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CANTO THE FIRSTXVIII
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall`n which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurled;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But `scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret:
With more capacity for love than earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth,
His early dreams of good outstripp`d the truth,
And troubled manhood follow`d baffled youth;
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,
And wasted powers for better purpose lent;
And fiery passions that had pour`d their wrath
In hurried desolation o`er his path,
And left the better feelings all at strife
In wild reflection o`er his stormy life;
But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,
He call`d on Nature`s self to share the shame,
And charged all faults upon the fleshly form
She gave to clog the soul, and feast the worm;
`Till he at last confounded good and ill,
And half mistook for fate the acts of will:
Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others` good,
But not in pity, not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought,
That sway`d him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime;
So much he soar`d beyond, or sunk beneath
The men with whom he felt condemn`d to breathe,
And long`d by good or ill to separate
Himself from all who shared his mortal state;
His mind abhorring this had fix`d her throne
Far from the world, in regions of her own;
Thus coldly passing all that pass`d below,
His blood in temperate seeming now would flow:
Ah! happier if it ne`er with guilt had glow`d,
But ever in that icy smoothness flow`d:
`Tis true, with other men their path he walk`d,
And like the rest in seeming did and talk`d,
Nor outraged Reason`s rules by flaw nor start,
His madness was not of the head, but heart;
And rarely wander`d in his speech, or drew
His thoughts so forth as to offend the view.
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