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� even 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 woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo�
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sat 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 draperied wall�
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� 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
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
