A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! the bright descent Of a young seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs;

So that with hasty motion I did veil

My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such color'd spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those that gaze upon the noonday sun.
Girt with a zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compass'd round about his brow
With triple arch of ever-changing bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternation of all hues, he stood.

"O child of man, why muse you here alone
Upon the mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill'd the earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling winds,
And odors rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:
Open thine eyes, and see.

I look'd, but not

Upon his face, for it was wonderful

With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great angel mind which look'd from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem'd to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense,
As with a momentary flash of light,
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen.
The smallest grain that dappled the dark earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,

I saw

The moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear galaxy,

Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagined depth-
And harmony of planet-girded suns

And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan sapphire. Nay, the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds,
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts,
Involving and embracing each with each,
Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,
Expanding momently with every sight

And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riven rapt brain; as when in some large lake,
From pressure of descendent crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm

Is ridged with restless and increasing spheres
Which break upon each other, each the effect
Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong
Than its precursor, till the eye in vain,
Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade,
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise
Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round.

The memory

I know not if I shape These things with accurate similitude From visible objects, for but dimly now, Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream, of that mental excellence Comes o'er me; and it may be I entwine The indecision of my present mind With its past clearness; yet it seems to me As even then the torrent of quick thought Absorb'd me from the nature of itself With its own fleetness. Where is he that borne Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream, Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge, And muse midway with philosophic calm Upon the wondrous laws which regulate The fierceness of the bounding element?

My thoughts, which long had grovell'd in the slime
Of this dull world, like dusky worms, which house
Beneath unsbaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of starlit wings which burn,
Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom;
Even so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength

To bear them upward through the trackless fields
Of undefined existence far and free.

Then first within the south methought I saw
A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile

Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement

On battlement, and the imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.

Behind

In diamond light upsprung the dazzling cones
Of pyramids, as far surpassing earth's,
As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft
Upon his narrow'd eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were,

Or metal more ethereal; and beneath

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open; and the eye could scan,

Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall,
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
That minister'd around it--if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

With ministering hand he raised me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill'd

My eyes with irresistible sweet tears;
In accents of majestic melody,

Like a swoln river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake :

"There is no mightier spirit than I to sway
The heart of man, and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the unattainable;
And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapp'd about with clouds
Of glory, of heaven.' With earliest light of spring,
And in the glow of sallow summer-tide,

And in red autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,

I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood,
-Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind-
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see they with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel

My fulness; I have fill'd thy lips with power;
I have raised thee nigher to the spheres of heaven,
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years. I am the spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All the intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth;
So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms,
And cool impleached twilights. Child of man!
Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through
The argent streets of the city, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous domes,

'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Her gardens frequent with the stately palın,
Her pagods hung with music of sweet bells,
Her obelisks of ranged chrysolite,

Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring

To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my city in their depths!

Oh city! oh latest throne ! where I was raised
To be a mystery of loveliness

Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink, and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-wall'd, barbarian settlements.
How changed from this fair city!"

Thus far the spirit :
Then parted heaven-ward on the wing; and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

A. TENNYSON,

TRIN. COLL.

GREEK PRIZE POEM.

ΝΗΣΩΝ, ΑΙΓΑΙΗ ΟΣΑΙ ΕΙΝ ΑΛΙ ΝΑΙΕΤΑΟΥΣΙ.

Τίς με, τίς κούφαις πτερύγεσσιν ὕμνων
τάχ ̓ ἐπ ̓ ἀκτὰν Λεσβίδ ̓ ἀναρπάσει ; τίς
χρυσέαν φόρμιγγ ̓ ἀπὸ πασσάλω, σὸν
Αἰολι Σαπφοῖ

θαῦμα δὴν ἄφθογγον ἔρημον ἀρεῖ;
φεῦ, πόθεν τεαὶ χάριτες, πόθεν μοι
φίλτρα καὶ πνεῦμ ̓ ἱμέρουν ποθέρποι ;
οἱ ἐλέλισσες

πράν ποκ' ἀμβρότοισι χέρεσσι χορδάν
οἷα δηξίθυμον ἄχος τρέφοισα
πένθιμον θρῆνον μελιγαρύων ἔ-

λειβες ἐρώτων.

τοῦ κλύων φίλαυλος ἔπαλλε δελφίν,
θαύμασαν δρυμοί θ ̓ ἅλιοί τε πρῶνες,