CHAPTER XXIII.

IN THE PLEIADES.

"CANST thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?"

Thus did the poet Job of old ask of the intelligences of earth.

"Assurance, seest thou that quivering halo about yon septametered constellation, as though it were coming to meet us dancing?"

"Yes, Clareese, I could not but see such beauty."

"Well, that is the seven-sistered Plefades, that you told me your poets of earth wrote of my most blessed Home of Love!"

"And are we so near it, Clareese, your home?"

"Yes, now we are here."

"Be

ye

here father and mother, and my sweet sisters, I long to greet you all, and that you may know him with me, my dearest companion! "

This ringing call, clear, sweet and tender, was scarcely thrilled forth from Clareese's pent-up love, ere I saw about her two exquisite forms of beauty like herself; and two other forms that reminded me not so much of verdant, merry spring with its flowers, as of quiet, mellow, beautiful autumn with its fruitage.

Here were spring and autumn and Clareese all twined in one bouquet of living, loving beauty!

So exquisite! Such touching love! Such deep emotion! Clareese's father (as we of earth would term him) Gracias

a Dios, as soon as he had embraced her in his bounteous affection, and had blessed her, turned to me; and as he did so, Clareese drew near to me and said:

"Father, this is Assurance from the lower material sphere, Earth. I met him when first he had risen, and I loved him -for his earthly sorrows so touched me, that I longed to make him happy here. He touched my soul, as has no other one; and so must God have given him to my keeping and care-and then finally to my love, I may hope, if another's love fail him!"

Then Gracias a Dios replied, addressing me:

"Assurance, if such be so, I welcome thee thrice o'er. If such be not so, I pray that God may have blessed thee with the love of one, so dear as she, my sweet Clareese! Let me present thee to my dear loved one, to my adorable Griselda, and to these, Caritas and Sophia, the beauteous souls, whom with Clareese God gave to our love. Now abide with us and be happy!"

I replied: "Most happy am I to meet with you all, whom dear Clareese loves, and who on her bestow love.

"I thank thee, most noble Gracias a Dios, for thy hearty welcome, and thy blessing. Of Clareese's love I am unworthy; her charming pity I implore and accept. It is this she feels for me ;- for when I told her of Earth's woes, its travailing and despair, and how through all my soul had struggled on, till death stripped off my groaning mortality and sped me hence, I saw her beauteous orbs of hazel-light suffuse; sweet pity filled their glowing disk till mellowed light, like filmy tears, diffused them o'er. From then till now that pity, so sincere, has blinded her, and its tender emotion, so near akin to love, has possessed her. With her tender nature so thrilled alway with each blest emotion, I do not wonder that she should mistake the throb of the one for the pulse of the other. Thus she esteems me, and thus only am I worthy.

"Yet if she-my loved one of earth-should forget me, and if our God, who mateth the doves of earth and these enraptured spheres of heaven, should to Clareese's waiting love mate my humble soul, such glorious union I would hail with joy! In this I must await.

"Clareese can tell you how I left on earth one dear to me, tidings of whom I must await.

"So enchanting a realm is this, your happy home! How blissful a life it must be to abide forever here, the recipient of the love and beauty of these pure, passion-thrilled elements?"

He said:

"The celestial beings whom God creates here, and those who come and abide in this sphere, experience above all others the entrancing emotions of every pure passion, which imparts happiness to the soul.

"The intense passion of a soul for its affinity here becomes sublime. I cannot describe to you the blessed delights that arise from the embraces in affection of affinite souls, melting into one life, combining into one compact of divine passion. Those who abide within the 'sweet influences of Pleiades' experience in these emotions celestial rhapsodies that can never be described in formal thought.

"These are the sweet influences of Pleiades' which God has sent forth from Himself for this purpose, and thou canst not bind them, nor destroy them."

And here Clareese added:

"The tender, thrilling passion of the lover is just as much the gift and blessing of our Father, and its enjoyment is just as much His praise as the sacred emotions of worship and the reverential prayer."

And thus in happy converse we engaged, till Algol waned somewhat his steady glow, when Clareese and I departed for Plutone's realm.

*

I do not feel equal to the task of even attempting to describe the beauties and emotions pervading all life and every element of the sweet-sistered Pleiades.

Orion's holy, calm and serene solitude are incomprehensible.

Pleiades' "sweet influences" and inexpressible emotions are indescribable. You feel them; you are throbbing and pulsating in them; you are enraptured with them; you are intoxicated by them. These elements are buoying you up from beneath, and they are surging over you from above; they are embracing you upon the right, and caressing you upon the left; they are kissing you; they are singing to you in cadences of love.

Their soft, mellow light suggests to you the look of love. Their sweet-scented effluvia waft to you the breath of love.

Their warm, sidereal zephyrs thrill you with the kiss of love.

Their ever-exhilarating influences remind you of the embraces of love.

Their tintillating motions sing to you the songs of love. Their flitting forms of beauty reveal to you the joys of love.

Beauty, sweetness, life and joy reign and mingle everywhere.

Love's emotion, love's devotion, fill you, thrill you, ever

more.

The sweet Pleiades was like an almost boundless celestial flower-garden bordering vast palaces fitted for lovers' abode; —and this garden, trellised and bowered, and shaped in every aspect to suit each fancy of pure passion and fastidious beauty. In every direction there were exquisite colors like flower-plants and flower-fields: those beneath you reaching upward, and those above you revealing their beauty downward. And hither and thither and upward and downward

among these fields and mirages of colors and forms of ravishing beauty, there bubbled and coursed and danced and rippled and ascended and descended ethereal currents, like fleeting cataracts and bubbling fountains, sweetly singing as they sped; each rippling streamlet bordered by carpets of color like the exquisite sea-green.

Everywhere the soul quaffed the most delicious fragrances, which always invigorated and augmented every faculty of being.

Between the upper and nether expanse of these celestial colors there had formed exquisitely-wrought, tinted curtains of variegated hues, woven and draped, like climbing and descending tendrils of all kinds of graceful trellis-forms— warped and woofed,—caressing and entwining. These, at tasteful intervals, had thus, as warp and woof admixed, become lovely shapes of hanging tapestry, and had formed here and there, by graceful foldings, unnumbered hidden bowers and retreating alcoves, amid which radiant forms glided and wandered; and each sacred, sweet bower and recess vanished from all others when a twain of happy lovers held concourse therein, and enjoyed the blissful raptures of affinite love. None others could approach the shrine of love while they twain were ministrant at its altar.

Some of these artistic foldings of this variegated beauty took shape like vast draped arches dividing gorgeous chambers; others fluctuated as receding, overhanging waves flowing ever outward and onward, like vast bridal wreaths bedecking the variegated firmament. Legions of sweet fragrant forms, like trees and shrubs, were twined and locked, as though they also were loving and being loved.

Ever and anon the sweet-singing ethereal currents, seeming to tire of their solo and single flow, would glide together in their dance and duet of love.

The elements were melodious everywhere, and the music was all soft and low, like a myriad æolian harps all kissed