No form of beauty soothed thine eye,
As through the dim expanse it wandered wide;
No kindred spirit caught thy sigh,
As o'er the watery waste it lingering died.
Unfelt the pulse, unknown the power,
That latent in his heart was sleeping,--
Oh Sympathy! that lonely hour
Saw Love himself thy absence weeping.
But look, what glory through the darkness beams!
Celestial airs along the water glide:--
What Spirit art thou, moving o'er the tide
So beautiful? oh, not of earth,
But, in that glowing hour, the birth
Of the young Godhead's own creative dreams.
'Tis she!
Psyche, the firstborn spirit of the air.
To thee, oh Love, she turns,
On thee her eyebeam burns:
Blest hour, before all worlds ordained to be!
They meet--
The blooming god--the spirit fair
Meet in communion sweet.
Now, Sympathy, the hour is thine;
All Nature feels the thrill divine,
The veil of Chaos is withdrawn,
And their first kiss is great Creation's dawn!
[1] Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive
principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its
first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two
powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timaeus held
Form to be the father, and Matter the mother of the World.
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