XVIII: On Lough's Statue Of Lady MacBeth

If this great image were by ocean thrown
Among some people who have never yet
Learn'd in the mind's creations to forget
Life's pressure, and the melancholy stone
Were on a rock for savage wonder set,
Methinks some sense of Shakspeare's world unknown
Would dawn on spirits reverential grown
To strange divinity, as if they met
A bodied fragment of the poet's soul;--
And while the spectral gaze and withering hand
Urge silence, such as that which death's control
Rules,--on the thoughts of that astonish'd band
Shapes from the noblest scenes by mortal plann'd
Would rise, and breathe the grandeur of the whole.