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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
Btrone grief . I lay gazing on the tranquil water-mirror with eyelids slumberful , when suddenly its crystal surface was broken by a snow-white bird , whose track upon the water touched the tieart as would a flaw in the pure mirror of some high-gifted talisman . I could have wept to see thus marred a thing so beautiful . The bird alighted on the banks , shedding music
from its wings , and , circling overhead a moment , dropped upon the ivory shoulder of a daughter of Paradise . She stood before me in unveiled and pristine loveliness ; a torrent of ravishing black hair , deep as Indian dye , broke over her neck and shoulders with the profusion of a flood , and playing * around her uncinctured zone , murmured downward to her feet ,
unsandalled , save by those delicate azure veins which upon her ankles shone clear as pure sapphire on Parian . The fragrance of her parted lips was richer tnan myrrh or frankincense * sweeter than the breath of roses after a summer shower ! And her eyes beamed upon me with the lambent lustre of twin-morning stars * Then , in a voice whose tone was music and silver , sweet as
liquid dropping in a dream , she said : — " Oh , beloved Spirit ! I have sought thee long and late , and have at length found thee—Oh , my soul ' s joy ! what happiness is mine ! I thought my heart had died of its own wealth of love , but thou hast stirred its depths again !—Let me tell thee of my short sad history . —I was born of a globule of naphtha , blown by a sea-sprite in a frolic , who—when the creature of that generative mirth blushed forth
in the purple light and rosy flush of life , its hair flowing around its polished limbs redolent of grace and beauty—stood all amaze at the unlooked-for presence ; then , in the delirium of his joy , dashed headlong down unfathomed void , and never again upon the sea-foam rose . Then did a blight fall over the beings that peopled these magnificent abodes , and they died away one by one , until I was left alone , —alone ! Oh , that the measureless
love of my heart should have been lavished on this little bird ! Yet I have found thee , and all pain is departed , and sorrow hath flown . Look on me ; centuries of summers have not touched the perennial bloom of this cheek , or faded the rich dye of my crimson lip . —Sweet ! we will dwell together evermore ! Thou wilt not leave me—I know thou wilt not ; if I could think it , I should droop , and fade , and die !"
Never came healing" to the worn wanderer on the wings of sleep , with such welcome as did these words to my enraptured ears . M y soul yearned to her ; and forgetting , in that ravishing and thrilling hour , the whisper within , and , whilst the delirium was tempered with a hallowed glow , as of the presence of a thing divine , I locked her gently in my embrace , and murmured in her ear , in a tone of ineffable tenderness : — - " Beautiful Spirit ! I am thine , thine ! for ever thine !"
Untitled Article
644 The Opium-Trance .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 644, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/56/
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