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:
93 Each: All (S.M.); thing: things (S. M.). 99 lead: hang (1829, 1831).
Incumbent on night
(As she on the air)
To keep watch with delight
On the harmony there?
"Ligeia! wherever
Thy image may be,
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
Are the music of things
But are modell'd, alas!
Away, then, my dearest,
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 -
117 S. M. inserts deep before "dreamy."
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 't were the Simoom, and would destroy –
For what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood
Sweet was their death
-or that Bliss is Woe? 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
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
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.
Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely 't is to look so far away!
She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls nor mourn'd to leave.
That eve that eve
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
197 the orb of EARTH: one constant star (1829, 1831).
And on my eyelids - 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
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. 1
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,
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 hurl'd
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And roll'd, a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
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