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 eyelid, 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 sunlit ether, caught the ray

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 the unburthened air,

Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile

Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,

And nursled the young mountain in its lair.

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Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

Through 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; [page 113:]

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 the 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

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That from his marble dwelling peeréd out

Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche —

Achaian statues in a world so rich?

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Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis —

From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss

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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 gray twilight

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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 —

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Is not its form — its voice — most palpable and loud?

 

But what is this? — it cometh — and it brings

A music with it — ’t is 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 [page 114:]

Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.

Within the centre of that hall to breathe

She paused and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,

The fairy light that kissed her golden hair

And longed to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

 

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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:

 

 

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,

A thousand seraphs burst the Empyrean through,

Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight,

Seraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light

That fell, refracted, through thy bounds afar,

O Death! from eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error, sweeter still that death;

Sweet was that error — even 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,

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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?

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Unguided Love hath fallen 'mid “tears of perfect moan.” [page 118:]

 

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 turned it upon her, but ever then

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It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

 

“Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!

How lovely 'tis to look so far away!

She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve

I left her gorgeous halls — nor mourned to leave.

That eve — that eve — I should remember well —

The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos, with a spell

On the 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 weighed them into night!

On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran

With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:

But O that light! — I slumbered — Death, the while,

Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle

So softly that no single silken hair

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Awoke that slept — or knew that he was there. [page 119:]

 

The last spot of Earthes orb I trod upon

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Was a proud temple called the Parthenon;

More beauty clung around her columned wall

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Than even 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 wished 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 women's loveliness — and passionate love.”

 

“But, list, Ianthe! when the air so soft

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Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft,

Perhaps my brain grew dizzy — but the world

I left so late was into chaos hurled,

Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,

And rolled, 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 through

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.” [page 120:]

“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 gray Time unfurled

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 swelled upon the sky,

As glowing Beauty's bust beneath man's eye,

We paused 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.