...soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of earth, The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes 1613 Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon...choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dreams that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas! Were limbs and breath and being intertwined...

...The sounds that soothed his sleep. The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As...sweet human love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who>spurned •"/"- -f Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting...

...arms." Die Sinne schwinden ihm. Beim Erwachen ist alles leer. — Woher war die Vision gekommen ? — „The Spirit of sweet Human Love has sent A vision...dream that fleeting shade, He overleaps the bounds, . . ." Das so mit ganzer Seele gefühlte Ideal, sollte es nun ganz im Reich des Traumes verloren sein?...

...metaphysical preoccupation. But trouble was in waiting for him, for The spirit of sweet human love had sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. The Poet, after wandering through Egypt, Arabia, and Persia, at last found his way to the vale of Cashmire....

...whose converse are his own. They meet in love; sleep returns, and the Poet awakens to find her gone: His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. He is as empty as the scene, and his eyes are now only a reflection of the ideal he has loved. As in...

...Mab he talks of dim forebodings of thy loveliness Haunting the human heart or in "Alastor" he writes His wan eyes Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven, or in one of the incidental lyrics of Prometheus Unbound he exclaims Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest...

...and in the passage from Alastor to which Browning here alludes "she" stands for erotic fulfillment: "The spirit of sweet human love has sent / A vision...the sleep of him who spurned / Her choicest gifts I ... I Lost, lost, for ever lost!" (Alastor, 203-9). 16 But Browning seems more radically indecisive...

...is as radically divided within as was the physical world he explored at the outset of his journey. "He eagerly pursues / Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; / He overleaps the bounds" (205-7), and he is for a time sundered: the old wanderer by day, and the quester born in the womb of...

...dominant mood is one of detumescence, absence, disenchantment, as the ' poet ' wakes from his dream ; ' His wan eyes / Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly / As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven' (SPW, p. 19, lines 200-2). But his imagination soon fills the void. Leaving Kashmir the poet journeys...

...service of the Arab maiden and to wander off into Asia until "The spirit of sweet human love . . . sent / A vision to the sleep of him who spurned / Her choicest gifts" (1ines 203-205) that filled him with undying restlessness. Thus Shelley, speaking both as author in...