purified for heaven. One night, when the stars threw down the light
that shadows love, I stole forth to the accustomed spot, and knocked,
with my airy fingers, at her door. She answered not. Again I knocked,
and breathed her name. Where was she? At once, the truth fell on my
miserable spirit, and crushed it to the earth, among dead men's bones
and mouldering dust, groaning in cold and desolate agony. Her penance
was over! She had taken her trackless flight, and had found a home in
the purest radiance of the upper stars, leaving me to knock at the stone
portal of the darksome sepulchre. But I know--I know, that angels
hurried her away, or surely she would have whispered ere she fled!

She is gone! How could the grave imprison that unspotted one! But her
pure, ethereal spirit will not quite forget me, nor soar too high in
bliss, till I ascend to join her. Soon, soon be that hour! I am weary
of the earth-damps; they burden me; they choke me! Already, I can float
in the moonshine; the faint starlight will almost bear up my footsteps;
the perfume of flowers, which grosser spirits love, is now too earthly a
luxury for me. Grave! Grave! thou art not my home. I must flit a
little longer in thy night gloom, and then be gone,--far from the dust
of the living and the dead,--far from the corruption that is around me,
but no more within!

A few times, I have visited the chamber of one who walks, obscure and
lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage. He will leave not many living
friends, when he goes to join the dead, where his thoughts often stray,
and be might better be. I steal into his sleep, and play my part among
the figures of his dreams. I glide through the moonlight of his waking
fancy, and whisper conceptions, which, with a strange thrill of fear, he
writes down as his own. I stand beside him now, at midnight, telling
these dreamy truths with a voice so dream-like, that he mistakes them