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 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! [26]

  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.” [27]

  He was a goodly spirit—­he who fell: 
  A wanderer by mossy-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.