Ascend thy empire and so be
A partner of thy throne—
By winged phantasy,*
My embassy is given,
Till secrecy shall knowledge be
In the environs of heaven."
She ceased, and buried then her burning cheek,
Abashed, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirred not, breathed not; for a voice was there, How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear,
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the sphere." Ours is a world of words; quiet we call
"Silence," which is the merest word of all.
in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropomorphites.-Vide Du PIN.
* Among Milton's minor poems are these lines:
"Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus?
Eternus, incorruptus, aquævus polo,
Unusque et universus exemplar Dei."
And afterwards,—
"Non qui profundum cæcitas lumen dedit
Dirceus augur vidit hunc alto sinu," &c.
"Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie.”—GOETHE.
All nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings;
But ah! not so when thus in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky.
"What though in worlds which sightless* cycles
Linked to a little system and one sun
Where all my life is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder-cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean wrath,
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What though in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets through the upper heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly
With all thy train athwart the moony sky--
Apart-like fire-flies in Sicilian night,†
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle-and so be.
* 66
"Sightless: too small to be seen."-LEGGE.
+ I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies; they will collect in a body, and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable radii.
To every heart a barrier and a ban,
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"
Uprose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-moonèd eve; on earth we plight
Our faith to one love, and one moon adore:
The birthplace of young beauty had no more.
As sprung that yellow star from downy hours,
Uprose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way, but left not yet her Therasaan reign.*
HIGH on a mountain of enamelled head-
Such as the drowsy shepherd, on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelids, starts and sees,
With many a muttered "hope to be forgiven,"
What time the moon is quadrated in heaven-
Of rosy head, that, towering far away
Into the sunlight ether, caught the ray
* Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.
Of sunken suns at eve-at noon of night,
While the moon danced with the fair stranger light,
Upreared upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburdened air.
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement,* such as fall
Through the ebon air, besilvering the pall
* "Some star which from the ruined roof
Of shaked Olympus, by mischance, did fall."-MILTON.
Of their own dissolution, while they die—
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linkèd light from heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown;
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Looked out above into the purple air;
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallowed all the beauty twice again,-
Save when between th' empyrean and that ring
Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing.
But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for beauty's grave
Lurked in each cornice, round each architrave,
And every sculptured cherub thereabout,
That from his marbled dwelling peered out,
Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche-
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmore and Persepolis,*
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah? Oh, the wave t
Is now upon thee-but too late to save!
Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says,-"Je connois bein l'admiration qu'inspirent ces ruines; mais un palais érigé au pied d'une chaîne des rochers sterils, peut-il être un chef-d'œuvre des arts?"
"Oh, the wave!" Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation; but on its own shores it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah.
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