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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
Whose sleep hath been taken
Beneath the cold moon,
As the spell which no clumber
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 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 Simoon, 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?
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.
"lanthe, 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 ese - 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 - О 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 О 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
Unrolling as a chart unto my view
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
lanthe, 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
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman'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 huri'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 Daedalion 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