St. John._
          Who livest—_that_ we know—
              In Eternity—we feel—
          But the shadow of whose brow
              What spirit shall reveal? Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
              Thy messenger hath known
          Have dream’d for thy Infinity
              *A model of their own—
          Thy will is done, Oh, God! The star hath ridden high
          Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
              Beneath thy burning eye;
          And here, in thought, to thee—
              In thought that can alone
          Ascend thy empire and so be
              A partner of thy throne—
     * The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as
     having a really human form.—_Vide Clarke’s Sermons_, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit. The drift of Milton’s argument, leads him to employ language
     which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their
     doctrine;  but it will be seen immediately, that he guards
     himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most
     ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church.—_Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s Christian Doctrine_. This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary,
     could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of
     Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He
     lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples
     were called Anthropmorphites.—_Vide Du Pin_. Among Milton’s poems are these lines:—
                Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, &c.
                Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
                Natura solers finxit humanum genus? Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
                Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.—And afterwards,
                Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
                Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, &c.
          By wingèd Fantasy,*
              My embassy is given,
          Till secrecy shall knowledge be
              In the environs of Heaven.”
          She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek
          Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek
          A shelter from the fervour of His eye;
          For the stars trembled at the Deity. She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there
          How solemnly pervading the calm air! A sound of silence on the startled ear
          Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
           Ours is a world of words:  Quiet we call
          “Silence”—which is the merest word of all. All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things
          Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings—
          But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
          The eternal voice of God is passing by,
          And the red winds are withering in the sky! ** “What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,
          Link’d to a little system, and one sun—
          Where all my love is folly and the crowd
          Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
          The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath—
          (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?) What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
          The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
     * Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
       Seinem Schosskinde
       Der Phantasie.—_Göethe_. ** Sightless—too small to be seen—_Legge_. Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
          To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven. Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
          With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
          *Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
          And wing to other worlds another light! Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
          To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
          To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
          Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”
              Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
          The single-moonèd eve!—on Earth we plight
          Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
          The birth-place of young Beauty had no more. As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
          Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
          And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
          **Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign. * I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies;
    —they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common
     centre, into innumerable radii. ** Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca,
     which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of
     astonished mariners. Part II. HIGH on a mountain of enamell’d head—
          Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
          Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
          Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
          With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”
           What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—
          Of rosy head, that towering far away
          Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
          Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,
          While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—
          Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile
          Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthen’d air,
          Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
          Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
          And nursled the young mountain in its lair. *Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
          Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall
          Of their own dissolution, while they die—
          Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. A dome, by linkèd light from Heaven let down,
          Sat gently on these columns as a crown—
          A window of one circular diamond, there,
          Look’d out above into the purple air,
     * Some star which, from the ruin’d roof Of shak’d Olympus,
     by mischance, did fall.—_Milton._
          And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
          And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,
          Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
          Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing. But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
          The dimness of this world:  that greyish green
          That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
          Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—
          And every sculptur’d cherub thereabout
          That from his marble dwelling peerèd out,
          Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—
          Achaian statues in a world so rich? *Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—
          From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
          **Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave
          Is now upon thee—but too late to save! Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
          Witness the murmur of the grey twilight
     * Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, “Je connois
     bien l’admiration qu’inspirent ces ruines—mais un palais
     érigé au pied d’une chaine des rochers sterils—peut il
     être un chef d’œuvre des arts!” [_Voila les arguments de M. Voltaire_.] ** “Oh!