Rather know her the offspring of that embrace strong love
straineth the heavens with. This owe we to thy music, bridal nightingale!
And the difference of this celestial spirit from the smirking phantasy of
whom all stand soon or late forsaken, is the difference between painted
day with its poor ambitious snares, and night lifting its myriad tapers
round the throne of the eternal, the prophet stars of everlasting time!
And the one dieth, and the other liveth; and the one is unregretted, and
the other walketh in thought-spun raiment of divine melancholy; her ears
crowded with the pale surges that wrap this shifting shore; in her eyes a
shape of beauty floating dimly, that she will not attain this side the
water, but broodeth on evermore.
'Therefore, hold on thy cherished four long notes, which are as the very
edge where exultation and anguish melt, meet, and are sharpened to one
ecstasy, death-dividing bird! Fill the woods with passionate chuckle and
sob, sweet chaplain of the marriage service of a soul with heaven! Pour
out thy holy wine of song upon the soft-footed darkness, till, like a
priest of the inmost temple, 'tis drunken with fair intelligences!'
Thus the old minstrels and minnesingers.
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