n she who loves him is so fair!
And then his honour, faith, and pride,
Had bound him to a meaner bride,
If once his promise had been given;
But she, so pure, so far above
The common forms of earthly mould,
So like the incarnate shapes of love,
Conceived, and born, and nursed in heaven,
His love for her could ne'er grow cold!
And yet he comes not. Half way now,
From where, at his meridian height,
He pours his fullest, warmest light,
To where, at eve, in his decline,
The day-god sinks into the brine,
When his diurnal task is done,
Descends his ever burning throne,
And still the bridegroom is not, there--
Say, why yet tarries he, and where?

IV.

Within an arbour, rudely reared,
But to the maiden's heart endeared
By every tie that binds the heart,
By hope's, and love's, and memory's art,--
For it was here he first poured out
In words, the love she could not doubt,--
Mazelli silent sits apart.
Did ever dreaming devotee,
Whose restless fancy, fond and warm,
Shapes out the bright ideal form
To which he meekly bends the knee,
Conceive of aught so fair as she?
The holiest seraph of the sphere
Most holy, if by chance led here,
Might drink such light from those soft eyes,
That he would hold them far more dear
Than all the treasures of the skies.
Yet o'er her bright and beauteous brow
Shade after shade is passing now,
Like clouds across the pale moon glancing,
As thought on rapid thought advancing,
Thrills through the maiden's trembling breast,
Not doubting, and yet not at rest.
Not doubting! Man may turn away
And scoff at shrines, where yesterday
He knelt, in earnest faith, to pray,
And wealth may lose its charm for him,
And fame's alluring star grow dim,
Devotion, avarice, glory, all
The pageantries of earth may pall;
But love is of a higher birth
Than these, the earth-born things of earth,--
A spark from the eternal flame,
Like it, eternally the same,
It is not subject to the breath
Of chance or change, of life or death.
And so doubt has no power to blight
Its bloom, or quench its deathless light,--
A deathless light, a peerless bloom,
That beams and glows beyond the tomb!
Go tell the trusting d