Let Reason first her office ply; Esteem, and admiration high, And mental, moral sympathy, Exist they first, nor be they brought By self-deceiving afterthought,— What if an halo interfuse With these again its opal hues, That all o’erspreading and o’erlying, Transmuting, mingling, glorifying, About the beauteous various whole. With beaming smile do dance and quiver; Yet, is that halo of the soul?— Or is it, as may sure be said, Phosphoric exhalation bred Of vapour, steaming from the bed Of Fancy’s brook, or Passion’s river? So when, as will be by-and-by, The stream is waterless and dry, This halo and its hues will die; And though the soul contented rest With those substantial blessings blest, Will not a longing, half confest, Betray that this is not the love, The gift for which all gifts above Him praise we, Who is Love, the Giver? I cannot say—the things are good: Bread is it, if not angels’ food; But Love? Alas! I cannot say; A glory on the vision lay; A light of more than mortal day About it played, upon it rested; It did not, faltering and weak, Beg Reason on its side to speak: Itself was Reason, or, if not, Such substitute as is, I wot, Of seraph-kind the loftier lot;— Itself was of itself attested;— To processes that, hard and dry, Elaborate truth from fallacy, With modes intuitive succeeding, Including those and superseding; Reason sublimed and Love most high It was, a life that cannot die, A dream of glory most exceeding. 1844 _Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!_[3] Farewell, my Highland lassie! when the year returns around, Be it Greece, or be it Norway, where my vagrant feet are found, I shall call to mind the place, I shall call to mind the day, The day that’s gone for ever, and the glen that’s far away; I shall mind me, be it Rhine or Rhone, Italian land or France, Of the laughings and the whispers, of the pipings and the dance; I shall see thy soft brown eyes dilate to wakening woman thought, And whiter still the white cheek grow to which the blush was brought; And oh, with mine commixing I thy breath of life shall feel, And clasp thy shyly passive hands in joyous Highland reel; I shall hear, and see, and feel, and in sequence sadly true, Shall repeat the bitter-sweet of the lingering last adieu; I shall seem as now to leave thee, with the kiss upon the brow, And the fervent benediction of—Ὁ Θεὸς μετὰ σοῦ!