THOU Saxon-Greek, whose fancy-teeming soul
Unfolds before our eyes the glowing roll
Of antique lore, and shows us how to read
Of godlike love, the terror and the meed;
And how, descending, came from heavenly birth
The beauty and the loveliness of earth;
Or, dearer still, to dream our life away,
Hearing the nightingale's low throbbing lay.
Spirit divine! How did I feel thy might,
As once I sat enwrapped in shady night,
While all was hushed, save where on leathern wing
The bat flits by, or waters murmuring
Invite the soul to sleep and dewy ease,
With all the senses hushed, unskilled to please
The raptured soul, as, lingering on thy lay,
I turned the sad night to a radiant day.
How did I rest untouched by earthly care,
Remembering not things which had been or were,
But while the stars were sinking to their bed
And darkness came, nodding his dreamy head,
A lovely vision passed before my eye,
Bright radiant figures on a gloomy sky.
First Dian and Endymion appear,
No longer wrapped in modesty and fear,
But clothed with love as with a garment bright,
Slow gliding did they pass and fade from sight.
Ray-crowned Hyperion like a glittering star
Up heaven's ascent compels his shining car;
Then Lamia's deceit, and Isabel
Mourning the Basil-pot she loved so well.
And lo! as all these fancies fade away,
Enwrapped in misty clouds of pearly gray,
Bright in their midst the parting shades disclose
A lovely form, fresh as the budding rose,
In dawning womanhood. My love I knew,
Though all her charms of earth's most lovely hue
Irradiate were with heaven's celestial light.
Breathless I gazed upon the heavenly sight;
But, ah, dissolved in dew before my eyes,
It vanished, and the dawn was in the skies.
B. W. W
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THE NEW PHYSICAL LABORATORY.