CXVIII. Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,[497] Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover; The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting With her most starry canopy[498]--and seating Thyself by thine adorer, what befel? This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell Haunted by holy Love--the earliest Oracle! CXIX. And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, Blend a celestial with a human heart;[om] And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, Share with immortal transports? could thine art Make them indeed immortal, and impart The purity of Heaven to earthly joys, Expel the venom and not blunt the dart-- The dull satiety which all destroys-- And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys? CXX. Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert! whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies O'er the World's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. CXXI. Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art--[on] An unseen Seraph, we believe in thee,-- A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,-- But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;[499] The mind hath made thee, as it peopled Heaven, Even with its own desiring phantasy, And to a thought such shape and image given, As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung--and riven. CXXII. Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, And fevers into false creation:--where, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? In him alone. Can Nature show so fair? Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreached Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs[500] the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? CXXIII. Who loves, raves[501]--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds Which robed our idols, and we see too sure Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.