That they have followers proves nothing—

     “‘No Indian prince has to his palace
     More followers than a thief to the gallows. SONNET—TO SCIENCE


     Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
         Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
         Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
     To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies
         Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
     To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thous not torn the Naiad from her flood,
     The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
         The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? AL AARAAF (*)


     PART I.
          O! nothing earthly save the ray
          (Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,
          As in those gardens where the day
          Springs from the gems of Circassy—
          O! nothing earthly save the thrill
          Of melody in woodland rill—
          Or (music of the passion-hearted)
          Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
          That like the murmur in the shell,
          Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
          Oh, nothing of the dross of ours—
          Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
          That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
          Adorn yon world afar, afar—
          The wandering star. * A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared
     suddenly in the heavens—attained, in a few days, a
     brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter—then as suddenly
     disappeared, and has never been seen since. ’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
          Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
          Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
          An oasis in desert of the blest. Away—away—’mid seas of rays that roll
          Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—
          The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
          Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—
          To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
          And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—
          But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,
          She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
          And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
          Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs. Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
          Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
          (Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
          Like woman’s hair ‘mid pearls, until, afar,
          It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)
          She look’d into Infinity—and knelt. Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
          Fit emblems of the model of her world—
          Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight
          Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
          A wreath that twined each starry form around,
          And all the opal’d air in color bound. All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
          Of flowers:  of lilies such as rear’d the head
          *On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
          So eagerly around about to hang
          Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—
          **Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died. The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
          Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:
          * On Santa Maura—olim Deucadia. **And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—
          Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d
          All other loveliness: its honied dew
          (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
          Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,
          And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
          In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
          So like its own above that, to this hour,
          It still remaineth, torturing the bee
          With madness, and unwonted reverie:
          In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
          And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
          Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
          Repenting follies that full long have fled,
          Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
          Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:
          Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
          She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
          **And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
          While pettish tears adown her petals run:
          ***And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—
          And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
          Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
          Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
     * This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated. ** Clytia—The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a
     better-known term, the turnsol—which continually turns
     towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from
     which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its
     flowers during the most violent heat of the day.—_B. de St.
     Pierre_. *** There is cultivated in the king’s garden at Paris, a
     species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large
     and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla,
     during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It
     does not blow till towards the month of July—you then
     perceive it gradually open its petals—expand them—fade
     and die.—_St. Pierre_. *And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
     From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
     **And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante! Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante! ***And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
     With Indian Cupid down the holy river—
     Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
     ****To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:
        “Spirit! that dwellest where,
              In the deep sky,
          The terrible and fair,
              In beauty vie! Beyond the line of blue—
              The boundary of the star
          Which turneth at the view
              Of thy barrier and thy bar—
          Of the barrier overgone
             By the comets who were cast
          From their pride, and from their throne
             To be drudges till the last—
          To be carriers of fire
             (The red fire of their heart)
          With speed that may not tire
             And with pain that shall not part—
     * There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the
     Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of
     three or four feet—thus preserving its head above water
     in the swellings of the river. ** The Hyacinth. *** It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first
     seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges—and
     that he still loves the cradle of his childhood. **** And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints. —_Rev.