'Bird of lovers! Voice of the passion of love! Sweet, deep, disaster-
toning nightingale!' sings the old minnesinger; 'who that has not loved,
hearing thee is touched with the wand of love's mysteries, and yearneth
to he knoweth not whom, humbled by overfulness of heart; but who,
listening, already loveth, heareth the language he would speak, yet
faileth in; feeleth the great tongueless sea of his infinite desires
stirred beyond his narrow bosom; is as one stript of wings whom the
angels beckon to their silver homes: and he leaneth forward to ascend to
them, and is mocked by his effort: then is he of the fallen, and of the
fallen would he remain, but that tears lighten him, and through the tears
stream jewelled shafts dropt down to him from the sky, precious ladders
inlaid with amethyst, sapphire, blended jasper, beryl, rose-ruby, ether
of heaven flushed with softened bloom of the insufferable Presences: and
lo, the ladders dance, and quiver, and waylay his eyelids, and a second
time he is mocked, aspiring: and after the third swoon standeth Hope
before him with folded arms, and eyes dry of the delusions of tears,
saying, Thou hast seen! thou hast felt! thy strength hath reached in thee
so far! now shall I never die in thee !'

'For surely,' says the minstrel, 'Hope is not born of earth, or it were
perishable. Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love
straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal
nightingale! And the difference of this celestial spirit from the
smirking phantasy of whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the
difference between painted day with its poor ambitious snares, and night
lifting its myriad tapers round the throne of the eternal, the prophet
stars of everlasting time! And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and
the one is unregretted, and the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of
divine melancholy; her ears crowded with the pale surges that wrap this