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

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!
Spirit of Beauty.⁠By evil power
Thou hast obtained my presence: what is there
Between thy soul and me?
Erdolph.⁠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?
Spirit of Beauty.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.