Yet both SO passing strange and Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that ern cave, burn below With unapparent fire, The baby Sleep is pillowed: Her golden tresses shade The bosom's stainless pride, Twining like tendrils of the parasite Around a marble column. Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful Where woods and streams with soft and Draw that strange car of glory, reins of pausing winds A lulling murmur weave? Ianthe doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death: Nor in her moonlight chamber silently Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb, Or mark her delicate cheek light Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold Their wings of braided air: The Dæmon leaning from the ethereal car Gazed on the slumbering maid. Human eye hath ne'er beheld A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful, With interchange of hues mock the As that which o'er the maiden's charmèd Filling the chamber and the moonlight Disparting as it went the silver clouds It moved towards the car, and took its sky. Maiden, the world's supremest spirit Beneath the shadow of her wings Folds all thy memory doth inherit From ruin of divinest things, Feelings that lure thee to betray, And light of thoughts that pass away. For thou hast earned a mighty boon, Entranced in some diviner mood scat Beside the Dæmon shape. Obedient to the sweep of aery song, The magic car moved on; The magic car moved on. From the swift sweep of wings The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; And where the burning wheels Custom, and Faith, and Power thou Eddied above the mountain's loftiest The sea no longer was distinguished; earth Less shares thy eternal breath. Spirit of Nature! thou Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, Imperishable as this glorious scene, Here is thy fitting temple. If solitude hath ever led thy steps That lurks in graves and fattens on the As heaven low resting on the wave it Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulph Sculpturing records for each memory nounce, Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world: diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. The magic car no longer moved; The Dæmon and the Spirit Entered the eternal gates. Those clouds of aery gold That slept in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy, With the ethereal footsteps trembled not; While slight and odorous mists Floated to strains of thrilling melody Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines. The Dæmon and the Spirit Approached the overhanging battlement. Below lay stretched the boundless universe! There, far as the remotest line That limits swift imagination's flight, Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion, Immutably fulfilling Eternal Nature's law. Above, below, around, The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony, Each with undeviating aim In eloquent silence through the depths of space Pursued its wondrous way.Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy. Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by, Strange things within their belted orbs Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly, appear. Like animated frenzies, dimly moved Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes, o'er the dead Breathing in self contempt fierce blas phemies Against the Dæmon of the World, and high Thronging round human graves, and Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit, |