MAURICE.

Ay! if you loved her, would your eyes have miss'd
The moonish faintness that o'erlaps her now,
Melting the fresh, full, ruddy glow of health
To loveliness most heavenly, yet most sad?
Her cheeks, where youth once summer'd into roses,
Glow now with faint exotic loveliness,
Not native to this harsh and gusty earth;
And from her large dark eyes there seems to gaze
Some angel with mute, melancholy looks,
As from a casement at this jarring world.

ORAN.

Ha! then you too have seen it; it is not,
O Heaven!--is not delusion, this fond dream,
But even now it works, works bliss for her.
Proceed, Sir ... you were saying ... Sir, I list ...
That in her eyes you saw angelic fire,
Pure from the dross, the dimming clouds of earth,
Deem'd now her frame ethereal, unakin
To earth's clay-moulded fabrics--such, perchance,
As entering heaven, might have left its dust
At the bright folding portals, sandal-like,
And thence, repassing in seraphic trance,
Still left unclaim'd the vesture at the gate!

ROGER.