Whether, companion of the stars, With their tenfold round he errs; Or inhabits with his lone Nature in the neighboring moon; Or sits with body-waiting souls, Dozing by the Lethaean pools:⁠— Or whether, haply, placed afar In some blank region of our star, He stalks, an unsubstantial heap, Humanity’s giant archetype; Where a loftier bulk he rears Than Atlas, grappler of the stars, And through their shadow-touched abodes Brings a terror to the gods. Not the seer of him had sight, Who found in darkness depths of light; 2107 His travelled eyeballs saw him not In all his mighty gulfs of thought:⁠— Him the farthest-footed good, Pleiad Mercury, never showed To any poet’s wisest sight In the silence of the night:⁠— News of him the Assyrian priest 2108 Found not in his sacred list, Though he traced back old king Nine, And Belus, elder name divine, And Osiris, endless famed. Not the glory, triple-named, Thrice great Hermes, though his eyes Read the shapes of all the skies, Left him in his sacred verse Revealed to Nature’s worshippers. “O Plato! and was this a dream Of thine in bowery Academe? Wert thou the golden tongue to tell First of this high miracle, And charm him to thy schools below?