Suspended he that task, but ever gazed
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

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Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

Her daily portion, from her father's tent,

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And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

From duties and repose to tend his steps:

Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

To speak her love: - and watched his nightly sleep,
Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips

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Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn
Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home
Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

The Poet wandering on, through Arabie
And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
And o'er the aërial mountains which pour
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,

down

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In joy and exultation held his way;

Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

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Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine
Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

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Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

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His inmost sense suspended in its web

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

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Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

A permeating fire: wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

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Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

The beating of her heart was heard to fill
The pauses of her music, and her breath
Tumultuously accorded with those fits
Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,
As if her heart impatiently endured
Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
And saw by the warm light of their own life
Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

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His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,"
Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

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Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

Roused by the shock he started from his trance The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

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Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,
The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes
Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
The spirit of sweet human love has sent

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!
Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,
And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
Lead only to a black and watery depth,

While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,
Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,
The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
His brain even like despair.

While day-light held

The sky, the Poet kept mute conference

With his still soul. At night the passion came,

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Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,

And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
Into the darkness. - As an eagle grasped

In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
Burn with the poison, and precipitates

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Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, 230 Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O'er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven

By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,
Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
Day after day, a weary waste of hours,

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Bearing within his life the brooding care

That ever fed on its decaying flame.

And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand

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Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind
With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet
Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused
In its career: the infant would conceal
His troubled visage in his mother's robe

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

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To remember their strange light in many a dream
Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught
By nature, would interpret half the woe

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That wasted him, would call him with false names
Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
Of his departure from their father's door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged
His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,
Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
It rose as he approached, and with strong wings
Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
High over the immeasurable main.

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His eyes pursued its flight.

"Thou hast a home,

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Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
And what am I that I should linger here,
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

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