Classic Poem

XXXI.

Away the wild steed leapeth, while his rider calmly sleepeth
Beneath a rock which keepeth the entrance to the glen,
Which standeth like a castle, where are dwelling lord and vassal,
Where within are wine and wassail, and without are warrior men;
But save the sleeping Maurice, this castle cliff had then
No mortal denizen!

XXXII.

Now Maurice is awaking, for the solid earth is shaking,
And a sunny light is breaking through the slowly opening stone,
And a fair page at the portal crieth, “Welcome, welcome! mortal,
Leave thy world (at best a short ill), for the pleasant world we own;
There are joys by thee untasted, there are glories yet unknown—
Come kneel at Una's throne.”

XXXIII.

With a sullen sound of thunder, the great rock falls asunder,
He looks around in wonder, and with ravishment awhile,
For the air his sense is chaining, with as exquisite a paining,
As when summer clouds are raining o'er a flowery Indian isle;
And the faces that surround him, oh! how exquisite their smile,
So free of mortal care and guile.

XXXIV.

These forms, oh! they are finer—these faces are diviner
Than, Phidias, even thine are, with all thy magic art;
For beyond an artist's guessing, and beyond a bard's expressing,
Is the face that truth is dressing with the feelings of the heart;
Two worlds are there together—Earth and Heaven have each a part—
And such, divinest Una, thou art!

XXXV.

And then the dazzling lustre of the hall in which they muster—
Where brightest diamonds cluster on the flashing walls around;
And the flying and advancing, and the sighing and the glancing,
And the music and the dancing on the flower-in woven ground,
And the laughing and the feasting, and the quaffing and the sound,
In which their voices all are drowned,

XXXVI.

But the murmur now is hushing—there's a pushing and a rushing,
There's a crowding and a crushing, through that golden, fairy place,
Where a snowy veil is lifting, like the slow and silent shifting
Of a shining vapour drifting across the moon's pale face—
For there sits gentle Una, fairest queen of fairy race,
In her beauty, and her majesty, and grace.

XXXVII.

The moon by stars attended, on her pearly throne ascended,
Is not more purely splendid than this fairy-girted queen;
And when her lips had spoken, 'mid the charmed silence broken,
You'd think you had awoken in some bright Elysian scene;
For her voice than the lark's was sweeter, that sings in joy between
The heavens and the meadows green.

XXXVIII.

But her cheeks—ah! what are roses?—what are clouds where eve reposes?—
What are hues that dawn discloses?—to the blushes spreading there;
And what the sparkling motion of a star within the ocean,
To the crystal soft emotion that her lustrous dark eyes wear?
And the tresses of a moonless and a starless night are fair
To the blackness of her raven hair.

XXXIX.

Ah! Mortal, hearts have panted for what to thee is granted—
To see the halls enchanted of the spirit world revealed;
And yet no glimpse assuages the feverish doubt that rages
In the hearts of bards and sages wherewith they may be healed;
For this have pilgrims wandered—for this have votaries kneeled—
For this, too, has blood bedewed the field,

XL.

“And now that thou beholdest what the wisest and the oldest,
What the bravest and the boldest, have never yet descried,
Wilt thou come and share our being, be a part of what thou'rt seeing,
And flee, as we are fleeing, through the boundless ether wide?
Or along the silver ocean, or down deep where pearls hide?
And I, who am a queen, will be thy bride.