Virginalia ; or, songs of my summer nights :: :: University of Virginia Library

I drink, bewildered with divine delight,
Refreshing draughts out of thy soul's deep shining Well;
And walk, arrayed in robes of living white,
Through Heaven's immortal Bowers of Asphodel,—
Translated on the pinions of the Dove,
Feeding on music from the honeyed lips of love.

New forms of Beauty thou didst in my soul awaken,
New joys inspiring, such as Angels feel above,—
Like some tall Reed by winds from Eden shaken,
My soul swayed, bent down by the music of thy love;
As one, when lifted suddenly from distress,
Falls at the Gates of God with too much happiness.

As when the Moon comes out upon the Hills of Heaven,
And troubles Ocean with the presence of her light;
Did thy dear Beauty, when to me first given,
Madden my spirit with an infinite delight—
As one who wanders through the Gate of Dreams,
Amid the Bowers of Bliss, beside Elysian streams.

Up to the Alpine Peaks of thy sweet song,
My soul soared, singing, shouting while it soared,
Echoing the utterance of thy sweet Angelic tongue,
Piling around Heaven's Gate the fountains that were poured
Out of thy soul in rivers of ecstatic fire—
Drowning the Archangel's songs to silence with thy heavenly Lyre.

For as the Lightnings strike out from the clouds cool rain,
Refreshing, with their fall, the thirsting Earth;

So thou didst from our souls, with thy sweet strain,
The tears of joy, expressive of thy heavenly worth—
The rosy richness of whose soft Aonian song
Unto Edenic chimes high up above th' Empyrean Realms belong.

Over the coral curve of thy sweet lips did roll
A cascade of sweet song of spiritual fire,
Out of the fountains of thy rich immortal soul,
Preaching of Beauty with an Angel's heavenly Lyre—
Where soft Persuasion, clad in robes of light,
Sat shedding odor from her wings of spotless white.