The earthlier half, its own and Heaven's before.
In allusion to the well-known Platonic fancy, that love is the yearning of the soul for the twin soul with which it was united in a former existence, and which it instinctively recognizes below. Schiller, in one of his earlier poems, has enlarged on this idea with earnest feeling and vigorous fancy.
[12.—Page 357, stanza lxxiii.]
Ice-blocks the walls, and hollow'd ice the roof!
The houses of the Esquimaux who received Captain Lyon were thus constructed:—the frozen snow being formed into slabs of about two feet long and half a foot thick; the benches were made with snow, strewed with twigs, and covered with skins; and the lamp suspended from the roof, fed with seal or walrus oil, was the sole substitute for the hearth, and furnished light and fire for cooking.
The Esquimaux were known to the settlers and pirates of Norway by the contemptuous name of dwarfs or pigmies—(Skrœllings).
which certain Norway hags
Had squeezed from heaven and bottled up in bags.
A well-known popular superstition, not, perhaps, quite extinct at this day, amongst the Baltic mariners.