Lit2Go

     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—
          Oh, 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.

     * A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared
     suddenly in the heavens—attained, in a few days, a
     brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly
     disappeared, and has never been seen since.

          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:

          * On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia.

          **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:

     * This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort.
     The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.

     ** Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a
     better-known term, the turnsol—which continually turns
     towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from
     which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its
     flowers during the most violent heat of the day.—B. de St.
     Pierre.

     *** There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a
     species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large
     and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla,
     during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It
     does not blow till towards the month of July—you then
     perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade
     and die.—St. Pierre.

     *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—

     * There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the
     Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of
     three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water
     in the swellings of the river.

     ** The Hyacinth.

     *** It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first
     seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and
     that he still loves the cradle of his childhood.

    **** And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.
   —Rev. St. John.

          Who livest—that we know—
              In Eternity—we feel—
          But the shadow of whose brow
              What spirit shall reveal?
          Tho' the beings whom thy Nesace,
              Thy messenger hath known
          Have dream'd for thy Infinity
              *A model of their own—
          Thy will is done, Oh, God!
              The star hath ridden high
          Thro' many a tempest, but she rode
              Beneath thy burning eye;
          And here, in thought, to thee—
              In thought that can alone
          Ascend thy empire and so be
              A partner of thy throne—

     * The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as
     having a really human form.—Vide Clarke's Sermons, vol.
     1, page 26, fol. edit.

     The drift of Milton's argument, leads him to employ language
     which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their
     doctrine;  but it will be seen immediately, that he guards
     himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most
     ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church.—Dr.
     Sumner's Notes on Milton's Christian Doctrine.

     This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary,
     could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of
     Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He
     lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples
     were called Anthropmorphites.—Vide Du Pin.

     Among Milton's poems are these lines:—
                Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.
                Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
                Natura solers finxit humanum genus?
                Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
                Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.—And afterwards,
                Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
                Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c.

          *By winged Fantasy,
              My embassy is given,
          Till secrecy shall knowledge be
              In the environs of Heaven."

          She ceas'd—and buried then her burning cheek
          Abash'd, amid the lilies there, to seek
          A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
          For the stars trembled at the Deity.
          She stirr'd not—breath'd 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.
          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 tho' in worlds which sightless cycles run,
          Link'd to a little system, and one sun—
          Where all my love 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 tho' in worlds which own a single sun
          The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

     * Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
       Seinem Schosskinde
       Der Phantasie.—Göethe.

    ** Sightless—too small to be seen—Legge.

          Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
          To bear my secrets thro' 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
          To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban
          Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"

              Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
          The single-mooned eve!—on Earth we plight
          Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
          The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
          As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
          Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
          And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
          **Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

     * 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.

     ** Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca,
     which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of
     astonished mariners.

                         Part II.

          HIGH on a mountain of enamell'd head—
          Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
          Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
          Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
          With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
          What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—
          Of rosy head, that towering far away
          Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
          Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,
          While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light—
          Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
          Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd 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
          Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
          Of their own dissolution, while they die—
          Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
          A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
          Sat gently on these columns as a crown—
          A window of one circular diamond, there,
          Look'd out above into the purple air,

     * Some star which, from the ruin'd roof Of shak'd Olympus,
     by mischance, did fall.—Milton.

          And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
          And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
          Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring,
          Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.
          But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
          The dimness of this world:  that greyish green
          That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave
          Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave—
          And every sculptur'd cherub thereabout
          That from his marble dwelling peeréd out
          Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche—
          Achaian statues in a world so rich?
          *Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—
          From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
          **Of beautiful Gomorrah!  O, the wave
          Is now upon thee—but too late to save!

          Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
          Witness the murmur of the grey twilight

     * Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, "Je connois
     bien l'admiration qu'inspirent ces ruines—mais un palais
     erigé au pied d'une chaine des rochers sterils—peut il
     être un chef d'oevure des arts!" [Voila les arguments de M.
     Voltaire.]

     ** "Oh! the wave"—Ula Degusi is the Turkish appellation;
     but, on its own shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or
     Almotanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities
     engluphed in the "dead sea." In the valley of Siddim were
     five—Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Stephen of
     Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteeen, (engulphed)
    —but the last is out of all reason.

    It is said, (Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau,
Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux) that after an excessive drought, the
vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At any
season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the
transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of
many settlements in the space now usurped by the 'Asphaltites.'

          *That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,
          Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—
          That stealeth ever on the ear of him
          Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim.
          And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—
          ***Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?

              But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings
          A music with it—'tis the rush of wings—
          A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain
          And Nesace is in her halls again.
          From the wild energy of wanton haste
              Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
          And zone that clung around her gentle waist
              Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
          Within the centre of that hall to breathe
          She paus'd and panted, Zanthe!  all beneath,
          The fairy light that kiss'd her golden hair
          And long'd to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

              ***Young flowers were whispering in melody
          To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;
          Fountains were gushing music as they fell
          In many a star-lit grove, or moon-lit dell;
          Yet silence came upon material things—
          Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—
          And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
          Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

     * Eyraco—Chaldea.

     ** I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of
     the darkness as it stole over the horizon.

     *** Fairies use flowers for their charactery.—Merry Wives
     of Windsor.  [William Shakespeare]

           "'Neath blue-bell or streamer—
               Or tufted wild spray
           That keeps, from the dreamer,
               *The moonbeam away—
             Bright beings!  that ponder,
               With half closing eyes,
           On the stars which your wonder
               Hath drawn from the skies,
           Till they glance thro' the shade, and
               Come down to your brow
           Like—eyes of the maiden
               Who calls on you now—
           Arise!  from your dreaming
               In violet bowers,
           To duty beseeming
               These star-litten hours—
           And shake from your tresses
               Encumber'd with dew
           The breath of those kisses
               That cumber them too—
           (O!  how, without you, Love!
               Could angels be blest?)
           Those kisses of true love
               That lull'd ye to rest!
           Up!—shake from your wing
               Each hindering thing:
           The dew of the night—
               It would weigh down your flight;
           And true love caresses—
               O! leave them apart!

     * In Scripture is this passage—"The sun shall not harm
     thee by day, nor the moon by night." It is perhaps not
     generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of
     producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed
     to its rays, to which circumstance the passage evidently
     alludes.

          They are light on the tresses,
              But lead on the heart.

          Ligeia!  Ligeia!
              My beautiful one!
          Whose harshest idea
              Will to melody run,
          O!  is it thy will
              On the breezes to toss?
          Or, capriciously still,
              *Like the lone Albatross,
          Incumbent on night
              (As she on the air)
          To keep watch with delight
              On the harmony there?

          Ligeia!  whatever
              Thy image may be,
          No magic shall sever
              Thy music from thee.
          Thou hast bound many eyes
              In a dreamy sleep—
          But the strains still arise
              Which thy vigilance keep—
          The sound of the rain
              Which leaps down to the flower,
          And dances again
              In the rhythm of the shower—
          **The murmur that springs
              From the growing of grass

     * The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.

     ** I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am
     now unable to obtain and quote from memory:—"The verie
     essence and, as it were, springe-heade, and origine of all
     musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of
     the forest do make when they growe."

          Are the music of things—
              But are modell'd, alas!—
          Away, then my dearest,
              O!  hie thee away
          To springs that lie clearest
              Beneath the moon-ray—
           To lone lake that smiles,
              In its dream of deep rest,
          At the many star-isles
              That enjewel its breast—
          Where wild flowers, creeping,
              Have mingled their shade,
          On its margin is sleeping
              Full many a maid—
          Some have left the cool glade, and
              * Have slept with the bee—
          Arouse them my maiden,
              On moorland and lea—
          Go!  breathe on their slumber,
              All softly in ear,
          The musical number
              They slumber'd to hear—
          For what can awaken
              An angel so soon

     * The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be
     moonlight. The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty
     lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is,
     however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud
     Halcro—in whose mouth I admired its effect:

                O!  were there an island,
                    Tho' ever so wild
                Where woman might smile, and
                    No man be beguil'd, &c.

          Whose sleep hath been taken
              Beneath the cold moon,
          As the spell which no slumber
              Of witchery may test,
          The rythmical number
              Which lull'd him to rest?"

          Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
          A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro',
          Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—
          Seraphs in all but "Knowledge," the keen light
          That fell, refracted, thro' 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 'twere 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 ecstacy 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!

     * With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and
     Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain
     that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be
     characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.

            Un no rompido sueno—
            Un dia puro—allegre—libre
            Quiera—
            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.

          What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
          Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
          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—
          O!  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—
          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 wo)
          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.

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

     * There be tears of perfect moan
         Wept for thee in Helicon.—Milton.

          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 sate, and on the draperied wall—
          And on my eye-lids—O 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 O 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 it 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
          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."

          "My Angelo! and why of them to be?
          A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—

    * It was entire in 1687—the most elevated spot in Athens.

    ** Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
       Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love.—Marlowe.

           And greener fields than in yon world above,
           And women's loveliness—and passionate love."

           "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 thro'
           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:
           We came, my love; around, above, below,
           Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
           Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
           She grants to us, as granted by her God—
           But, Angelo, than thine grey Time unfurl'd
           Never his fairy wing o'er fairier world!
           Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
           Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
           When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
           Headlong thitherward o'er the starry sea—
           But when its glory swell'd upon the sky,
           As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye,

     * Pennon—for pinion.—Milton.

           We paus'd before the heritage of men,
           And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!"

           Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away
           The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
           They fell:  for Heaven to them no hope imparts
           Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.