There was in him a vital scorn of all:[jp]

As if the worst had fallen 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: 320

With more capacity for love than Earth

Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth.

His early dreams of good outstripped the truth,[275]

And troubled Manhood followed baffled Youth;

With thought of years in phantom chase misspent,

And wasted powers for better purpose lent;

And fiery passions that had poured their wrath

In hurried desolation o'er his path,

And left the better feelings all at strife[jq]

In wild reflection o'er his stormy life; 330

But haughty still, and loth himself to blame,

He called 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:[jr] [276]

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, 340

That swayed 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 soared beyond, or sunk beneath,

The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe,

And longed by good or ill to separate

Himself from all who shared his mortal state;

His mind abhorring this had fixed her throne

Far from the world, in regions of her own: 350

Thus coldly passing all that passed below,

His blood in temperate seeming now would flow:

Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glowed,

But ever in that icy smoothness flowed!

'Tis true, with other men their path he walked,

And like the rest in seeming did and talked,

Nor outraged Reason's rules by flaw nor start,

His Madness was not of the head, but heart;

And rarely wandered in his speech, or drew

His thoughts so forth as to offend the view. 360