I found her not—the chamber seemed
Like some divinely haunted place
Where fairy forms had lately beamed,
And left behind their odorous trace!
It felt as if her lips had shed
A sigh around her, ere she fled,
Which hung, as on a melting lute,
When all the silver chords are mute,
There lingers still a trembling breath
After the note's luxurious death,
A shade of song, a spirit air
Of melodies which had been there.
I saw the veil, which, all the day,
Had floated o'er her cheek of rose;
I saw the couch, where late she lay
In languor of divine repose;
And I could trace the hallowed print
Her limbs had left, as pure and warm,
As if 'twere done in rapture's mint,
And Love himself had stamped the form.
Oh my sweet mistress, where wert thou?
In pity fly not thus from me;
Thou art my life, my essence now,
And my soul dies of wanting thee.
[1] In the "Histoire Naturelle des Antilles," there is an account of some curious shells, found at Curaçoa, on the back of which were lines, filled with musical characters so distinct and perfect, that the writer assures us a very charming trio was sung from one of them. The author adds, a poet might imagine that these shells were used by the syrens at their concerts.
[2] According to Cicero, and his commentator, Macrobius, the lunar tone is the gravest and faintest on the planetary heptachord.
[3] Leucippus, the atomist, imagined a kind of vortices in the heavens, which he borrowed from Anaxagoras, and possibly suggested to Descartes.
[4] Heraclides, upon the allegories of Homer, conjectures that the idea of the harmony of the spheres originated with this poet, who, in representing the solar beams as arrows, supposes them to emit a peculiar sound in the air.
[5] In the account of Africa which D'Ablancourt has translated, there is mention of a tree in that country, whose branches, when shaken by the hand produce very sweet sounds.
[6] Alluding to the extinction, or at least the disappearance, of some of those fixed stars, which we are taught to consider as suns, attended each by its system. Descartes thought that our earth might formerly have been a sun, which became obscured by a thick incrustation over its surface. This probably suggested the idea of a central fire.