Under the quick faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstacy,-
Possessing and possest by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one-or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweeet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips,
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh wherefore two ?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
"Till, like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:

In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, oue will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation. Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love's rare Universe,

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.-
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,

And say: "We are the masters of thy slave;

"What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?" Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet, "But its reward is in the world divine,

66 Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet

Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,

And bid them love each other and be blest:

And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest,-for I am Love's.

RND OF EFIPSYCHIDION.

JULIAN AND MADDALO,

The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,
The goats with the green leaves of budding spring,
Are saturated not-nor Love with tears.

Virgil's Gallus.

COUNT MADDALO is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius; and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men, and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentered and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frauk, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.

Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of

B