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When one may dwell ’mongst them in mental ease?

Why follow, like a fettered slave, one’s longing

Which sometimes leads through dun and dreary wilds,

O’er pathless hills and mountain tops afar,

And then points to a dim and distant star,

With faith a-smiling, like a little child’s,

While spectral shadows round one’s soul is thronging?

Because a gleam—as from a fiery globe—

Illumined souls before their incarnation,

And bound them with love’s chain eternally,

That Beauty’s face for ever they might see,

And ne’er be happy in their earthly station,

Unless their life in heav’n’s pure light they robe.

This gleam was ever glowing in the heart

Of him whom men might say was “lacking sense,”

The light of beauty and a smould’ring love.—

Since strait-laced folk may now his acts reprove,

And fearing this, we shall the tale condense,

Of what took place, before he did depart.

One day he met a scholar from Vienna,

Whose home was on the banks of that fair stream,

Renowned in history and minstrel’s song,