“It certainly did rhyme!”

“This was the reverie of the Student Hieronymus, as he sat at midnight in his chamber, with his hands clasped together, and resting upon anopen volume, which he should have been reading.  His pale face was raised, and the pupils of his eyes dilated as if the spirit-world were open before him, and some beauteous vision were standing there, and drawing the student’s soul through his eyes up into Heaven, as the evening sun through parting summer-clouds, seems to draw into its bosom the vapors of the earth.  O, it was a sweet vision!  I can see it before me now!

“Near the student stood an antique bronze lamp, with strange figures carved upon it.  It was a magic lamp, which once belonged to the Arabian astrologer El Geber, in Spain.  Its light was beautiful as the light of stars; and, night after night, as the lonely wight sat alone and read in his lofty tower, through the mist, and mirk, and dropping rain, it streamed out into the darkness, and was seen by many wakeful eyes.  To the poor Student Hieronymus it was a wonderful Aladdin’s Lamp; for in its flame a Divinity revealed herself unto him, and showed him treasures.  Whenever he opened a ponderous, antiquatedtome, it seemed as if some angel opened for him the gates of Paradise; and already he was known in the city as Hieronymus the Learned.

“But, alas! he could read no more.  The charm was broken.  Hour after hour he passed with his hands clasped before him, and his fair eyes gazing at vacancy.  What could so disturb the studies of this melancholy wight?  Lady, he was in love!  Have you ever been in love?  He had seen the face of the beautiful Hermione; and as, when we have thoughtlessly looked at the sun, our dazzled eyes, though closed, behold it still; so he beheld by day and by night the radiant image of her upon whom he had too rashly gazed.  Alas! he was unhappy; for the proud Hermione disdained the love of a poor student, whose only wealth was a magic lamp.  In marble halls, and amid the gay crowd that worshipped her, she had almost forgotten that such a being lived as the Student Hieronymus.  The adoration of his heart had been to her only as the perfume of a wild flower, which she had carelessly crushedwith her foot in passing.  But he had lost all; for he had lost the quiet of his thoughts; and his agitated soul reflected only broken and distorted images of things.  The world laughed at the poor student, who, in his torn and threadbare cassock, dared to lift his eyes to the Lady Hermione; while he sat alone, in his desolate chamber, and suffered in silence.  He remembered many things, which he would fain forget; but which, if he had forgotten them, he would wish again to remember.  Such were the linden-trees of Bulach, under whose pleasant shade he had told his love to Hermione.  This was the scene which he wished most to forget, yet loved most to remember; and of this he was now dreaming, with his hands clasped upon his book, and that kind of music in his thoughts, which you, Lady, mistook for rhyme.