Al Aaraaf（第4/5页）

Away, then my dearest,

O! hie thee away

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—

Some have left the cool glade, and

Have slept with the bee—

Arouse them my maiden,

On moorland and lea—

Go! breathe on their slumber,

All softly in ear,

The musical number

They slumber'd to hear—

For what can awaken

An angel so soon

Whose sleep hath been taken

Beneath the cold moon,

As the spell which no slumber

Of witchery may test,

The rhythmical number

Which lull'd him to rest?"

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 'twere the Simoom, and would destroy—

For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?

Sweet was their death—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 "to be"—

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 "tears of perfect moan."

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 'tis to look so far away!

She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve

I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourn'd to leave.

That eve—that eve—I should remember well—

The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos, with a spell

On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall

Wherein I sate, and on the drapried wall—

And on my eye-lids—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—Death, the while,

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—

More beauty clung around her column'd wall

Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,

And when old Time my wing did disenthral