Oh, nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill,
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy's voice so peacefully departed,
That, like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell;—
Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty-all the flowers
That list our love, and deck our bowers--
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.
'Twas a sweet time for Nesace; for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns-a temporary rest—
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away, away, 'mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendour o'er th' unchained soul—
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destined eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time she rode,
And late to ours, the favour'd one of God;
But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,
She throws aside the sceptre-leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.
Now, happiest, loveliest in yon lovely earth, Whence sprang the "idea of beauty" into birth
(Falling in wreaths through many a startled star,
Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until afar
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),
She looked into infinity—and knelt.
Rich clouds for canopies about her curled-
Fit emblems of the model of her world
Seen but in beauty-not impeding sight
Of other beauty glittering through the light;
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opaled air in colour bound.
All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as reared the head
On the fair Capo Deucato,* and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of-deep pride-
Of hert who loved a mortal-and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Upreared its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnamed,
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it shamed
All other loveliness: its honeyed dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropped from heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
* On Santa Maura-olim Deucadia.
This flower is much noticed by Leuwenhoek and Tournefort. The bee feeding upon its blossom becomes intoxicated.
In Trebizond; and on a sunny flower,
So like its own above, that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness and unwonted reverie:
In heaven and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger-grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chastened, and more fair:
Nyctanthes, too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower + that sprang on earth
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to heaven, from garden of a king :
“Clytia—the Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known term, the turnsol, which turns continually towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds, which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day."-B. DE ST. PIERRE.
"There is cultivated in the king's garden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July; you then perceive it gradually open its petals, expand them, fade, and die."-ST. PIERRE.
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