Page 88 of 172 AL AARAAF. - Complete Poetical Works

[Footnote 19: Eyraco-Chaldea.]

[Footnote 20: I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon.]

[Footnote 21:

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

'Merry Wives of Windsor'.]

[Footnote 22: In Scripture is this passage:

"The sun shall not harm thee by day, nor the moon by night."

It is, perhaps, not generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed to its rays, to which circumstances the passage evidently alludes.]

[Footnote 23: The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing.]

[Footnote 24: I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am now unable to obtain and quote from memory:

"The verie essence and, as it were, springe heade and origine of all

musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of the forest

do make when they growe."]

[Footnote 25: The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight. The rhyme in the verse, as in one about sixty lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro--in whose mouth I admired its effect:

O! were there an island,

Tho' ever so wild,

Where woman might smile, and

No man be beguil'd, etc. ]

[Footnote 26: With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.

Un no rompido sueno--

Un dia puro--allegre--libre

Quiera--

Libre de amor--de zelo--

De odio--de esperanza--de rezelo.

'Luis Ponce de Leon.'

Sorrow is not excluded from "Al Aaraaf," but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium.

The passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures--the price of which, to those souls who make choice of "Al Aaraaf" as their residence after life, is final death and annihilation.]

[Footnote 27:

There be tears of perfect moan

Wept for thee in Helicon.

'Milton'.]

[Footnote 28: It was entire in 1687--the most elevated spot in Athens.]

[Footnote 29:

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows

Than have the white breasts of the queen of love.

'Marlowe.']

[Footnote 30: Pennon, for pinion.--'Milton'.]

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		"The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty." Francisco de Goya