"This is motion!" said he. "We fly upon the wings of the wind! The viewless wind comes roaring out of the black region of the East, it fills the high heaven, it roars on to the uttermost undulation of the atmosphere, and we are a part of it! We are only a mote upon its breath, a dust-atom driven before it, Eloise,--and yet one great happiness is greater than it, drowns it in a vaster flood of viewless power, can whisper to it calm!" How should Eloise contradict him? With such rude awakening, he might only snatch her in his arms and plunge down to death. Perhaps he half divined the fear. "Yes, Eloise," he said. "They are both here, life and death, at our beck! I can take you to my heart, one instant the tides divide, then they close above us, and you are mine for ever and ever and only,--sealed mine beneath all this crystal sphere of the waters! We hear the gentle lapping of the ripples on the shore, we hear the tones of evening-bells swim out and melt above us, we hear the oar shake off its shower of tinkling drops,--up the jewel-strewn deeps of heaven the planets hang out their golden lamps to light our slumbers! Heart to heart and lip to lip, we are at rest, we are at peace, nothing comes between us, our souls have the eternities in which to mingle!" He saw Eloise shudder, and turned from his dream, blazing full upon her. "Life, then, is best!" he cried. "But life together and alone, life where we count out its throbs in some far purple island of the main, prolonged who knows how far?--love shall make for us perpetual youth, there shall no gloom enter our Eden, perfect solitude and perfect bliss! Alone, we two in our pride and our joy can defy the powers of any other heaven, we shall become gods ourselves! Up helm and away! Life is best!" THE NEVA. I walk, as in a dream, Beside the sweeping stream, Wrapped in the summer midnight's amber haze: Serene the temples stand, And sleep, on either hand, The palace-fronts along the granite quays. Where golden domes, remote, Above the sea-mist float, The river-arms, dividing, hurry forth; And Peter's fortress-spire, A slender lance of fire, Still sparkles back the splendor of the North. The pillared angel soars Above the silent shores; Dark from his rock the horseman hangs in air; And down the watery line The exiled Sphinxes pine For Karnak's morning in the mellow glare. I hear, amid the hush, The restless current's rush, The Neva murmuring through his crystal zone: A voice portentous, deep, To charm a monarch's sleep With dreams of power resistless as his own. Strong from the stormy Lake, Pure from the springs that break In Valdai vales the forest's mossy floor, Greener than beryl-stone From fir woods vast and lone, In one full stream the braided currents pour.