Then, further, I was conscious that my face Had lull'd her fears; that close to me she came Tamer than beast, and toy'd with my great beard, And murmur'd sounds like prattled infants' speech, And yielding to my kisses kissed again.

Whereat, in scorn of my pale Soul, I cried,

"Here will I feast in honour of this night!"

And spread the board with meats and bread and wine, And drew the curtain with a wave of arm

Bidding the sunlight welcome: lastly, snatch'd

A purple robe of richness from the wall,

And flung it o'er her while she kiss'd and smiled,
Girdling the waist with clasp and cord of gold.

Then sat we, side by side. She, queenly stoled,

Amid the gleaming fountain of her hair,

With liquid azure orbs and rosy lips

Gorgeous with honey'd kisses; I, like a man

Who loves fair eyes and knows they are a fiend's,
And in them sees a heav'n he knows is hell.
For, like a glorious beast, she ate and drank,
Staining her lips in crimson wine, and laugh'd

To feel the vinous bubbles froth and burst

In veins whose sparkling blood was meet to be
An angel's habitation. Cup on cup
I drain'd in fulness-careless as a god-
A haggard bearded head upon a breast
In tumult like a sun-kist bed of flowers.

But ere, suffused with light, the eyes of Heaven
Widen'd to gaze upon the white-arm'd Moon,
Stiller than stone we reign'd there, side by side.
Yea, like a lonely King whose Glory sits
Beside him,-impotent of life but fair,
Brightly apparelëd but vacant-eyed,

And haunts him with the mockery his woe
Casts o'er its jewel'd brows,—I sat above
The tumult of the town, as on a throne,
Watching her wearily; while far away
Vacant eternity was sown with stars,
And sunset dark'd like dying eyes that shut
Under the waving of an angel's wing.

6. A VOICE IN HEAVEN SINGS.

1.

FROM the furthest fringe of the night,
While the arms of the flesh enfold thee,
From the darkening fringe of the night
Whence the Moon is withdrawing her light,
I, Psyche the Soul, behold thee!
The glory is faded, is faded,

Pygmalion!

In the sense is my silence degraded,

And my semblance on earth is gone!

2.

O thou, who couldst symbol in stone,
By strength and endurance unbroken,

The Eternal,-conferring on stone
The yearning and love of thine own
Soul, as a hope and a token!
There cometh a bitter to-morrow,

Weak Heart, weak Heart,

For, far from the range of thy sorrow,
I, Psyche the Soul, depart!

7.-ICHABOD.

THREE days and nights the vision dwelt with me,
Three days and nights we dozed in dreadful state,
Look'd piteously upon by sun and star;

But the third night there pass'd a homeless sound
Across the city underneath my tower,

And lo! there came a roll of muffled wheels,

A shrieking and a hurrying to and fro

Beneath, and I gazed forth. Then far below

I heard the people shriek "A pestilence!"

But, while they shriek'd, they carried forth their Dead,
And flung them out upon the common ways,
And moaning fled: while far across the hills
A dark and brazen sunset ribb'd with black
Glared, like the sullen eyeballs of the plague.

I turn'd to her, the partner of my height:
She, with bright eyeballs sick with wine, and hair
Gleaming in sunset, on a couch asleep.

And lo! a horror lifted up my scalp,

The pulses plunged upon the heart, and fear
Froze my wide eyelids. Peacefully she lay
In purple stole array'd, one little hand
Bruising the downy cheek, the other still
Clutching the dripping goblet, and the light,
With gleams of crimson on the ruinous hair,
Spangling a blue-vein'd bosom whence the robe
Fell back in rifled folds; but dreadful change
Grew pale and hideous on the waxen face,

And in her sleep she did not stir, nor dream.

Therefore, it seem'd, Death pluck'd me by the sleeve, And, sweeping past, with lean forefinger touch'd

The sleeper's brow and smiled; when, shrinking back, I turn'd my face away, and saw afar

The brazen sullen sunset ribb'd with black

Glare on her, like the eyeballs of the plague.

O apparition of my work and wish! Shrieking I fled, my robe across my face, And left my glory and my woe behind,

And sped, thro' pathless woods, o'er moonlit peaks,

Toward sunrise ;-nor have halted since that hour,