Which those poor slaves with weary Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow

Who travel to their home among the This truth is that deep well, whence dead

sages draw

By the broad highway of the world, and | The unenvied light of hope; the eternal

SO

With one chained friend, perhaps a

jealous foe,

The dreariest and the longest journey go.

law

By which those live, to whom this world
of life

Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth

True Love in this differs from gold The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

bright,

There was a Being whom my spirit

oft

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy In the clear golden prime of my youth's

The life that wears, the spirit that She met me, robed in such exceeding

One object, and one form, and builds That I beheld her not.

thereby

A sepulchre for its eternity.

Mind from its object differs most in this:

Evil from good; misery from happiness;

The baser from the nobler; the impure Of the sweet kisses which had lulled And frail, from what is clear and must endure.

them there,

Breathed but of her to the enamoured air;

If you divide suffering and dross, you And from the breezes whether low or

Each part exceeds the whole; and we And from all sounds, all silence. In

the words

How much, while any yet remains un- Of antique verse and high romance,—in form,

shared,

Sound, colour-in whatever checks that Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; But neither prayer nor verse could dis

Storm

Makes this cold common hell, our life, a That world within this Chaos, mine and

doom

As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;

Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.

me,

Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her :

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy And therefore I went forth, with hope youth

and fear

I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath,

of fire,

And towards the loadstar of my one

desire,

I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting
sphere

A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-
But She, whom prayers or tears then
could not tame,

Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with
vain strife,

And stumbling in my weakness and my
haste,

And half bewildered by new forms, I

past

Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, Past, like a God throned on a winged In which she might have masked herself planet, from me.

Whose burning plumes to tenfold swift- There, -One, whose voice was venomed

Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; Sate by a well, under blue nightshade And as a man with mighty loss dis

mayed,

I would have followed, though the grave between

bowers;

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,

Her touch was as electric poison,-flame

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are Out of her looks into my vitals came,

unseen:

When a voice said :-"O Thou of hearts the weakest,

The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest."

And from her living cheeks and bosom

flew

A killing air, which pierced like honeydew

Into the core of my green heart, and lay Then I-"Where?" the world's echo Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown

answered " where!"

And in that silence, and in my despair,
I questioned every tongueless wind that
flew

Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my

soul;

gray

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

With ruins of unseasonable time.

In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought.

And murmured names and spells which And some were fair—but beauty dies

Others were wise-but honeyed words | Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead :— For at her silver voice came Death and

And from her presence life was radiated And there I lay, within a chaste cold Through the gray earth and branches

So that her way was paved, and roofed Of Heaven look forth and fold the above wandering globe With flowers as soft as thoughts of bud- In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe ; And all their many-mingled influence

ding love;

And music from her respiration spread Like light, all other sounds were penetrated

By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,

So that the savage winds hung mute around;

And odours warm and fresh fell from
her hair

Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,
When light is changed to love, this
glorious One

Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming
clay

blend,

If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;-
So ye, bright regents, with alternate

sway

Govern my sphere of being, night and day!

Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;

Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons
three,

From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe

Was lifted by the thing that dreamed Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that

As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's Alternating attraction and repulsion, Thine went astray and that was rent in

glow

I stood, and felt the dawn of my long
night

Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years-that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this
passive Earth,

twain;

Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there love's folding-star at thy

return;

The living Sun will feed thee from its

urn

Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn

This world of love, this me; and into In thy last smiles; adoring Even and birth

Morn

Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and Will worship thee with incense of calm

dart

Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and
guide

By everlasting laws, each wind and tide
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy
grave

breath

And lights and shadows; as the star of
Death

And Birth is worshipped by those sisters
wild

Called Hope and Fear-upon the heart are piled

Their offerings,-of this sacrifice divine Which was its cradle, luring to faint A World shall be the altar. bowers

Lady mine, The armies of the rainbow-wingèd | Scorn not these flowers of thought, the showers; fading birth

And, as those married lights, which Which from its heart of hearts that plant

Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny The merry mariners are bold and free:

Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest

The day is come, and thou wilt fly Is a far Eden of the purple East;

The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, Or serene morning air; and far beyond, The soul in dust and chaos.

There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever ploughed that path Built round with ivy, which the water-

The halcyons brood around the foamless Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;