MARRIAGE.

———

BY RUFUS DAWES.

———

The inmost region of the mind, where dwells

The essences of unborn thought,—those ends

In which Effects, through Causes, dwell in power,

Opened. ’Twas in vision, and I saw

A palace of vast size—such as the eye,

The natural eye of man, never beheld.

Its massy walls of unhewn agate towered,

Girt by a colonnade of crysolite;

And there were ninety columns of huge bulk,

Sustaining an entablature of gold,

Diamond and ruby, glittering like the sun.

The windows were each one a double plate

Of spacious crystal, sliding from the touch

Each side in golden frames. The portico

Hung o’er a flight of alabaster steps,

Extending to a lawn of delicate moss,

Where browsed a flock of innocent, white lambs,

That little children garlanded with flowers.

Around the palace, orchard-trees were seen,

Laden with fruit celestial, that hung down

Like gems among the gold and silver leaves.

Majestic vines, heavy with clustering grapes,

In large festoons swung gorgeously between

The opulent boughs that dropped with nectarines.

’Twas on a mountain’s summit, high and broad,

Commanding a magnificent expanse,

Where Art, in its essential excellence,

Glowed in potential forms, where Nature, too,

Un-ultimated in terrestrial things,

Bloomed in angelic beauty. To the east

A river, brinked luxuriantly with flowers,

Lapsed silently. The deep-enameled dome,

Whose measureless horizon knew no bounds,

Was draped with clouds that broke celestial rays,

Shining down shadowless. Turning, I saw

A pair of Consorts, whose exalted home

Was in this paradise. No forms of earth,

No mortal lineaments—no reach of thought

Poetic, when imagination wings

Homeward to Heaven, could in the least compare

With their angelic radiance;—they were

Beauty itself in form,—two, and yet one,—

One angel male and female—a true Man.

He was her Understanding, she his Will;

Thence, but one mind in heavenly marriage formed.

Her love was cradled in his thought, that loved

Her love and nursed it—as the tender drops

Clasp the warm sunbeams, while the smile of Heaven

Breaks in the rainbow. Such is genuine love.

He in his form more radiantly shone

Than that sublime achievement of fine art,

That shows the power of luminous Truth to kill

Sinuous Error;—she, than Guido’s gem

More beautiful, more human, and more true.

I saw, and lo! two dromedaries, each

Bearing a golden basket, one of bread,

The other of ripe fruit; they came and knelt.

Each took and gave the other,—he the bread,

She the ripe fruit. The dromedaries then

Rose and departed. I beheld them kneeling

Beside the river, and when they had drunk

I saw them rise again and kiss each other,

And then depart. I looked again, and lo!

The consorts had withdrawn. They were the first

Of the new birth of Marriage here on earth—

A promise for the future, when a Time,

And Times, and half a Time shall be fulfilled.