“I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe The dreariest and the longest journey go. True love in this differs from gold and clay That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light Imagination! . . . Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates . . . One object, and one form.” He drew a picture of Emilia which was one long pæan to her beauty: “Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress And her loose hair: and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind.” “The brightness Of her divinest presence trembles through Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew Embodied in the windless heaven of June, Amid the splendour of winged stars, the Moon Burns inextinguishably beautiful.” “Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate Whose course has been so starless! O too late Beloved! O too soon adored by me!” “Emily A ship is floating in the harbour now. . . .” It was the most impassioned of invitations to set sail for some lovely and impossible Elysian isle. There “We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? . . . Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, And our veins beat together. . . . One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One heaven, one hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love’s rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire—— I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!”