Ay! some there were so lovely, that the eye
Dreamt of them in its night, when they were gone;
But when I search'd them, like a single flower
The outer blossoms parted, and showed nought within.
Oh! then I fled, as one whose own wild thoughts
Bid him outstrip the curbless winds of heaven,
And storm the bulwarks of sublime desire.
Want grew within me as a famine grows
With every hour that fleets unsatisfied;
But in my wanderings there rose a spot,
Where man had wrought pure nature's counsel out,
Nor reared a shrine to mock her loveliness;
Yet this I heeded not, for there was one
Who came to me on sudden with such joy
That I stirred not, but like one weak with thirst,
Let the life draught flow o'er my powerless lips.
O! yet I see her, with those blessed eyes
Slaying my soul with beauty; eyes so deep,
That in their azure ocean of soft light
Thought shrank into a fathom length; and smiles,
Stealing their sweetness from a heaven of love,
And joy, and immortality within,
Whence all emotion, angel-like, came forth,
Clad in a vesture of celestial light.
Her face beamed on me like a glimpse of heaven
Caught in the rapture of prophetic trance,
That in all day-light thoughts, and shaded dreams,
Haunts the deep soul for ever. As she went,
Grace lapt its mantle o'er her, like the gold
On fleecy-bosomed clouds in sunny skies.
O Spirit! she was beautiful! a thing
Guileless and pure, as though her youth had past
With Heaven's own children in the light of God,
Thence come to make a paradise of earth,
And breathe the transports of transcendant bliss
Like floral exhalations through my soul.
And I--I loved her with the love of heaven,
That melts down time and space, and all between,
And clasps an essence in the soul's embrace;
And from her being there would ever flow
Full streams of holy melody, that lapt
Earth, air, and heaven, and all terrestrial forms
With charms bright as heaven's new-created light.
And as she gazed on the blue firmament,
And shrined the stars with her pure thoughts, and dreamt
Of that which lay beyond; I gazed on her,
And drew Elysian theories of Heaven,
As though borne thither by wing'd seraphims.
Oh! what is there in love that wreathes all things
With an unfading halo of sweet light,
Making the mystery of Nature clear?