ISRAFEL.* IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven,) Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings- Of those unusual strings. * And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.-KORAN. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a dutyWhere Love's a grown up God Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore, thou art not wrong, An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest ! Merrily live, and long! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit— Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervour of thy luteWell may the stars be mute! Yes, Heaven is thine; but this If I could dwell Where Isra fel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. The sickness-the nausea- Have ceased, with the fever And oh! of all tortures Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a cavern not very far Down under ground. And ah! let it never That my room it is gloomy For man never slept In a different bed And, to sleep, you must slumber In just such a bed. My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its rosesIts old agitations Of myrtles and roses : For now, while so quietly A holier odor About it, of pansiesA rosemary odor, Commingled with pansiesWith rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies. And so it lies happily, A dream of the truth And the beauty of AnnieDrowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie. She tenderly kissed me, To sleep on her breast Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast. When the light was extinguished, She covered me warm, And I lie so composedly, That you fancy me dead And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed, (With her love at my breast) That you fancy me dead |