Almeryl strained her to him, and responded: 

My life was midnight on the mountain side;
Cold stars were on the heights: 
There, in my darkness, I had lived and died,
Content with nameless lights. 
Sudden I saw the heavens flush with a beam,
And I ascended soon,
And evermore over mankind supreme,
Stood silver in the moon.

And he fell playfully into a new metre, singing: 

Who will paint my beloved
In musical word or colour? 
Earth with an envy is moved: 
Sea-shells and roses she brings,
Gems from the green ocean-springs,
Fruits with the fairy bloom-dews,
Feathers of Paradise hues,
Waters with jewel-bright falls,
Ore from the Genii-halls: 
All in their splendour approved;
All; but, match’d with my beloved,
Darker, and denser, and duller.

Then she kissed him for that song, and sang: 

Once to be beautiful was my pride,
And I blush’d in love with my own bright brow: 
Once, when a wooer was by my side,
I worshipp’d the object that had his vow: 
Different, different, different now,
Different now is my beauty to me: 
Different, different, different now! 
For I prize it alone because prized by thee.

Almeryl stretched his arm to the lattice, and drew it open, letting in the soft night wind, and the sound of the fountain and the bulbul and the beam of the stars, and versed to her in the languor of deep love: 

Whether we die or we live,
Matters it now no more: 
Life has nought further to give: 
Love is its crown and its core. 
Come to us either, we’re rife,—­
Death or life!

Death can take not away,
Darkness and light are the same: 
We are beyond the pale ray,
Wrapt in a rosier flame: 
Welcome which will to our breath;
Life or death!

So did these two lovers lute and sing in the stillness of the night, pouring into each other’s ears melodies from the new sea of fancy and feeling that flowed through them.

Ere they ceased their sweet interchange of tenderness, which was but one speech from one soul, a glow of light ran up the sky, and the edge of a cloud was fired; and in the blooming of dawn Almeryl hung over Bhanavar, and his heart ached to see the freshness of her wondrous loveliness; and he sang, looking on her: 

The rose is living in her cheeks,
The lily in her rounded chin;
She speaks but when her whole soul speaks,
And then the two flow out and in,
And mix their red and white to make
The hue for which I’d Paradise forsake.

Her brow from her black falling hair
Ascends like morn:  her nose is clear
As morning hills, and finely fair
With pearly nostrils curving near
The red bow of her upper lip;
Her bosom’s the white wave beneath the ship.

The fair full earth, the enraptured skies,
She images in constant play: 
Night and the stars are in her eyes,
But her sweet face is beaming day,
A bounteous interblush of flowers: 
A dewy brilliance in a dale of bowers.