ord, can say
'God is thy law,' most just 'and _thou_ art mine.'

"To every blast she bends in beauty meek--
How can she shrink--his arms her shelter kind?--
And feels no need to blanch her rosy cheek
With thoughts befitting his superior mind.

"Who only sorrows when she sees him pained,
Then knows to pluck away pain's fiercest dart;
Or, love arresting, ere its gaol is gained
Steal half its venom ere it reach his heart.

"'Tis the soul's food--the fervid must adore--
For this the heathen, insufficed with thought
Moulds him an idol of the glittering ore
Or shines his smiling goddess, marble-wrought.

"What bliss for her--e'en on this world of woe
Oh! sire who mak'st yon orb-strown arch thy throne,--
That sees thee, in thy nobles work below,
Shine undefaced!--and calls that work her own!

"This I had hoped: but hope too dear, too great--
Go to thy grave! I feel thee blasted, now--
Give me, fate's sovereign, well to bear the fate
Thy pleasure sends--this, my sole prayer, allow."

XLVI.

Still, fixed on heaven, her earnest eye, all dew,
Seemed as it sought amid the lamps of night
For him her soul addressed; but other view
Far different--sudden from that pensive plight

Recalled her: quick as on primeval gloom
Burst the new day-star, when the Eternal bid,
Appeared, and glowing filled the dusky room,
As 'twere a brillant cloud; the form it hid

Modest emerged, as might a youth beseem;
Save a slight scarf, his beauty bare, and white
As cygnet's bosom on some silver stream;
Or young narcissus, when to woo the light

Of its _first_ morn, that flowret open springs;--
And near the maid he comes with timid gaze
And gently fans her, with his full spread wings
Transparent as the cooling gush that plays

From ivory fount. Each bright prismatic tint
Still vanishing, returning, blending, changing,
Glowed, from their fibrous mystic texture glint,
Like colours o'er the full-blown bubble ranging

That pretty urchins launch upon the air
And laugh to see it vanish; yet, so bright,
More like--and even that were faint compare,
As shaped from some new rain-bow; rosy light

Like that which pagans say the dewy car
Precedes of their Aurora, clipp'd him round
Retiring as he mov'd; and evening's star
Shamed not the diamond coronal that bound

His curly locks. And still to teach his face
Expression dear to her he wooed he sought;
And, in his hand, he held a little vase
Of virgin gold in strange devices wrought.

XL