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?

Though the beings whom thy Nesace,
Thy messenger hath known
Have dreamed for thy Infinity
k A model of their own-

Thy will is done, O God!

The star hath ridden high

Through 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 throne1By winged Fantasy,

My embassy is given,

Till secrecy shall knowledge be

In the environs of Heaven."

She ceased-and buried then her burning cheek
Abashed, amid the lilies, there to seek
A shelter from the fervour of His eye;

For the stars trembled at the Deity.

She stirred not-breathed not-for a voice was there

How solemnly prevading 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 even 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 though in worlds which sightless cycles

run,

Linked 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 though in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given

To bear my secrets through the upper Heaven
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,

With all thy train, athwart the moony sky

n

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 adoreThe 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 mountains and dim plain • Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign.

PART II.

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 th' 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.
a 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—
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 th' Empyrean and that ring,

Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing.