Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me,
Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes,
Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me,
While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies:
Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies
Within thy silent lips! how rare a light
Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd
Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd!
In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright,
Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast!
And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings,
And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding
In thy crisp curls, like cherubs there abiding--
Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs.
Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. But
verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, if
crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and the
Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, by way
of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty
soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold
legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and
would hunt the criminal to madness! How false is that political
philosophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged
up in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than
surrounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is
not often good for man to be alone: and yet in its true season,
(parsimoniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair
service, rendering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious
pleasures: religion presupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle
to rein-in the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to
prescribe for most men an occasional course of