Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
    Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman
    All that is insupportable in thee
    Of light, and love, and immortality!

He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate obscurity.  The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever been deluded.  At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth of the vision veiled from him so many years.  She and Mary shall henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him.  Then he calls on her to fly.  They three will escape and live together, far away from men, in an Aegean island.  The description of this visionary isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this century in the rhymed heroic metre.

    It is an isle under Ionian skies,
    Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise;
    And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
    This land would have remained a solitude
    But for some pastoral people native there,
    Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
    Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
    Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. 
    The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
    With ever-changing sound and light and foam
    Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar;
    And all the winds wandering along the shore,
    Undulate with the undulating tide. 
    There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
    And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
    As clear as elemental diamond,
    Or serene morning air.  And far beyond,
    The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer,
    (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,)
    Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
    Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
    Illumining, with sound that never fails
    Accompany the noonday nightingales;
    And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. 
    The light clear element which the isle wears
    Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
    Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
    And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
    And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
    And dart the arrowy odour through the brain,
    Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 
    And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
    With that deep music is in unison: 
    Which is a soul within a soul—­they seem
    Like echoes of an antenatal dream. 
    It is an isle ’twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea,
    Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
    Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer,