Sights from a Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales")

heaven far, far beyond me still. O that I could soar up into the very zenith, where man never breathed, nor eagle ever flew, and

where the ethereal azure melts away from the eye, and appears only a deepened shade of nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold

and solitary thought. What clouds are gathering in the golden west, with direful intent against the brightness and the warmth of this

dimmer afternoon! They are ponderous air-ships, black as death, and freighted with the tempest; and at intervals their thunder, the

signal-guns of that unearthly squadron, rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of fleecy vapor—methinks I could

roll and toss upon them the whole day long!—seem scattered here and there, for the repose of tired pilgrims through the sky.

Perhaps—for who can tell?—beautiful spirits are disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the brief appearance

of their curly locks of golden light, and laughing faces, fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or, where the floating mass so

imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament, a slender foot and fairy limb, resting too heavily upon the frail support, may be

thrust through, and suddenly withdrawn, while longing fancy follows them in vain. Yonder again is an airy archipelago, where the

sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space. Every one of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance,

which the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery profusion, like water wrung from a sea-maid's hair. Bright they are as a young

man's visions, and, like them, would be realized in chillness, obscurity, and tears. I will look on them no more.