(As she on the air)

To keep watch with delight

On the harmony there?

Ligeia! wherever

Thy image may be,

No magic shall sever

Thy music from thee.

Thou hast bound many eyes

In a dreamy sleep

But the strains still arise

Which _thy_ vigilance keep

The sound of the rain

Which leaps down to the flower,

And dances again

In the rhythm of the shower

The murmur that springs

From the growing of grass

Are the music of things

But are modell'd, alas!

Away, then my dearest,

O! hie thee away

To springs that lie clearest

Beneath the moon-ray

To lone lake that smiles,

In its dream of deep rest,

At the many star-isles

That enjewel its breast

Where wild flowers, creeping,

Have mingled their shade,

On its margin is sleeping

Full many a maid

Some have left the cool glade, and

Have slept with the bee

Arouse them my maiden,

On moorland and lea

Go! breathe on their slumber,

All softly in ear,

The musical number

They slumber'd to hear

For what can awaken

An angel so soon

Whose sleep hath been taken

Beneath the cold moon,

As the spell which no clumber

Of witchery may test,

The rhythmical number

Which lull'd him to rest?"

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,

A thousand seraphs burst th' Empyrean thro',

Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight

Seraphs in all but "Knowledge", the keen light

That fell, refracted, thro' thy bounds, afar

O Death! from eye of God upon that star:

Sweet was that error - sweeter still that death

Sweet was that error - ev'n with us the breath

Of Science dims the mirror of our joy

To them 'twere the Simoon, and would destroy

For what (to them) availeth it to know

That Truth is Falsehood - or that Bliss is Woe?

Sweet was their death - with them to die was rife

With the last ecstasy of satiate life

Beyond that death no immortality

But sleep that pondereth and is not "to be"

And there - oh! may my weary spirit dwell

Apart from Heaven's Eternity - and yet how far

from Hell!

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,

Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?

But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts

To those who hear not for their beating hearts.

A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover

O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)

Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?

Unguided Love hath fallen - 'mid "tears of perfect

moan."

He was a goodly spirit - he who fell:

A wanderer by moss-y-mantled well

A gazer on the lights that shine above

A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:

What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,

And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair

And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy

To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.

The night had found (to him a night of wo)

Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo

Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,

And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.

Here sate he with his love - his dark eye bent

With eagle gaze along the firmament:

Now turn'd it upon her - but ever then

It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

"lanthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!

How lovely 'tis to look so far away!

She seem'd not thus upon that autumn eve

I left her gorgeous halls - nor mourn'd to leave.

That ese - that eve - I should remember well

The sun-ray dropp'd, in Lemnos, with a spell

On th' Arabesque carving of a gilded hall

Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall

And on my eye-lids - О the heavy light!

How drowsily it weigh'd them into night!