As the spell which no slumber

Of witchery may test,

The rhythmical number

Which lull'd him to rest?"

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,

A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean through, Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight— Seraphs in all but "Knowledge," the keen light That fell, refracted, through thy bounds afar,

O Death

from

eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error-sweeter still that death—
Sweet was that error-ev'n with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy-
To them 't were the simoom, and would destroy.
For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood, or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death: with them to die was rife

With the last ecstasy of satiate life;

Beyond that death no immortality,

But sleep that pondereth, and is not "to be:"
And there-oh, may my weary spirit dwell!

Apart from heaven's Eternity—and yet how far from hell!*

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?

* With the Arabians there is a medium between heaven and hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not

But two they fell-for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—

Oh! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen, 'mid "tears of perfect

moan."*

He was a goodly spirit, he who fell :
A wanderer by moss-y-mantled well-
A gazer on the lights that shine above—
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair;

attain that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.

Libre de amor-de zelo

De odio de esperanza-de rezelo."

LUIS PONCE DE LEON.

Sorrow is not excluded from "Al Aaraaf," but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The passionate excitement of love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures, the price of which, to those souls who make choice of Al Aaraaf as their residence after life, is final death and annihilation. "There be tears of perfect moan

*

Wept for thee in Helicon."-MILTON.

And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo;
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,

And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love, his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament :
Now turn'd it upon her, but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

"Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely 'tis to look so far away!

She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls, nor mourn'd to leave
That eve-that eve-I should remember well,
The sun-ray dropp'd in Lemnos with a spell
On th' arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sat, and on the draperied wall,
And on my eyelids—oh, the heavy light!
How drowsily it weigh'd them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan :

But, oh, that light!-I slumber'd. Death the while

Stole o'er my senses in that lovely isle,

So softly that no single silken hair

Awoke that slept, or knew that he was there.

The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon: *
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,†
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I-as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung,

It was entire in 1687, the most elevated spot in Athens.

66

+

MARLOWE.

Unrolling as a chart unto my view-
Tenantless cities of the desert, too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wish'd to be again of men."

66

My Angelo! and why of them to be?

A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee;
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman's loveliness, and passionate love."

66

But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft Fail'd, as my pennon'd* spirit leapt aloft, Perhaps my brain grew dizzy-but the world I left so late was into chaos hurl'd—

Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery heaven athwart.
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,
And fell, not swiftly as I rose before,

But with a downward, tremulous motion, through
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours-
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Dædalion on the timid Earth.

"We came, and to thy Earth,—but not to us Be given our lady's bidding to discuss :

* Pennon, for pinion.-MILTON.