By all that thou hast To mortals given, Which—oh, could it last, This earth were heaven! We call thee hither, entrancing Power! Spirit of Love! Spirit of Bliss! Thy holiest time is the moonlight hour, And there never was moonlight so sweet as this. -------------- Impatient of a scene, whose luxuries stole, Spite of himself, too deep into his soul, And where, midst all that the young heart loves most, Flowers, music, smiles, to yield was to be lost, The youth had started up, and turn’d away From the light nymphs, and their luxurious lay, To muse upon the pictures that hung round,—[88] Bright images, that spoke without a sound, And views, like vistas into fairy ground. But here again new spells came o’er his sense:— All that the pencil’s mute omnipotence Could call up into life, of soft and fair, Of fond and passionate, was glowing there; Nor yet too warm, but touched with that fine art Which paints of pleasure but the purer part; Which knows even Beauty when half-veil’d is best,— Like her own radiant planet of the west, Whose orb when half retir’d looks loveliest.[89] _There_ hung the history of the Genii-King, Traced through each gay, voluptuous wandering With her from SABA’S bowers, in whose bright eyes He read that to be blest is to be wise;—[90] _Here_ fond ZULEIKA[91] woos with open arms The Hebrew boy, who flies from her young charms, Yet, flying, turns to gaze, and, half undone, Wishes that Heaven and she could _both_ be won; And here MOHAMMED, born for love and guile, Forgets the Koran in his MARY’S smile;— Then beckons some kind angel from above With a new text to consecrate their love.[92] With rapid step, yet pleas’d and ling’ring eye, Did the youth pass these pictur’d stories by, And hasten’d to a casement, where the light Of the calm moon came in, and freshly bright The fields without were seen, sleeping as still As if no life remain’d in breeze or rill. Here paus’d he, while the music, now less near, Breath’d with a holier language on his ear, As though the distance, and that heavenly ray Through which the sounds came floating, took away All that had been too earthly in the lay.