In their crystal nunneries,
Notwithstanding Love will win
Or else force a passage in.”
He plucked a few notes and was silent, for Philomel in a thorn beside the Dean broke forth, amazing the night with harmony, and holding breath we listened to the sweet delirium that hath enchanted the ages.
She stopt as suddenly as she began and flew to some more distant groves to duel with another songster as lovely, the moon herself in rising seeming to pause and listen ere she ascended her silver throne.
“Exquisite!” says he sighing. “How have I the rude audacity to match my numbers with hers? Yet I too have my breast on a thorn and must sing or die. And you assert that they please, Mr. Tylliol?”
“They enchant,” cried I eagerly. “But, O, Mr. Herrick, my good host and worthy friend, I beseech you reveal to me where hide the Hesperides you celebrate in verse that will not die like Philomel’s. Few are my days here. Let me not return empty. With the most awful reverence will I stand at a distance to admire, nor with a thought smirch the crystalline lawn that veils the bosom of Madam Julia or the silks that rustle in Dianeme’s going. What—what are the earthly names of these admired ladies?”
“In one hour, when the moon is up and at full, then you shall meet them,” says he. “For then they do use to give me gracious tryst beyond Dean Burn at a certain place known to me and to them. And if their beauty is not correspondent to your expectation, blame not them, but consider rather the teaching of Plotinus his book wherein he writes: ‘That which sees must be kindred and similar to its object before it can see it. Every man must partake of the divine nature before he can see Divinity.’ So then, if they appear not lovely the fault is in the eye that sees.”
“But, sir,” says I bewildered; “is this so also with the perishable beauty of women which leads man into ways unallied indeed with Divinity?”
He touched a few soft notes on the pensive strings, responding gravely: