"You ask not," replied the Naiad, "wherefore the wind hovers around the flower, and while it gives freshness and strength, hives within its bosom those treasured perfumes, which consecrate its flight, like visitants from paradise. You ask not, wherefore the moon-beam rests upon the wave, wooing it with the passion and purity of a bride; or wherefore the dew of midnight, which sleeps upon the flower, glitters like stars in the firmament-'Tis the universal spirit of love, which pervades the silent depths of nature; which weds the breath of summer to the flower, and pledges the kiss of moonlight to the swelling wave, that mirrors her radiance and glory."

"Yet I am but man," exclaimed Morni, as he hung enraptured upon the words of the Naiad.

"One wave of my wand," replied the queen, "could make thee in all things, even as I am, and the bright company which heralded thee hitheryet it is not the change of a moment. Slowly, as a decaying and corrupted government, must thine earthly nature be detached from thee. Thou art here to share my throne, and hold my sceptre; yet though thou art to hold communion with spirits-though thou may resemble them in form, and wear their light and gauze-like raiment-thy mind will for a time retrace the scenes of earth; thine ear listen, as in dreams, to the voices of those thou last loved, and thine heart wander back to the affections of its nature."

"Then I am doomed-" said Morni, as he felt the words of the Naiad already verified by the struggle within his heart, and himself but an exile amid the wealth and splendor which, like a gilded serpent, fascinates his eye, and coils its folds around him.

"To be loved by me, and sit upon my throne," replied the Naiad, as, rising, she waved her sceptre over him, and he sank senseless at her feet.

Thus passed time-if, indeed, time could be said to fly, in realms whose endless pleasure and ceaseless light divide the external world from that of our own thoughts and actions, which mark our epochs upon earth. Of all the spirits who thronged the realms, who turned their eyes to the praise and beauty of their queen, Morni was the favorite. He felt her prophecy of gradual change progressing; but though he looked around him with the eyes of a spirit, familiar with the object of mystery which met his gaze, and felt himself irrevocably the tenant of a world for which he was adapted by a secret and unfelt process of conformation-his heart still remained unchanged, like a particle of dust polluting the purity and brightness of his spiritual form. In fancy he yet pressed to it his earthly bride; returned with ardour those glances which rested on him, as she hung upon his breast, and felt, with a delicious joy, the fevered pressure of her lip, strong as the embrace of death, and murmuring the accents of a broken heart.

64

Queen!" he exclaimed, starting from a reverie of earth, as he reclined by her side-"thy love cannot deny me its first boon and its last?"

"Speak thy request," replied the Naiad.

Morni paused for a moment in an agony of doubt and fear. He dreaded to incur the penalty of eternal exileperhaps of death, should his request be denied. He turned his tear-dimmed eyes upon the queen. He felt a gentle pressure, as of down, upon his lidsthe tears had passed away beneath the lip of the Naiad, and every object around him was bathed in a voluptuous light, hitherto a stranger to his vision.

"That I may revisit earth," replied Morni, tremblingly.

The queen was silent. A momentary frown, like the dew clouding the blush of the flower, passed over her face, as she heard and paused on Morni's wish.

Your heart still wanders back to earth?" she said.

66

Blame me not," responded Morni, "for the condition thou thyself hast imposed upon my nature.-Oh! were it but for a moment, I implore thee, bright spirit," he continued, earnestly, "let me but see nature once again, as she crowns and beautifies earth, fixes her eternal throne of adamant upon the mountain, or scatters her painted treasures through the depths of the valley. Let me once more return to the friends whom I have left, whose smiles I see trembling on their lips as ready to greet me ;-let me once more wander through the vales of that isle, consecrated by the love it has witnessed and the despair passion has left behind;-let me ascend-be it for but a day-an hour-and I return, content to share the glories of thy throne. or the pleasures of thine immortal love."

As he knelt before her, his arms extended in the intensity of prayer, and his lips still quivering with the thronging, unuttered emotions of his heart, the Naiad looked upon him with a mingled expression of tenderness and reproof.

"Ah! thou smil'st upon thy suppliant," cried Morni, as he started in rapture at the softness which beamed from her eyes, and overspread her features, like the ray of earliest dawn blushing through the mist of morning :-"thou smil'st, bright queen; thou wilt notcan'st not refuse me?"

"Then thou weariest already of my paradise?" returned the Naiad.

Not so, fair spirit," exclaimed the prince" by the light which gilds it, like an eternal sun,-by the sceptre thou hold'st, I swear my homage to thy throne, and, if thou'lt not disown it, the love of an earth-born creature."

She extended her crystal sceptre to him, and Morni pressed it to her lips in token of fealty and passion.

Should we restore thy nature to thee," said the Naiad, " and allow thee to ascend to earth-beware, there are

stronger, though unseen ties, which bind thee to our realm beyond the light breath which speaks the oath, and either leaves it chained to the altar of the heart by the vow of honor, or scatters it to the wild air, a thing as light as that with which it mingles."

"What ties?" faltered the prince.

66

Thy change of nature," replied the queen, "and a mysterious power, which will haunt thee through the caves and hiding-places of the earth, to cancel thy perjury, and reclaim thee to the nature thou hast foresworn."

Perjury!" repeated Morni; "by these vales of light, which rise around us like an air-wrought palace, I seek neither to break the oath I have sworn before thy throne, nor release myself from the sacred nature thy power has breathed upon me! Should thou or thy realm be forgotten while I tread the earth, thou hast within thy grasp an element, which carries in its bosom the strength of thunder and the vengeance of death."

"And such shall be thy doom, son of earth," returned the queen, "should'st thou forget to return the love of the Naiad, or the duty thou hast sworn to her throne."

66

"Thy bride, the princess Ethnea," interrupted the Naiad, in a sterner tone than she had hitherto adopted. "Fool! immortality is within thy grasp, and yet thou cling'st to dust and death, while the former crumbles in thine embrace, and death conceals his dart from thee, beneath the embroidered robe he hath flung on thy painted earth. To thy love!-away! Yet stay," she added, checking herself, as Morni, deaf to her words, and unconscious of the desire of vengeance, which lurked like a serpent beneath them, was dashing from the spot, and felt his wings already spread for flight; "stay; ere thou seek'st thine earth, I have a parting charge to give thee. The period of thy visit must be short, and thy return

marked by the signs with which thy brethren of dust count the flight of time."

"Thy commands, fair queen," replied the prince, "shall be cherished and obeyed. Say on."

"When the moon rides highest in the sky, and mountain, vale, and plain sleep beneath the spell of her lightthat be thine hour of return. Thou rememberest thine oath? Thou knowest my power? To thy bride of dust, away!"

The resurrection of the prince from the deep was the flight of a moment. The blood once more circled through his veins; to the mind was once more restored impressions and recollections, as though he had never abandoned earth or his nature, but which, in the change he had undergone, lay vague, confused and undefined, like the severered and dislocated relics of life as they spread and scatter through the vault of death. His heart once more leaped to the living impulses, which flowed back upon it, like streams returning their tributes to the fountain; and amid the emotions which thronged and swelled within a bosom, hitherto pulseless and inanimate, he felt the returning glow of a warrior's ambition-the unbending loftiness of a prince's pride-and love, flowing through every vein, like a tide of flame, and springing from the heart, as its centre-its exhaustless fount.

As he stood on the border of the lake, thus divested of every influence of his spiritual nature, the thought flashed on him of entering the castle, and standing in the presence of Ethnea, in the disguise of a minstrel. The moon, like a bride parting the curtained clouds, was slowly ascending "her highest noon," while her troop of sparkling satellites glanced in her wake, like handmaidens bearing her silver train. The lake was one mirror of light. The prince stooped over the bank, and beheld the transformation realised as by enchantment-the Barrad around his head-the long beard floated on his breast, and the harp was in his hand.

"Thanks! thanks! bright queen," he cried in rapture, and he swept the silent strings; "as thou hast not deserted me, my life upon my faith!"

He sprang from the spot, and with a hasty step traversed the gardens, lin

gering on every place which reminded him of hours passed in the dalliance of love of vows plighted in truth, to be broken, alas! by the hand of death. As thus he wandered, living over again days and hours, whose memory multiplied the happiness they brought; and, in the ecstacy of retrospective life, forgetful of the nature which claimed him as its own, and the oath whose fulfilment bound him to an exacting, remorseless future, a burst of minstrelsy rose from within the castle walls, and died away in silence, like some parting spirit, upon the bosom of the night.

That sound dispelled memory and reverie, and awakened within him a sense of his condition, on which he was permitted to revisit earth. He looked toward the sky;-time was yet merciful to him-the moon was far from her noon. He turned to the castle; every turret glowed with light, and the great hall was a scene of mirth, festivity and rejoicing. Anon broke upon his ear the merry peal of the revellers, the rich minstrelsy of the harps, as the dancers kept measure to their strains.

"And is this thy love, Ethnea ?" said Morni, as he vainly endeavored to wake one chord from the harp he bore, while a tear-drop glistened in the moonlight, as it fell among the strings-Is this the love for which I wept, even amid the vales of paradise; which made those crystal depths a place of darkness, and their bright spirits deformed to the eye, when I thought of thee! Ethnea, weepest thou thy love, amid the revel, the dance, and the song?"

Dispirited and sad amid these witnesses of her forgetfulness, yet almost incredulous of the festive light which broke on his eye, and the strains of mirth which assailed his ear, with quick and agitated step he bent his way towards the castle. He paused a moment on the threshold of the gate. It was no longer the vision, which, in his despair, he had fondly hoped; but a stern and revolting truth, which crushed out the so long cherished image of Ethnea from his heart, and made it yearn for the presence of the Naiad-the love which defied temptation and the decay of time-and that home beneath the wave of eternal happiness and light.

"A minstrel, worn with travelling," he said to the man, who watched by

the gate, "implores admission, and he will requite the hospitality of thy purse with his humble skill upon the harp." "Enter," said the man; "and the peace of our walls be upon thee!"

The next moment Morni stood among the revellers, joyless and unsmiling amid the gaiety which surrounded him, like one risen from the dead to paralyze the hearts and voices of mirth with the chill of his dark and fearful home. Still pealed the harps of the minstrels, and still whirled on the giddy dance; still whispered the manly lip its compliment and the tributes of gallantry, while the ear of beauty hung entranced on sounds, which filled it like softest music. Frenzied and desperate wandered the eyes of Morni among the sparkling group; he felt his glance imbued with more than a mortal fire; his cheek became cold, as though the hour had arrived for the dissolution of his nature; while thick and burning drops streamed from his brow, like fire distilled from the land of the spirit. To escape detection, he mingled with the minstrels, and his harp swelled the strains of festivity from his unconscious and trembling hands.

But while he, thoughtlessly, struck the strings, his eyes wandered restlessly through the pageant-throng around him. Ethnea was not there. Was she dead? The harrowing thought fell on him with remorse for the rash charge he had announced against her. Had she died for him? The question was followed by a mingled sensation of sadness and joy, which confounded both, and wrought on its victim like madness. Ethnea gone! then earth had no farther claims upon his heart; and the affections, which led him back, he felt were already breaking and withering.

While thus he stood in melancholy and despair, desiring the moment which should restore his spiritual nature, in a remote part of the hall his eyes rested on a form, seen in happier hours, and worshipped through all the vicissitudes of death and change, with the devotion of an idolater. It was Ethnea. Anger clouded his brow, as the truth of the charge rushed to his mind; but a moment dispelled it, as the sunshine brushes the ripple from the wave. She was surrounded by mirth;

but there was no responsive smile upon the lips to share, or give it welcome. The lamps gleamed above her with the brilliancy of day, but where was the blush which might have reposed upon that cheek, like a rose expanding in the warmth of sunlight? The giddy dance wove its labyrinth around her; yet like a statue did she regard the moving crowd, cold, joyless and silent. It was Ethnea; but, alas! how changed from her he had claimed as his bridefrom her whose beauty had been his dream amid the loveliness of paradise. The hollow of her cheek, her sadness, her silence—all bespake a truth, which defied even the separation of death, and sought the tomb of her lover, to watch and weep there.

Though his oath were broken; though the threatened penalty of the Naiad and the utter extinction of spirit followed; though death approached, and whispered in his ear the curse of dust; yet one word must be exchanged with the princess, even though it were but "Farewell!"

The dance had ceased, and the harps sunk to silence. He descended amid the crowd-there was one expedient still left him to inform her of his presence. He called to mind the air he had often sung in her bower, and sang to her the last time they met there. Ethnea loved it, perhaps, as much for the minstrel, as the melancholy sweetness which marked it. He swept the strings, and sang the following linesWhen we parted last, the smile which played On thy lip. I thought could never dieBut alas! our smiles as often fade, As the moonlight to the lover's eye.

It was the star-light of my path;

The spell which did my steps beguile;
And though the tempest lower'd in wrath,
One ray still pierced it-'twas that smile!-

Too happy! if the love we felt

In those bright hours, could last for ever; If the God, before whose shrine we knelt, Our hearts had fated ne'er to sever.

But rent the tie-and gone the truth

Which blessed our hearts in that sweet hour; Too late we've learned the doom of youthThat passion fadeth like a flower

And what is left, save the broken heart,
And the tear, which dims the once bright eye?
Oh would that ere the hour to part,
A sterner fate had come-To die!

But vain to murmur!-Vain to weep
Over a doom as dark as ours!-
To guard a withered flower, and keep
Our sad watch by its faded bowers.