s ambrosial air to the
house-worshipful in which _she_ doubtless lay, like a closed
lily-flower, clasped in sleep.

A mocking-bird--the Southland's nightingale--in, some tree or bush not
far away, burst into passion-shaken melody that seemed to voice, as no
words could, his own emotion.

Down the stair he slipped, and out of the door, into the well-nigh
intoxicating beauty of the southern summer's night. Indeed, the odors of
the dew-drenched flowers--the moonlight--the bird-music, together with
his remembrance of his lady's greeting, went to his head like wine.

As he strolled along some lines of Shelley's which had long been
favorites of his, sang in his brain:

"I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And the spirit in my feet
Has led me--who knows how?--
To thy chamber-window, sweet!

"The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream;
The champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
Oh, beloved, as thou art!

"Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast.
Oh, press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last."

The words of the latter half of this serenade were meaningless as
applied to his case. To have quoted them--even mentally--in any literal
sense, would have seemed to him profanation; yet the whole poem in some
way not to be analysed or defined, expressed his mood--and who so brutal
as to seek to reduce to common-sense the emotions of a poet-lover, in
the springtime of life?

At length he was before the closed and shuttered house, standing silent
and asleep. Opposite were the grassy slopes of Capitol Square--with the
pillared, white Capitol, in its midst, looking, in the moonlight, like a
dream of old Greece. _Her_ house! He looked upon its moonlit, ivied
walls with adoration. A light still shone from one upper room. Was it
_her_ chamber? Was she, too, awake and alive to the beauty of this magic
night?

His heart beat tumultuously at the thought. Then--Oh, wonder! His knees
trembled under him--he grew dizzy and was ready, indeed