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

His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-colored 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 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

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

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 Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O'er the wide aery 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 moonlight 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, 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

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

As in a furnace burning secretly From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

Who ministered with human charity His human wants, beheld with wonder

ing awe

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

Encountering on some dizzy precipice That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight. "Thou hast a home,

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

gloomy smile

thoughts?” A

Of desperate hope wrinkled his quiver. ing lips.

For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly

Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,

Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,

With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.

There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight

Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.

A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his

gaze.

It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

Swayed with the undulations of the tide. A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky

Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind

Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.

Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft

On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,

And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea

Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As if that frail and wasted human form, Had been an elemental god.

At midnight

The moon arose and lo! the ethereal

cliffs

Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around

Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves Bursting and eddying irresistibly Rage and resound for ever.-Who shall save?

The boat fled on,-the boiling torrent drove,

The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,

Now shall it fall ?—A wandering stream of wind,

Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,

And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks

Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, Beneath a woven grove it sails, and bark! The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar, With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.

Where the embowering trees recede, and leave

A little space of green expanse, the cove Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers

For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,

Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,

Or falling spear-grass,

decay

or their own