no shape.

"Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms; repose thus."

"Thus I lean, O Invisible but felt! And what art thou?"

"Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. Daughter of Man,
drink of my cup!"

"I drink: it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full current. My
arid heart revives; my affliction is lightened; my strait and struggle
are gone. And the night changes! the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide
sky--all change!"

"All change, and for ever. I take from thy vision darkness; I loosen
from thy faculties fetters! I level in thy path obstacles; I with my
presence fill vacancy. I claim as mine the lost atom of life. I take to
myself the spark of soul--burning heretofore forgotten!"

"O take me! O claim me! This is a god."

"This is a son of God--one who feels himself in the portion of life that
stirs you. He is suffered to reclaim his own, and so to foster and aid
that it shall not perish hopeless."

"A son of God! Am I indeed chosen?"

"Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair; I knew thee
that thou wert mine. To me it is given to rescue, to sustain, to cherish
mine own. Acknowledge in me that Seraph on earth named Genius."

"My glorious Bridegroom! true Dayspring from on high! All I would have
at last I possess. I receive a revelation. The dark hint, the obscure
whisper, which have haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art
He I sought. Godborn, take me, thy bride!"

"Unhumbled, I can take what is mine. Did I not give from the altar the
very flame which lit Eva's being? Come again into the heaven whence thou
wert sent."

That Presence, invisible but mighty, gathered her in like a lamb to the
fold; that voice, soft but all-pervading, vibrated through her heart
like music. Her eye received no image; and yet a sense visited her
vision and her brain as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of
sovereign seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding
elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, above all, as
of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious on the Night,
vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun.

Such was the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the
tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who
shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged
deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record
the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:--How