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lake.

      Yet that terror was not fright,

      But a tremulous delight—

      A feeling not the jewelled mine

      Could teach or bribe me to define—

      Nor Love—although the Love were thine.

      Death was in that poisonous wave,

      And in its gulf a fitting grave

      For him who thence could solace bring

      To his lone imagining—

      Whose solitary soul could make

      An Eden of that dim lake.

      1827

       AL AARAAF

      Part I

      O! nothing earthly save the ray

      (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,

      As in those gardens where the day

      Springs from the gems of Circassy—

      O! nothing earthly save the thrill

      Of melody in woodland rill—

      Or (music of the passion-hearted)

      Joy’s voice so peacefully departed

      That like the murmur in the shell,

      Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—

      O! nothing of the dross of ours—

      Yet all the beauty—all the flowers

      That list our Love, and deck our bowers—

      Adorn yon world afar, afar—

      The wandering star.

      ’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there

      Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

      Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—

      An oasis in desert of the blest.

      Away away—’mid seas of rays that roll

      Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—

      The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

      Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—

      To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

      And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—

      But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,

      She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,

      And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

      Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

      Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,

      Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,

      (Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,

      Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,

      It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),

      She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.

      Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—

      Fit emblems of the model of her world—

      Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight—

      Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—

      A wreath that twined each starry form around,

      And all the opal’d air in color bound.

      All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

      Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head

      On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

      So eagerly around about to hang

      Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—

      Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.

      The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

      Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:

      And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—

      Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d

      All other loveliness: its honied dew

      (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

      Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,

      And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

      In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower

      So like its own above that, to this hour,

      It still remaineth, torturing the bee

      With madness, and unwonted reverie:

      In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

      And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

      Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,

      Repenting follies that full long have fled,

      Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

      Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:

      Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

      She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

      And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

      While pettish tears adown her petals run:

      And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—

      And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

      Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

      Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

      And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

      From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:

      And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!

      Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!

      And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever

      With Indian Cupid down the holy river—

      Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given

      To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

      “Spirit! that dwellest where,

      In the deep sky,

      The terrible and fair,

      In beauty vie!

      Beyond the line of blue—

      The boundary of the star

      Which turneth at the view

      Of thy barrier and thy bar—

      Of the barrier overgone

      By the comets who were cast

      From their pride, and from their throne

      To be drudges till the last—

      To be carriers of fire

      (The red fire of their heart)

      With speed that may not tire

      And with pain that shall not part—

      Who livest—that we know—

      In Eternity—we feel—

      But the shadow of whose brow

      What spirit shall reveal?

      Tho’

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