For many days Adrian and Idris continued to visit me thus.  In this dear intercourse, love, in the guise of enthusiastic friendship, infused more and more of his omnipotent spirit.  Idris felt it.  Yes, divinity of the world, I read your characters in her looks and gesture; I heard your melodious voice echoed by her—­you prepared for us a soft and flowery path, all gentle thoughts adorned it—­your name, O Love, was not spoken, but you stood the Genius of the Hour, veiled, and time, but no mortal hand, might raise the curtain.  Organs of articulate sound did not proclaim the union of our hearts; for untoward circumstance allowed no opportunity for the expression that hovered on our lips.  Oh my pen! haste thou to write what was, before the thought of what is, arrests the hand that guides thee.  If I lift up my eyes and see the desart earth, and feel that those dear eyes have spent their mortal lustre, and that those beauteous lips are silent, their “crimson leaves” faded, for ever I am mute!

But you live, my Idris, even now you move before me!  There was a glade, O reader! a grassy opening in the wood; the retiring trees left its velvet expanse as a temple for love; the silver Thames bounded it on one side, and a willow bending down dipt in the water its Naiad hair, dishevelled by the wind’s viewless hand.  The oaks around were the home of a tribe of nightingales—­there am I now; Idris, in youth’s dear prime, is by my side —­remember, I am just twenty-two, and seventeen summers have scarcely passed over the beloved of my heart.  The river swollen by autumnal rains, deluged the low lands, and Adrian in his favourite boat is employed in the dangerous pastime of plucking the topmost bough from a submerged oak.  Are you weary of life, O Adrian, that you thus play with danger?—­

He has obtained his prize, and he pilots his boat through the flood; our eyes were fixed on him fearfully, but the stream carried him away from us; he was forced to land far lower down, and to make a considerable circuit before he could join us.  “He is safe!” said Idris, as he leapt on shore, and waved the bough over his head in token of success; “we will wait for him here.”

We were alone together; the sun had set; the song of the nightingales began; the evening star shone distinct in the flood of light, which was yet unfaded in the west.  The blue eyes of my angelic girl were fixed on this sweet emblem of herself:  “How the light palpitates,” she said, “which is that star’s life.  Its vacillating effulgence seems to say that its state, even like ours upon earth, is wavering and inconstant; it fears, methinks, and it loves.”

“Gaze not on the star, dear, generous friend,” I cried, “read not love in its trembling rays; look not upon distant worlds; speak not of the mere imagination of a sentiment.  I have long been silent; long even to sickness have I desired to speak to you, and submit my soul, my life, my entire being to you.  Look not on the star, dear love, or do, and let that eternal spark plead for me; let it be my witness and my advocate, silent as it shines—­love is to me as light to the star; even so long as that is uneclipsed by annihilation, so long shall I love you.”