ht;
And true love caresses--
O! leave them apart!
They are light on the tresses,
But lead on the heart.

Ligeia! Ligeia!
My beautiful one!
Whose harshest idea
Will to melody run,
O! is it thy will
On the breezes to toss?
Or, capriciously still,
Like the lone Albatross, [23]
Incumbent on night
(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 [24]
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--[25]
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 slumber
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 Simoom, 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 n