refused to Truth! And, passing from the room, I found her lover
stretched in his cloak beside the door; for he reads with a feverish and
desperate prophecy the doom that waits her; and so loves he the very air
she breathes, the very ground she treads, that when she has left his
sight he creeps, silently and unknown to her, to the nearest spot
hallowed by her presence, anxious that while yet she is on earth not an
hour, not a moment, should be wasted upon other thoughts than those that
belong to her; and feeling a security, a fearful joy, in lessening the
distance that _now_ only momentarily divides them. And that love seemed
to me not as the love of the common world, and I stayed my wings and
looked upon it as a thing that centuries might pass and bring no parallel
to, in its beauty and its melancholy truth. But I kept away the sleep
from the lover's eyes, for well I knew that sleep was a tyrant, that
shortened the brief time of waking tenderness for the living, yet spared
him; and one sad, anxious thought of her was sweeter, in spite of its
sorrow, than the brightest of fairy dreams. So I left him awake, and
watching there through the long night, and felt that the children of
earth have still something that unites them to the spirits of a finer
race, so long as they retain amongst them the presence of real love!"

And oh! is there not a truth also in our fictions of the Unseen World?
Are there not yet bright lingerers by the forest and the stream? Do the
moon and the soft stars look out on no delicate and winged forms bathing
in their light? Are the fairies and the invisible hosts but the children
of our dreams, and not their inspiration? Is that all a delusion which
speaks from the golden page? And is the world only given to harsh and
anxious travellers that walk to and fro in pursuit of no gentle shadows?
Are the chimeras of the passions the sole spirits of the universe? No!
while my remembrance treasures in its deepest cell the image of one no
more,--one who was "not of the earth, earthy;" one in whom love was the