ight, with her starry tiar, floateth in--
A dark and dazzling beauty! that doth draw
Over the light of love a shade of awe
Most strange, that parts our wonder not the less
Between her mystery and loveliness!

And she is there, that is a pyramid
Whereon the stars, the statues of the dead,
Are imaged over the eternal hall,
A group of radiances majestical!
And Julio looks up, and there they be,
And Agathe, and all the waste of Sea,
That slept in wizard slumber, with a shroud
Of night flung o'er his bosom, throbbing proud
Amid its azure pulses; and again
He dropt his blighted eye-orbs, with a strain
Of mirth upon the ladye:--Agathe!
Sweet bride! be thou a queen, and I will lay
A crown of sea-weed on thy royal brow;
And I will twine these tresses, that are now
Floating beside me, to a diadem;
And the sea foam will sprinkle gem on gem,
And so will the soft dews. Be thou the queen
Of the unpeopled waters, sadly seen
By star-light, till the yet unrisen moon
Issue, unveiled, from her anderoon,
To bathe in the sea fountains: let me say,
"Hail--hail to thee! thrice hail, my Agathe!"

The warrior world was lifting to the bent
Of his eternal brow magnificent,
The fiery moon, that in her blazonry
Shone eastward, like a shield. The throbbing sea
Felt fever on his azure arteries,
That shadow'd them with crimson, while the breeze
Fell faster on the solitary sail.
But the red moon grew loftier and pale,
And the great ocean, like the holy hall,
Where slept a seraph host maritimal,
Was gorgeous, with wings of diamond
Fann'd over it, and millions beyond
Of tiny waves were playing to and fro,
All musical, with an incessant flow
Of cadences, innumerably heard
Between the shrill notes of a hermit bird,
That held a solemn paean to the moon.

A few devotional fair clouds were soon
Breathed o'er the living countenance of Heaven,
And under the great galaxies were driven
Of stars that group'd together, and they went
Like voyagers along the firmament,
And grew to silver in the blessed light
Of the moon alchymist. It was not night,
Not the dark deathly shadow, that falls o'er
The eye-lid like a curse, but far before
In splendour, struggling through a fall of gloom,
In many a myriad gushes, that do come
Direct from