Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/266

248* If thou be not a mockery of the mind!

Nay! look not so upon me, with those eyes

Wherein a heaven of conscious purity

Lies calmly pitying, suffused with dew:

I know that I have sinned!

By evil power

Thou hast obtained my presence: what is there

Between thy soul and me?

Have I not loved thee,

And with a love that knew no change through years

Of suffering and sin? Have I not scorned

The loves of kindred and the hopes of fame,

The common sympathies of social life.

And smiles and tears of maidens eyeing me

With trembling tenderness—through darkening days

Still clinging to the worship of thine image,

The pale remembrance of a vanished dream?

Art thou so sinful, yet thou darest to love?

Has thy dark life borne thee to so great light?

—Heaven gave thee many gifts, the greatest this,

To feel in beauty an undying joy.

iSo could the spirit of the universe

Thy boyhood thrill, and Nature's lessons wise

Were stored in golden chambers of thy mind.

But when with growing years it had become

The passion of thy being, and thou could'st

Forget or scorn that nobler beauty. Virtue's,

And the bright forms of uncreated Truth,

The aims of all existence were o'erlooked.

And Heaven commended to thy parching lips

The ashy cup of bitterest discontent.

Turning from these in wretchedness of heart

To satisfy the cravings of the soul,

With beauty more sublime, ethereal.

Of knowledge and the mind; but this alone,

The farther thou from highest excellence,

And darker paths around thee. It was then

To punish thy perverseness, I was sent

To lead thy folly on and torture thee

With a vain vision. In that transient dream

I did appear, and by that shady fountain

In this created loveliness I gazed

In sadness on thee—that thou couldst so miss

What was most truly beautiful, and stir

Thy soul's pure springs to blackness with vain toil

After that happiness which hidden lay

In thine own breast; would'st thou its fount unseal

I would have spoken, but thy God had left thee

To the wild workings of thine own dark soul.

And would not have thee warned. And from that hour

In wretched constancy thou hast adored

My semblance mirrored in thy restless mind—

A phantom loveliness. But now return

To the green earth, and open all thy heart

To fairest Virtue and immortal Truth,

And the large charities of human love,

And through thy being thou shalt thrice enjoy

All loveliness beside; but otherwise

Created beauty shall forever be

A madness and a torture to thy spirit:

The conquering sun shall seem to thee a blot.