society of the lettered,
apparently with none which could appreciate or applaud him.
For the matter of the poem, the wild voyage of the mad monkish lover
with the dead Bride of Heaven, it strikes, of course, on the common
reef of the Romantic--the ridiculous. But the recurring contrasts of a
pure, clear peace in sea and sky, are of rare and atoning beauty. Such
a passage is--
"And the great ocean, like a holy hall,
Where slept a seraph host maritimal,
Was gorgeous with wings of diamond."