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University of California • Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 
 LUCIA S. GROMME 
 
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POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
FIRST PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1897 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED, WITH 
 SEVERAL NEW ILLUSTRATIONS 
 JUNE, 1898 
 
POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN KEATS 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 ROBERT AN NING BELL 
 AND INTRODVCTION 
 BY WALTER. RALEIGH 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE BELL 
 SfSONS YORK STREET 
 COVENT GARDEN: NEW 
 YORK 66FIFTH>^/ENVE 
 MDCCCXCVIII 
 

 CHISWICK PRESS :— CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
 
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 iiFIP 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introduction xi 
 
 Dedication of the Volume of 1817 to Leigh Hunt 
 
 " Glory and loveliness have pass'd away " .... xxix 
 
 Endymion r 
 
 Lamia 129 
 
 Isabella or the Pot of Basil 154 
 
 Hyperion 180 
 
 The Eve of St. Agnes 205 
 
 The Eve of St. Mark 225 
 
 ODES 
 
 Ode to a Nightingale 233 
 
 Ode on a Grecian Urn 236 
 
 Ode to Psyche 238 
 
 Ode to Autumn 242 
 
 Ode to Melancholy 244 
 
 Ode to Indolence 247 
 
 Fragment of an Ode to Maia 249 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AND LYRICS 
 
 "I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HlLL " 255 
 
 Calidore. A Fragment 263 
 
 To . 268 
 
 Imitation of Spenser 271 
 
 " Woman ! when I behold thee flippant, vain " . 272 
 
 Sleep and Poetry 274 
 
 Fancy 288 
 
 Ode ("Bards of Passion and of mirth") 292 
 
 Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 294 
 
 Robin Hood 295 
 
 Faery Songs — 
 
 I. " Shed no tear— oh shed no tear ! " . . . 297 
 
 IL "Ah! woe is me! poor Silver- wing ! " . . 298 
 
 La belle Dame sans Merci 299 
 
 "In a drear-nighted December" 306 
 
 " Asleep ! O sleep a little while, white pearl ! " 306 
 
 Epistle to George Felton Mathew 307 
 
 Epistle to My Brother George ....... 310 
 
 Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke 314 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 To My Brother George— 
 
 " Many the wonders I this day have seen "... . 323 
 
 Sonnet — 
 
 " How many bards gild the lapses of time ! " ... 323 
 
 To G. A. W.— 
 
 "Nymph of the downward smile, and sidelong 
 
 glance" 324 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " O solitude ! if I must with thee dwell " 324 
 
 To My Brothers — 
 
 " Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals " 325 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 325 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there" 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " To one who has been long in city pent " 3 2 6 
 
 On first looking into Chapman's Homer— 
 
 " Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold " . . . 326 
 
 On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour — 
 
 " Give me a golden pen, and let me lean " .... 3 2 7 
 Addressed to Haydon— 
 
 "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning". . . . 3 2 7 
 On the Grasshopper and Cricket— 
 
 " The poetry of earth is never dead ■ 3 2 $ 
 
 Sonnet — 
 
 u Happy is England ! I could be content " .... 328 
 Written on a Summer Evening — 
 
 "The church bells toll a melancholy round". . . . 3 2 9 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " After dark vapours have oppress'd our plains " . . 3 2 9 
 
 On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first 
 Time— 
 " My spirit is too weak — mortality " 33° 
 
 On a Picture of Leander— 
 
 " Come hither, all sweet maidens, soberly " . . . . 33° 
 
 On the Sea — 
 
 " It keeps eternal whisperings around " 33 1 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " When I have fears that I may cease to be" . . . 33 I 
 
 To Homer — 
 
 " Standing aloof in giant ignorance "...... 33 2 
 
 The Human Seasons— 
 
 " Four Seasons fill the measure of the year" .... 33 2 
 
 Written before re-reading King Lear— 
 
 " O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute 1 " . . 333 
 
 To the Nile— 
 
 " Son of the old moon-mountains African ! " . . . . 333 
 
 To a Lady seen for a few Moments at Vaux- 
 hall — 
 " Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb " . . 334 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Dream, after reading Dante's Episode of 
 Paulo and Francesca— 
 
 "As Hermes once took to his feathers light" . . . 334 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd " . . 335 
 On Fame— 
 
 " Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy ■ . . . 335 
 On Fame— 
 
 " How fevefd is the man, who cannot look "... 336 
 To Sleep— 
 
 " O soft embalmer of the still midnight " 336 
 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone ! " . . 337 
 To Fanny— 
 
 " I cry your mercy— pity— love !— aye, love ! " . . . 337 
 Sonnet— 
 
 " Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art " . . 338 
 
 Note 
 
 The text here given is based on that of Lord Houghton. 
 
 The publishers, however, desire to thank Mr. Buxton 
 
 Forman for his kind permission to embody many of the 
 
 emendations made by him in his edition of the works of 
 
 Keats. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 u Three small volumes of verse, some earnest 
 friendships, one passion, and a premature death," 
 — these, according to his first biographer, make 
 up the whole story of John Keats. And of 
 these the volumes of verse alone need concern 
 us. To his friendships, it is true, we owe, be- 
 sides some occasional poems, the most illumina- 
 tive of the letters, which, better than the poems, 
 bring us acquainted with the gravity and nobility 
 of his character and the depth of his critical 
 insight : to his one passion we owe nothing — if 
 it be not his premature death. Through all the 
 prolonged struggle of sense and thought and 
 agonizing passion, which was the life of Keats, 
 there runs one dominant strain of devotion to 
 his chosen art. Few, even among great poets, 
 have set before themselves so clear an aim or 
 pursued it with a more courageous purpose. It 
 is easy therefore to turn from that oft-narrated 
 tragic story of pain and unsatisfied passion to 
 display his life as a swift and triumphant pro- 
 gress in the art of poetry. Of his biography, 
 thus conceived, the three volumes are the 
 landmarks — the " Poems," published in 1817, 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 " Endymion," in 1818, and the volume contain- 
 ing " Lamia," " Isabella," and " The Eve of St. 
 Agnes," in 1820. When his friends, Cowden 
 Clarke, Leigh Hunt, Haydon, and the rest, had 
 introduced him to the masters, it might almost 
 be said that their best service to him was done ; 
 thenceforward he was training his faculties in 
 the study of the world's art, and measuring 
 his beginnings by its masterpieces. Spenser, 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and 
 Dante, each became his companion and exemplar 
 in turn, until in a few brief years he had well- 
 nigh outgrown his discipleship, and attained 
 his style. The successive stages in this rapid 
 passage to maturity have been made the theme 
 of many critical essays, wherein the chief in- 
 fluences that conspired to mould the work of 
 Keats are set forth at large. Such a study is 
 of singular interest, for it illustrates, in brief 
 epitome, the making of a poet. As, of yore, by 
 the magic of the wizard, 
 
 " Through one window men beheld the spring, 
 And through another saw the summer glow, 
 And through a third the fruited vines a-row, 
 While still unheard, though in its wonted way, 
 Piped the drear wind of that December day," 
 
 so, in like manner, are we enabled to forget the 
 malignity of the poet's fate, while we pass in 
 review this pageant of the seasons, each tread- 
 ing hard upon another's heels, and supplanting 
 it by "a power more strong in beauty." Yet it 
 is easier to trace the process of growth, to show 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 how the immaturities of youth are one by one 
 outgrown and cast off, than to analyze and 
 appraise achieved perfection. The small body 
 of Keats' perfect work can never be explained 
 by an audit of his debts to his predecessors. 
 " Men of genius," he himself said, "are great as 
 certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass 
 of neutral intellect ; " and it is this ethereal and 
 incalculable chemistry of genius that baffles our 
 attempt when we try to resolve the essence of 
 pure poetry which is found in the five great 
 Odes. 
 
 On one side, at least, of his character, his 
 poetic endowment was of the fullest. His senses 
 were almost preternaturally acute, and his 
 emotional susceptibility to sense-impressions was 
 abnormal in its intensity. Again and again in 
 his letters he expresses the delight he felt in a 
 life purely passive and receptive. " It is more 
 noble," he writes to Reynolds, " to sit like Jove 
 than to fly like Mercury : — let us not therefore 
 go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee- 
 like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of 
 what is to be arrived at ; but let us open our 
 leaves like a flower, and be passive and recep- 
 tive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, 
 and taking hints from every noble insect that 
 favours us with a visit." The sentence might 
 be taken as a metaphorical account of his own 
 education in poetry. And again, to another of 
 his friends, Benjamin Bailey, he writes, " O for 
 a life of sensations rather than of thoughts ! " 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 His remarks on the nature of poetic genius 
 show the same stress laid on the receptive 
 power. " A poet is the most unpoetical of any- 
 thing in existence, because he has no identity ; 
 he is continually in for, and filling some other 
 body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men 
 and women who are creatures of impulse, are 
 poetical, and have about them an unchangeable 
 attribute ; the poet has none, no identity. He 
 is certainly the most unpoetical of any of God's 
 creatures." For men of action, for the " fine 
 doing " of this world, as distinguished from the 
 fine writing, he always expresses an admiration 
 which is genuine and enthusiastic enough, but 
 it is offered at an alien shrine. The true analogy 
 for poetry was to be found, he felt, elsewhere. 
 Yet one sort of activity there is which may be 
 held to be a part of the business of a poet, and 
 that is activity of thought. With regard to this 
 Keats took up a somewhat dubious attitude. 
 He felt the need and the utility of strenuous 
 intellectual exercise, and yet he felt also that 
 this was not poetry, and might very easily lead 
 away from poetry. " I have been hovering for 
 some time," he writes, in desponding mood, just 
 after the completion of " Endymion," " between 
 an exquisite sense of the luxurious, and a love 
 for philosophy ; were I calculated for the former 
 I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall turn 
 all my soul to the latter." There can be no 
 doubt which of these two several ways was, in 
 the view of Keats, the way of poetry. No 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 better phrase than the first could be hit upon to 
 designate the merit that might have been noticed 
 by the critics in his early poems. " An exquisite 
 sense of the luxurious," not yet taking shape in 
 full perception or final expression, but vital, 
 sincere, and full of promise, awaiting only the 
 touch of thought to chasten and constrain it to 
 finer issues — this true poetic quality is to be 
 found in the first lispings of his muse. 
 
 The blemishes and excesses of his early work, 
 which have been, from first to last, most labori- 
 ously handled by his critics, are generally at- 
 tributable to this revelry of delight in the life of 
 the senses. Amid the new-found pleasures of 
 the world around him, and the glories of the 
 ancient world of romance, his attitude is that of 
 a lotos-eater. " Luxuries, bright, milky, soft, 
 and rosy" fill his imagination and crowd his 
 verse until they become loathsome by their own 
 deliciousness. He puts on imagination the work 
 of sense ; and attempts to recapture, by means 
 of words, evanescent sensations of taste and 
 touch. Words like " tender," " balmy," " swoon- 
 ing," "delicious," all expressions reminiscent 
 of gentle, pleasurable experiences, are too fre- 
 quent in his poems. An appeal to the senses 
 is too often made the sole standard of reference. 
 There is a tendency in his books, noted by 
 himself, and since treated in graver fashion by 
 Mr. Robert Bridges, " to class women with roses 
 and sweetmeats — they never see themselves 
 dominant." To the same cause must be at- 
 
 b 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 tributed the sequence of his ideas, which usually, 
 in the early poems, refuse the control of the 
 active powers of will and thought. Ideas and 
 fancies followone another, like those of a dreamer, 
 in the natural disorder proper to reverie, and 
 the poet, foregoing command, abandons himself 
 to the delight of watching the bright procession. 
 In the "Quarterly Review" for April, 1818, the 
 writer of the notorious article on " Endymion " 
 accuses Keats, with justice, of allowing his 
 rhymes to suggest to him the development of 
 his theme. It is also true that his ideas them- 
 selves are often associated by no train of im- 
 agination or thought, but simply by a certain 
 vague affinity in their pleasure-giving qualities. 
 More than one passage of these earlier poems 
 contains acknowledgment of the debt he owed 
 to sleep, and he sometimes does too little waking 
 work upon that " embroidery of dim dreams" 
 wherewith sleep had supplied him. 
 
 But if this, and more than this, must be said 
 by way of stricture on his immature pieces, it is 
 only that the most beautiful and characteristic 
 part of his work may be more intelligently 
 approached. The poignancy of his sensations 
 served him well in poetry. All the little sights 
 and sounds of a summer meadow-land, the row 
 of sweet peas, " on tip-toe for a flight," the silent 
 flitting of moths, and the wavering of minnows 
 against the stream never had a more enraptured 
 and delicate observer than the author of the 
 descriptive poem that stood first in the volume 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 of 1817. What was to come of this impassioned 
 talent for observation, when it had found 
 control, may be seen in the " Ode to Autumn," 
 written not much more than two years later. 
 The keenness of sensibility that was an ecstasy 
 and a torment to him makes him also the poet 
 of the nightingale, intoxicates him with the 
 happiness of the song of the bird, until his 
 heart aches, and he swoons into a day-dream, 
 to be carried forthwith, on viewless wings, far 
 from the Hampstead garden into that embalmed 
 darkness. His subserviency to a chance sug- 
 gestion of sound, which was ponderously 
 ridiculed by the " Quarterly " reviewer, and his 
 habit of fastening on a single word that he 
 might extract from it, to the last drop, its store 
 of emotional virtue, gave us what is perhaps the 
 most wonderful transition in all poetry : 
 
 " Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 
 
 To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! " 
 
 Lastly, by his dream imagery he succeeded in 
 giving expression to emotions that logic can 
 never handle. The tired peacefulness that 
 rests on the earth with recovered Spring is 
 rendered by a group of subtly harmonious 
 imaginations in the sonnet ending : 
 
 " A sleeping infant's breath, 
 The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs, — 
 A woodland rivulet, — a Poet's death." 
 
 And surely the feelings aroused in the heart 
 by the monuments of a great and vanished 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 civilization, although they can find no definitive 
 expression, do communicate themselves, by a 
 series of images, in the sonnet describing how 
 the Elgin marbles awaken in the poet's mind 
 
 " A most dizzy pain 
 That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude 
 Wasting of old Time — with a billowy main, 
 A sun, a shadow of a magnitude." 
 
 That the power of thought was never 
 dormant in Keats his letters prove. It grew 
 stronger in him and asserted itself more and 
 more from year to year. Early in his poetic 
 career he criticises one of Wordsworth's poems 
 by remarking that " if Wordsworth had thought 
 a little deeper at that moment, he would not 
 have written the poem at all." As his poetic 
 faculty strengthened he came to feel that the 
 exercise of the reasoning powers and the ac- 
 quisition of knowledge were useful servants 
 to poetry, not redoubtable rivals. "Were I 
 to study Physic," he writes to Reynolds, 
 "or rather Medicine again, I feel it would 
 not make the least difference in my poetry." 
 His thinking is always that of a poet, who holds 
 fast by the authenticity of the Imagination, 
 and never loses himself in the entanglements 
 of verbal sophistry. He speaks, in a letter to 
 his brother and sister, of "the amusement 
 of life to a speculative mind ; I go among the 
 fields, and catch a glimpse of a stoat or a field- 
 mouse, peeping out of the withered grass ; the 
 creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 with it j I go amongst the buildings of a city, 
 and I see a man hurrying along — to what ? — 
 the creature hath a purpose and its eyes are 
 bright with it." These vivid, speculative simili- 
 tudes claim a larger control of his meditations, 
 as time goes on, to the strengthening of his 
 poetry. Even in his latest work the " sense of 
 the luxurious " is still fully evidenced — in such 
 a line as this, for instance, 
 
 " Now more than ever seems it rich to die," 
 
 or this, where the same word is used, and the 
 enjoyment of a rage warm and soft as velvet, 
 seems to annul all dramatic sense of the human 
 situation : 
 
 " If thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
 Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave." 
 
 But a craving for the luxury of sensation no 
 longer asserts sovereign rights over his poetry, 
 to the exclusion of thought. With what an 
 exquisite touch of surprise, in the " Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn," is the main thought found intrud- 
 ing on the long-drawn description : 
 
 " And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
 Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return." 
 
 Some critics have found in these lines only 
 an intellectual quibble, an irrelevant confusion 
 made between art and reality. But the last 
 lines of the same poem answer these objectors : 
 
xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' — that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 
 
 " What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must 
 be Truth, whether it existed before or not ; " — so 
 Keats had written, years earlier, to a friend ; 
 and now the idea finds its enduring place in his 
 art. He has pondered so deeply on the Grecian 
 Urn, on the unfading immortality and freedom 
 from decay of its pictured life, that the repre- 
 sentation has become for him the reality; this is 
 the true life of the little town, and surely that 
 other life of long ago passed into it, with solemn 
 ritual, on an appointed day. A more beautiful 
 and deliberate confusion of ideas was never 
 made. 
 
 With the other great English poets who were 
 his contemporaries, Keats had few intimate 
 relations. Wordsworth he regarded with distant 
 reverence; from Shelley, it is said, he held 
 aloof, fearing lest he might be drawn by that 
 magnetic influence out of his natural path. He 
 resented, with just indignation, the criticism 
 that saw in him merely a lieutenant of Leigh 
 Hunt. In truth, his closest kinship is with 
 the Elizabethans. Not since the time of the 
 Renaissance had there been born in England a 
 poet who followed beauty with so ardent a 
 simplicity, or who found in the pagan world so 
 unsophisticated a source of delight. He borrowed 
 much from the Elizabethans, but he resembles 
 them also in native temper. Chapman, one of the 
 chief gods of his idolatry, is generally counted a 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 crabbed writer, but these lines, which are taken 
 from Chapman's continuation of Marlowe's poem, 
 and describe the return of Leander to his home 
 after the visit to Hero, might almost have been 
 written by Keats : 
 
 " Then laid he forth his late-enriched arms, 
 In whose white circle Love writ all her charms 
 
 * # # * # 
 
 And as those arms held up in circle met, 
 He said, ' See, sister, Hero's carcanet ! 
 Which she had rather wear about her neck 
 Than all the jewels that do Juno deck.' " 
 
 The splendid life and jollity of the choral 
 song in the fourth book of " Endymion," the 
 flamboyant mirth of Bacchus and his crew as they 
 dance over the hill like a " moving vintage," is 
 pure Renaissance in manner — though it is fair 
 to note that the song owes much to pictorial in- 
 spiration, and that Keats preludes and closes it 
 in his most characteristic fashion, with a plaintive 
 apostrophe to Sorrow. That primitive joy in 
 life which to the men of the Renaissance seemed 
 a thing once more almost within their grasp is 
 to the later poet of the Romantic Revival a 
 memory and a picture, saddening the heart by 
 its inevitable contrast with the desolate reality. 
 Another difference, not wholly unconnected with 
 this, is seen in the curiously diverse manners in 
 which the two ages, the ages of Shakespeare and 
 of Goethe, regarded poetry. To the men of the 
 Renaissance poetry was a kind of prophetic moral 
 utterance. The professed object of Spenser's 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 great poem is to institute a gentleman in the 
 cardinal virtues, while that of Milton's is no- 
 thing less than to justify the government of 
 the Universe. Their poetry included in its 
 magnificent scope the whole of philosophy, 
 politics, and morals. In the later age the spirit 
 of poetry might be revived, but it could not 
 hope to recover, in the teeth of newer claims, 
 the whole of its former empire. Under the 
 influence of the philosophy of the eighteenth 
 century it had fallen into its place as one of the 
 fine arts. The effect of this narrowing and de- 
 fining of the functions of poetry is very apparent 
 in the work of Keats. The " sentences," 
 aphorisms and maxims that abound in Eliza- 
 bethan verse have few counterparts in his poems. 
 A more self-conscious art directs itself to a more 
 purely aesthetic goal, and poetry draws nearer 
 in aim and method to the sister arts of music 
 and painting. Hence, in such a poem as " The 
 Eve of St. Agnes" are found new marvels of 
 decorative and descriptive splendour ; hence, 
 also, it is perhaps not too rash to say, comes 
 that sense of desertion by the world, of impotence 
 to arrest the impending disaster, which sounds 
 an elegiac note in the midst of the wildest fes- 
 tivity. No Elizabethan could have treated the 
 subject of " La Belle Dame sans Merci " in the 
 purely impressionistic and passive manner of 
 Keats, or have given to it so weird a charm. 
 The sense of beauty is no longer a sense of 
 mastery, but rather a sense of fate. The poet 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 is bound hand and foot and condemned to be a 
 motionless observer while all fair, and wise, and 
 excellent things pass by him to their doom. His 
 delight in beauty becomes to him a fascination 
 and an anguish. He seeks a refuge from the 
 cruelty of life in the calmer world of art, and his 
 thinking faculties concentrate themselves on the 
 conditions of this, the only means of salvation. 
 The sayings by which he is remembered are not 
 of the old defiant kind : 
 
 " No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change ; 
 Thy pyramids, built up with newer might, 
 To me are nothing novel, nothing strange ; 
 They are but dressings of a former sight." 
 
 The truths that he utters, though he enunciates 
 them with the confidence of triumph, savour 
 rather of hardly- won .consolation : 
 
 " A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 
 
 It is in the quiet garden-ground of the arts 
 that he seeks to escape for a time from the woes 
 that he cannot forget ; and, for him, to think 
 means to remember the pitiless enemies without, 
 so that his bower of beautiful imaginings wears 
 for him an indescribable air of pathos and of 
 peace. 
 
 However this may be, to Keats, as to most 
 other modern poets, thought came borne upon 
 the wings of pain. The misery of this mortal 
 state ; the revenges and conquests of Time ; 
 the passing of youth and gladness and beauty ; 
 the bitterness concealed in pleasure ; — his 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 thoughts run through all the variations of this 
 eternal theme. Different aspects of it are treated, 
 by the light of differing moods, in all the five 
 great Odes, and " Hyperion," behind the colossal 
 outlines of the Titanic dynasty, reveals the same 
 inspiration. As the assault of thought became 
 more importunate he took an ever stronger hold 
 upon the realities of art, and sought and followed 
 beauty with a more ardent devotion. To what 
 height of consummate achievement he might 
 have attained, had his life been prolonged, who 
 shall say ? He had already, before his death, 
 put behind him his boyish imitation of Spenser, 
 and had turned, in dissatisfaction, from his 
 masterly attempt in the Miltonic manner. He 
 had ransacked the ages for themes, from the 
 misty origins of Grecian mythology to the sun- 
 lit Florence of Boccaccio. He might perhaps, 
 in the sequel, have produced work — not, cer- 
 tainly, of a more transcendent grace, but of a 
 fuller and more robust humanity. He who was 
 certain of nothing but of the holiness of the 
 heart's affections and the truth of Imagination, 
 might, perhaps, have reconciled these two 
 certainties in a work worthy to be placed beside 
 the work of Shakespeare. But his early death 
 and the unflagging singleness of purpose that 
 guided his life have won for him a pre-eminence 
 that is all his own. The purity of his devotion 
 was rewarded with the gift he most coveted, and 
 the name of Keats, more infallibly than any 
 other name in the long roll of English poets, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 calls up to the mind and to the lips, by the very 
 absence of all rival associations, the greater name 
 of Beauty. 
 
 The present edition, without pretending to be 
 complete, yet aims at including all the pieces by 
 which Keats is chiefly remembered. A few of 
 the weaker poems of his first published volume 
 have been omitted, and the mass of work that 
 was unpublished at his death, ranging in merit 
 from " La Belle Dame sans Merci," to the 
 feeblest doggerel verse contained in his letters, 
 has been subjected to a rigorous selection. As 
 it stands, this volume probably contains nearly all 
 of his verse for which Keats would have desired 
 permanence, as well as some pieces that would 
 not have escaped his own maturer censorship. 
 There have been many selections made of the 
 poetry of Keats, and none perhaps is likely to 
 be definitive. The final cause and justification 
 of this edition is to be sought, and will, I think, 
 be found, in the illustrations contributed by Mr. 
 Anning Bell. 
 
 July, 1897. Walter Raleigh. 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 OF THE VOLVME OF 
 I8I7TO 
 
 LEIGH HVNT 
 
 GLORY AND LOVELINESS HAVE PASS'D AWAY ; 
 
 FOR IF WE WANDER OUT IN EARLY MORN, 
 
 NO WREATHED INCENSE DO WE SEE UPBORNE 
 INTO THE EAST, TO MEET THE SMILING DAY : 
 NO CROWD OF NYMPHS SOFT VOICED AND YOUNG, 
 AND GAY, 
 
 IN WOVEN BASKETS BRINGING EARS OF CORN, 
 
 ROSES, AND PINKS, AND VIOLETS, TO ADORN 
 THE SHRINE OF FLORA IN HER EARLY MAY. 
 BUT THERE ARE LEFT DELIGHTS AS HIGH AS 
 THESE, 
 
 AND I SHALL EVER BLESS MY DESTINY, 
 THAT IN A TIME, WHEN UNDER PLEASANT TREES 
 
 PAN IS NO LONGER SOUGHT, I FEEL A FREE, 
 A LEAFY LUXURY, SEEING I COULD PLEASE, 
 
 WITH THESE POOR OFFERINGS, A MAN LIKE 
 THEE. 
 
POEMS BY JOHN KEATS 
 
 A POETIC ROMANCE INSCRIBED TO THE 
 MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON 
 
 "THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN ANTIQUE SONG" 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 A THING of beauty is a joy for ever : 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 
 B 
 
2 ENDYMION 
 
 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing 
 
 Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
 
 A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 
 
 Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 
 
 Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 
 
 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways 
 
 Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 
 
 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
 
 From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, 
 
 Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 
 
 For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 
 
 With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 
 
 That for themselves a cooling covert make 
 
 'Gainst the hot season ; the mid forest brake, 
 
 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms : 
 
 And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 
 
 We. have imagined for the mighty dead ; 
 
 All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 
 
 An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
 
 Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 
 
 Nor do we merely feel these essences 
 For one short hour ; no, even as the trees 
 That whisper round a temple become soon 
 Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, 
 The passion poesy, glories infinite, 
 Haunt us till they become a cheering light 
 Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, 
 That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, 
 They always must be with us, or we die. 
 
 Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I 
 Will trace the story of Endymion. 
 The very music of the name has gone 
 Into my being, and each pleasant scene 
 Is growing fresh before me as the green 
 Of our own valleys : so I will begin 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 Now while I cannot hear the city's din ; 
 Now while the early budders are just new, 
 And run in mazes of the youngest hue 
 About old forests ; while the willow trails 
 Its delicate amber ; and the dairy pails 
 Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year 
 Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer 
 My little boat, for many quiet hours, 
 With streams that deepen freshly into bowers. 
 Many and many a verse I hope to write, 
 Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white, 
 Hide in deep herbage ; and ere yet the bees 
 Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas, 
 I must be near the middle of my story. 
 O may no wintry season, bare and hoary, 
 See it half finish'd : but let Autumn bold, 
 With universal tinge of sober gold, 
 Be all about me when I make an end. 
 And now at once, adventuresome, I send 
 My herald thought into a wilderness : 
 There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress 
 My uncertain path with green, that I may speed 
 Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. 
 
 Upon the sides of Latmus was outspread 
 A mighty forest ; for the moist earth fed 
 So plenteously all weed-hidden roots 
 Into o'er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits. 
 And it had gloomy shades, sequester'd deep, 
 Where no man went ; and if from shepherd's keep 
 A lamb stray'd far a-down those inmost glens, 
 Never again saw he the happy pens 
 Whither his brethren, bleating with content, 
 Over the hills at every nightfall went. 
 Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever, 
 That not one fie^cy lamb which thus did sever 
 From the white flock, but pass'd unworried 
 
4 ENDYMION 
 
 By angry wolf, or pard with prying head, 
 
 Until it came to some unfooted plains 
 
 Where fed the herds of Pan : aye great his gains 
 
 Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many, 
 
 Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny 
 
 And ivy banks ; all leading pleasantly 
 
 To a wide lawn, whence one could only see 
 
 Stems thronging all around between the swell 
 
 Of turf and slanting branches : who could tell 
 
 The freshness of the space of heaven above, 
 
 Edged round with dark tree tops? through which a dove 
 
 Would often beat its wings, and often too 
 
 A little cloud would move across the blue. 
 
 Full in the middle of this pleasantness 
 There stood a marble altar, with a tress 
 Of flowers budded newly ; and the dew 
 Had taken fairy phantasies to strew 
 Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, 
 And so the dawned light in pomp receive. 
 For 'twas the morn : Apollo's upward fire 
 Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre 
 Of brightness so unsullied, that therein 
 A melancholy spirit well might win 
 Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine 
 Into the winds : rain-scented eglantine 
 Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; 
 The lark was lost in him ; cold springs had run 
 To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass ; 
 Man's voice was on the mountains ; and the mass 
 Of nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold, 
 To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. 
 
 Now while the silent workings of the dawn 
 Were busiest, into that self-same lawn 
 All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped 
 A troop of little children garlanded ; 
 
ENDYMION 5 
 
 Who gathering round the altar, seem'd to pry- 
 Earnestly round as wishing to espy 
 Some folk of holiday : nor had they waited 
 For many moments, ere their ears were sated 
 With a faint breath of music, which ev'n then 
 Fill'd out its voice, and died away again. 
 Within a little space again it gave 
 Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, 
 To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking 
 Through copse-clad valleys, — ere their death, o'ertaking 
 The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. 
 
 And now, as deep into the wood as we 
 Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light 
 Fair faces and a rush of garments white, 
 Plainer and plainer showing, till at last 
 Into the widest alley they all past, 
 Making directly for the woodland altar. 
 O kindly muse ! let not my weak tongue falter 
 In telling of this goodly company, 
 Of their old piety, and of their glee : 
 But let a portion of ethereal dew 
 Fall on my head, and presently unmew 
 My soul ; that I may dare, in wayfaring, 
 To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing. 
 
 Leading the way, young damsels danced along, 
 Bearing the burden of a shepherd song ; 
 Each having a white wicker over brimm'd 
 With April's tender younglings : next, well trimm'd, 
 A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks 
 As may be read of in Arcadian books ; 
 Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe, 
 When the great deity, for earth too ripe, 
 Let his divinity o'er-flowing die 
 In music, through the vales of Thessaly : 
 Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground, 
 
6 ENDYMION 
 
 And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound 
 
 With ebon-tipped flutes : close after these, 
 
 Now coming from beneath the forest trees, 
 
 A venerable priest full soberly, 
 
 Begirt with ministring looks : alway his eye 
 
 Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept, 
 
 And after him his sacred vestments swept. 
 
 From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white, 
 
 Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light ; 
 
 And in his left he held a basket full 
 
 Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull : 
 
 Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still 
 
 Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill. 
 
 His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath, 
 
 Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth 
 
 Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd 
 
 Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud 
 
 Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd, 
 
 Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd 
 
 Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car, 
 
 Easily rolling so as scarce to mar 
 
 The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown : 
 
 Who stood therein did seem of great renown 
 
 Among the throng. His youth was fully blown, 
 
 Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown ; 
 
 And, for those simple times, his garments were 
 
 A chieftain king's : beneath his breast, half bare, 
 
 Was hung a silver bugle, and between 
 
 His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen. 
 
 A smile was on his countenance ; he seem'd, 
 
 To common lookers on, like one who dream'd 
 
 Of idleness in groves Elysian : 
 
 But there were some who feelingly could scan 
 
 A lurking trouble in his nether lip, 
 
 And see that oftentimes the reins would slip 
 
 Through his forgotten hands : then would they sigh, 
 
 And think of yellow leaves, of owlets' cry. 
 
ENDYMION 7 
 
 Of logs piled solemnly. — Ah, well-a-day, 
 Why should our young Endymion pine away ! 
 
 Soon the assembly, in a circle ranged, 
 Stood silent round the shrine : each look was changed 
 To sudden veneration : women meek 
 Beckon'd their sons to silence ; while each cheek 
 Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear. 
 Endymion too, without a forest peer, 
 Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face, 
 Among his brothers of the mountain chase. 
 In midst of all, the venerable priest 
 Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least, 
 And, after lifting up his aged hands, 
 Thus spake he : " Men of Latmus ! shepherd bands ! 
 Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks : 
 Whether descended from beneath the rocks 
 That overtop your mountains ; whether come 
 From valleys where the pipe is never dumb ; 
 Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs 
 Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze 
 Buds lavish gold ; or ye, whose precious charge 
 Nibble their fill at ocean's very marge, 
 Whose mellow reeds are touch'd with sounds forlorn 
 By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn : 
 Mothers and wives ! who day by day prepare 
 The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air ; 
 And all ye gentle girls who foster up 
 Udderless lambs, and in a little cup 
 Will put choice honey for a favoured youth : 
 Yea, every one attend ! for in good truth 
 Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan. 
 Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than 
 Night-swollen mushrooms ? Are not our wide plains 
 Speckled with countless fleeces ? Have not rains 
 Green'd over April's lap ? No howling sad 
 Sickens our fearful ewes ; and we have had 
 
8 ENDYMION 
 
 Great bounty from Endymion our lord. 
 The earth is glad : the merry lark has pour'd 
 His early song against yon breezy sky, 
 That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity." 
 
 Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire 
 Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire ; 
 Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod 
 With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god. 
 Now while the earth was drinking it, and while 
 Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile, 
 And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright 
 'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light 
 Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang : 
 
 " O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
 From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 
 Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death 
 Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; 
 Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress 
 Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken ; 
 And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken 
 The dreary melody of bedded reeds — 
 In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds 
 The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth ; 
 Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth 
 Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx — do thou now, 
 By thy love's milky brow ! 
 By all the trembling mazes that she ran, 
 Hear us, great Pan ! 
 
 " O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles 
 Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, 
 What time thou wanderest at eventide 
 Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side 
 Of thine enmossed realms : O thou, to whom 
 Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 Their ripen'd fruitage ; yellow girted bees 
 Their golden honeycombs ; our village leas 
 Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn ; 
 The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, 
 To sing for thee ; low creeping strawberries 
 Their summer coolness ; pent up butterflies 
 Their freckled wings ; yea, the fresh budding year 
 All its completions — be quickly near, 
 By every wind that nods the mountain pine, 
 O forester divine ! 
 
 " Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies 
 For willing service ; whether to surprise 
 The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit ; 
 Or upward ragged precipices flit 
 To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; 
 Or by mysterious enticement draw 
 Bewildered shepherds to their path again ; 
 Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 
 And gather up all fancifullest shells 
 For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells, 
 And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping ; 
 Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping, 
 The while they pelt each other on the crown 
 With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown — 
 By all the echoes that about thee ring, 
 Hear us, O satyr king ! 
 
 " O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, 
 While ever and anon to his shorn peers 
 A ram goes bleating : Winder of the horn, 
 When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn 
 Anger our huntsman : Breather round our farms, 
 To keep off mildews, and all weather harms : 
 Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, 
 That come a swooning over hollow grounds, 
 And wither drearily on barren moors : 
 
io ENDYMION 
 
 Dread opener of the mysterious doors 
 Leading to universal knowledge — see, 
 Great son of Dryope, 
 
 The many that are come to pay their vows 
 With leaves about their brows ! 
 
 " Be still the unimaginable lodge 
 For solitary thinkings ; such as dodge 
 Conception to the very bourne of heaven, 
 Then leave the naked brain : be still the leaven, 
 That spreading in this dull and clodded earth 
 Gives it a touch ethereal — a new birth : 
 Be still a symbol of immensity ; 
 A firmament reflected in a sea ; 
 An element filling the space between ; 
 An unknown — but no more : we humbly screen 
 With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, 
 And giving out a shout most heaven rending, 
 Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean, 
 Upon thy Mount Lycean ! " 
 
 Even while they brought the burden to a close, 
 A shout from the whole multitude arose, 
 That linger'd in the air like dying rolls 
 Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals 
 Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine. 
 Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine, 
 Young companies nimbly began dancing 
 To the swift treble pipe, and humming string. 
 Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly 
 To tunes forgotten — out of memory : 
 Fair creatures ! whose young children's children bred 
 Thermopylae its heroes — not yet dead, 
 But in old marbles ever beautiful. 
 High genitors, unconscious did they cull 
 Time's sweet first-fruits — they danced to weariness, 
 And then in quiet circles did they press 
 
AND, BEING HIDDEN, LAUGH AT 
 THEIR OUT-PEEPING 
 
ENDYMION 13 
 
 The hillock turf, and caught the latter end 
 
 Of some strange history, potent to send 
 
 A young mind from its bodily tenement. 
 
 Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent 
 
 On either side ; pitying the sad death 
 
 Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath 
 
 Of Zephyr slew him, — Zephyr penitent, 
 
 Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 
 
 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. 
 
 The archers too, upon a wider plain, 
 
 Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, 
 
 And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft 
 
 Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, 
 
 Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope 
 
 Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee 
 
 And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, 
 
 Poor, lonely Niobe ! when her lovely young 
 
 Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue 
 
 Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip, 
 
 And very, very deadliness did nip 
 
 Her motherly cheeks. Aroused from this sad mood 
 
 By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd, 
 
 Uplifting his strong bow into the air, 
 
 Many might after brighter visions stare : 
 
 After the Argonauts, in blind amaze 
 
 Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways, 
 
 Until, from the horizon's vaulted side, 
 
 There shot a golden splendour far and wide, 
 
 Spangling those million poutings of the brine 
 
 With quivering ore : 'twas even an awful shine 
 
 From the exaltation of Apollo's bow ; 
 
 A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe. 
 
 Who thus were ripe for high contemplating, 
 
 Might turn their steps towards the sober ring 
 
 Where sat Endymion and the aged priest 
 
 'Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increased 
 
 The silvery setting of their mortal star. 
 
14 ENDYMION 
 
 There they discoursed upon the fragile bar 
 
 That keeps us from our homes ethereal ; 
 
 And what our duties there : to nightly call 
 
 Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather ; 
 
 To summon all the downiest clouds together 
 
 For the sun's purple couch ; to emulate 
 
 In ministring the potent rule of fate 
 
 With speed of fire-tail'd exhalations ; 
 
 To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons 
 
 Sweet poesy by moonlight : besides these, 
 
 A world of other unguess'd offices. 
 
 Anon they wander'd, by divine converse, 
 
 Into Elysium ; vieing to rehearse 
 
 Each one his own anticipated bliss. 
 
 One felt heart-certain that he could not miss 
 
 His quick gone love, among fair blossom'd boughs, 
 
 Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows 
 
 Her lips with music for the welcoming. 
 
 Another wish'd, 'mid that eternal spring, 
 
 To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails, 
 
 Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales : 
 
 Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind, 
 
 And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind ; 
 
 And, ever after, through those regions be 
 
 His messenger, his little Mercury. 
 
 Some were athirst in soul to see again 
 
 Their fellow huntsmen o'er the wide champaign 
 
 In times long past ; to sit with them, and talk 
 
 Of all the chances in their earthly walk ; 
 
 Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores 
 
 Of happiness, to when upon the moors, 
 
 Benighted, close they huddled from the cold, 
 
 And shared their famish'd scrips. Thus all out-told 
 
 Their fond imaginations, — saving him 
 
 Whose eyelids curtain'd up their jewels dim, 
 
 Endymion : yet hourly had he striven 
 
 To hide the cankering venom, that had riven 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 His fainting recollections. Now indeed 
 His senses had swoon'd off : he did not heed 
 The sudden silence, or the whispers low, 
 Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe, 
 Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms, 
 Or maiden's sigh, that grief itself embalms : 
 But in the self-same fixed trance he kept, 
 Like one who on the earth had never stept. 
 Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man, 
 Frozen in that old tale Arabian. 
 
 Who whispers him so pantingly and close ? 
 Peona, his sweet sister : of all those, 
 His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made, 
 And breath'd a sister's sorrow to persuade 
 A yielding up, a cradling on her care. 
 Her eloquence did breathe away the curse : 
 She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse 
 Of happy changes in emphatic dreams, 
 Along a path between two little streams, — 
 Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow, 
 From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow 
 From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small ; 
 Until they came to where these streamlets fall, 
 With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush, 
 Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush 
 With crystal mocking of the trees and sky. 
 A little shallop, floating there hard by, 
 Pointed its beak over the fringed bank ; 
 And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank, 
 And dipt again, with the young couple's weight, — 
 Peona guiding, through the water straight, 
 Towards a bowery island opposite ; 
 Which gaining presently, she steered light 
 Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, 
 Where nested was an arbour, overwove 
 By many a summer's silent fingering ; 
 
 15 
 
16 ENDYMION 
 
 To whose cool bosom she was used to bring 
 Her playmates, with their needle broidery, 
 And minstrel memories of times gone by. 
 
 So she was gently glad to see him laid 
 Under her favourite bower's quiet shade, 
 On her own couch, new made of flower leaves, 
 Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves 
 When last the sun his autumn tresses shook, 
 And the tann'd harvesters rich armfals took. 
 Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest : 
 But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest 
 Peona's busy hand against his lips, 
 And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips 
 In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps 
 A patient watch over the stream that creeps 
 Windingly by it, so the quiet maid 
 Held her in peace : so that a whispering blade 
 Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling 
 Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling 
 Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard. 
 
 O magic sleep ! O comfortable bird, 
 That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind 
 Till it is hush'd and smooth ! O unconfined 
 Restraint ! imprison'd liberty ! great key 
 To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, 
 Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, 
 Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves 
 And moonlight ; aye, to all the mazy world 
 Of silvery enchantment ! — who, upfurl'd 
 Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, 
 But renovates and lives ? — Thus, in the bower, 
 Endymion was calm'd to life again. 
 Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain, 
 He said : " I feel this thine endearing love 
 All through my bosom : thou art as a dove 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 Trembling its closed eyes and sleek wings 
 About me ; and the pearliest dew not brings 
 Such morning incense from the fields of May, 
 As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray 
 From those kind eyes, — the very home and haunt 
 Of sisterly affection. Can I want 
 Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears ? 
 Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears 
 That, any longer, I will pass my days 
 
 17 
 
 Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise 
 My voice upon the mountain-heights ; once more 
 Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar 
 Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll 
 Around the breathed boar : again I'll poll 
 The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow : 
 And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, 
 Again I'll linger in a sloping mead 
 To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed 
 Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet, 
 
 c 
 
18 ENDYMION 
 
 And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat 
 My soul to keep in its resolved course." 
 
 Hereat Peona, in their silver source, 
 Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim, 
 And took a lute, from which there pulsing came 
 A lively prelude, fashioning the way 
 In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay 
 More subtle cadenced, more forest wild 
 Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child ; 
 And nothing since has floated in the air 
 So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare 
 Went, spiritual, through the damsel's hand ; 
 For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann'd 
 The quick invisible strings, even though she saw 
 Endymion's spirit melt away and thaw 
 Before the deep intoxication. 
 But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon 
 Her self-possession — swung the lute aside, 
 And earnestly said : " Brother, 'tis vain to hide 
 That thou dost know of things mysterious, 
 Immortal, starry ; such alone could thus 
 Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn'd in aught 
 Offensive to the heavenly powers ? Caught 
 A Paphian dove upon a message sent ? 
 Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent, 
 Sacred to Dian ? Haply, thou hast seen 
 Her naked limbs among the alders green ; 
 And that, alas ! is death. No, I can trace 
 Something more high perplexing in thy face ! * 
 
 Endymion look'd at her, and press'd her hand, 
 And said, " Art thou so pale, who wast so bland 
 And merry in our meadows ? How is this ? 
 Tell me thine ailment : tell me all amiss ! — 
 Ah ! thou hast been unhappy at the change 
 Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange ? 
 
ENDYMION 19 
 
 Or more complete to overwhelm surmise ? 
 
 Ambition is no sluggard : 'tis no prize, 
 
 That toiling years would put within my grasp, 
 
 That I have sigh'd for : with so deadly gasp 
 
 No man e'er panted for a mortal love. 
 
 So all have set my heavier grief above 
 
 These things which happen. Rightly have they done : 
 
 I, who still saw the horizontal sun 
 
 Heave his broad shoulder o'er the edge of the world, 
 
 Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl'd 
 
 My spear aloft, as signal for the chase — 
 
 I, who, for very sport of heart, would race 
 
 With my own steed from Araby ; pluck down 
 
 A vulture from his towery perching ; frown 
 
 A lion into growling, loth retire — 
 
 To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire, 
 
 And sink thus low ! but I will ease my breast 
 
 Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest. 
 
 " This river does not see the naked sky, 
 Till it begins to progress silverly 
 Around the western border of the wood, 
 Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood 
 Seems at the distance like a crescent moon : 
 And in that nook, the very pride of June, 
 Had I been used to pass my weary eves ; 
 The rather for the sun unwilling leaves 
 So dear a picture of his sovereign power, 
 And I could witness his most kingly hour, 
 When he doth tighten up the golden reins, 
 And paces 'eisurely down amber plains 
 His snorting four. Now when his chariot last 
 Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast, 
 There blossom'd suddenly a magic bed 
 Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red : 
 At which I wondered greatly, knowing well 
 That but one night had wrought this flowery spell 
 
 i 
 
20 ENDYMION 
 
 And, sitting down close by, began to muse 
 
 What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus, 
 
 In passing here, his owlet pinions shook ; 
 
 Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook 
 
 Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth, 
 
 Had dipt his rod in it : such garland wealth 
 
 Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought, 
 
 Until my head was dizzy and distraught. 
 
 Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole 
 
 A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul ; 
 
 And shaping visions all about my sight 
 
 Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light ; 
 
 The which became more strange, and strange, and dim, 
 
 And then were gulph'd in a tumultuous swim : 
 
 And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell 
 
 The enchantment that afterwards befell ? 
 
 Yet it was but a dream : yet such a dream 
 
 That never tongue, although it overteem 
 
 With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring, 
 
 Could figure out and to conception bring 
 
 All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay 
 
 Watching the zenith, where the milky way 
 
 Among the stars in virgin splendour pours ; 
 
 And travelling my eye, until the doors 
 
 Of heaven appear'd to open for my flight, 
 
 I became loth and fearful to alight 
 
 From such high soaring by a downward glance : 
 
 So kept me steadfast in that airy trance, 
 
 Spreading imaginary pinions wide. 
 
 When, presently, the stars began to glide, 
 
 And faint away, before my eager view : 
 
 At which I sigh'd that I could not pursue, 
 
 And dropt my vision to the horizon's verge ; 
 
 And lo ! from opening clouds, I saw emerge 
 
 The loveliest moon, that ever silver'd o'er 
 
 A shell for Neptune's goblet : she did soar 
 
 So passionately bright, my dazzled soul 
 
ENDYMION 21 
 
 Commingling with her argent spheres did roll 
 
 Through clear and cloudy, even when she went 
 
 At last into a dark and vapoury tent — 
 
 Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train 
 
 Of planets all were in the blue again. 
 
 To commune with those orbs, once more I raised 
 
 My sight right upward : but it was quite dazed 
 
 By a bright something, sailing down apace, 
 
 Making me quickly veil my eyes and face : 
 
 Again I look'd, and, O ye deities, 
 
 Who from Olympus watch our destinies ! 
 
 Whence that completed form of all completeness ? 
 
 Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness ? 
 
 Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O where 
 
 Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair ? 
 
 Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun ; 
 
 Not — thy soft hand, fair sister ! let me shun 
 
 Such follying before thee — yet she had, 
 
 Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad ; 
 
 And they were simply gordian'd up and braided, 
 
 Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, 
 
 Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow ; 
 
 The which were blended in, I know not how, 
 
 With such a paradise of lips and eyes, 
 
 Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs, 
 
 That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings 
 
 And plays about its fancy, till the stings 
 
 Of human neighbourhood envenom all. 
 
 Unto what awful power shall I call ? 
 
 To what high fane ? — Ah ! see her hovering feet 
 
 More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet 
 
 Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose 
 
 From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows 
 
 Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion ; 
 
 'Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million 
 
 Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed, 
 
 Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed, 
 
22 ENDYMION 
 
 Handfuls of daisies." — " Endymion, how strange ! 
 
 Dream within dream ! " — " She took an airy range, 
 
 And then, towards me, like a very maid, 
 
 Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid, 
 
 And press'd me by the hand : Ah ! 'twas too much ; 
 
 Methought I fainted at the charmed touch, 
 
 Yet held my recollection, even as one 
 
 Who dives three fathoms where the waters run 
 
 Gurgling in beds of coral : for anon, 
 
 I felt upmounted in that region 
 
 Where falling stars dart their artillery forth, 
 
 And eagles struggle with the buffeting north 
 
 That balances the heavy meteor-stone ; — 
 
 Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone, 
 
 But lapp'd and lull'd along the dangerous sky. 
 
 Soon, as it seem'd, we left our journeying high, 
 
 And straightway into frightful eddies swoop'd ; 
 
 Such as aye muster where grey time has scoop'd 
 
 Huge dens and caverns in a mountain's side : 
 
 There hollow sounds aroused me, and I sigh'd 
 
 To faint once more by looking on my bliss — 
 
 I was distracted ; madly did I kiss 
 
 The wooing arms which held me, and did give 
 
 My eyes at once to death : but 'twas to live, 
 
 To take in draughts of life from the gold fount 
 
 Of kind and passionate looks ; to count, and count 
 
 The moments, by some greedy help that seem'd 
 
 A second self, that each might be redeem'd 
 
 And plunder'd of its load of blessedness. 
 
 Ah, desperate mortal ! I ev'n dared to press 
 
 Her very cheek against my crowned lip, 
 
 And, at that moment, felt my body dip 
 
 Into a warmer air : a moment more, 
 
 Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store 
 
 Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes 
 
 A scent of violets, and blossoming limes, 
 
 Loiter'd around us ; then of honey cells, 
 
ENDYMION 23 
 
 Made delicate from all white-flower bells ; 
 
 And once, above the edges of our nest, 
 
 An arch face peep'd, — an Oread as I guess'd. 
 
 " Why did I dream that sleep o'er-power'd me 
 In midst of all this heaven ? Why not see, 
 Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark, 
 And stare them from me ? But no, like a spark 
 That needs must die, although its little beam 
 Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream 
 Fell into nothing — into stupid sleep. 
 And so it was, until a gentle creep,. 
 A careful moving caught my waking ears, 
 And up I started : Ah ! my sighs, my tears, 
 My clenched hands ; — for lo ! the poppies hung 
 Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung 
 A heavy ditty, and the sullen day 
 Had chidden herald Hesperus away, 
 With leaden looks : the solitary breeze 
 Bluster'd, and slept, and its wild self did tease 
 With wayward melancholy ; and I thought, 
 Mark me, Peona ! that sometimes it brought 
 Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus ! — 
 Away I wander'd — all the pleasant hues 
 Of heaven and earth had faded : deepest shades 
 Were deepest dungeons ; heaths and sunny glades 
 Were full of pestilent light ; our taintless rills 
 Seem'd sooty, and o'er-spread with upturn'd gills 
 Of dying fish ; the vermeil rose had blown 
 In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown 
 Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird 
 Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd 
 In little journeys, I beheld in it 
 A disguised demon, missioned to knit 
 My soul with under darkness ; to entice 
 My stumblings down some monstrous precipice : 
 Therefore I eager followed, and did curse 
 
24 ENDYMION 
 
 The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse, 
 Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven 
 These things, with all their comfortings, are given 
 To my down-sunken hours, and with thee, 
 Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea 
 Of weary life." 
 
 Thus ended he, and both 
 Sat silent : for the maid was very loth 
 To answer ; feeling well that breathed words 
 Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords 
 Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps 
 Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps, 
 And wonders ; struggles to devise some blame ; 
 To put on such a look as would say, Shame 
 On this poor weakness ! but, for all her strife, 
 She could as soon have crush'd away the life 
 From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause, 
 She said with trembling chance : " Is this the cause ? 
 This all ? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas ! 
 That one who through this middle earth should pass 
 Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave 
 His name upon the harp-string, should achieve 
 No higher bard than simple maidenhood, 
 Singing alone, and fearfully, — how the blood 
 Left his young cheek ; and how he used to stray 
 He knew not where ; and how he would say, nay, 
 If any said 'twas love : and yet 'twas love ; 
 What could it be but love ? How a ring-dove 
 Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path ; 
 And how he died : and then, that love doth scathe, 
 The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses ; 
 And then the ballad of his sad life closes 
 With sighs, and an alas ! — Endymion ! 
 Be rather in the trumpet's mouth, — anon 
 Among the winds at large — that all may hearken ! 
 Although, before the crystal heavens darken, 
 
ENDYMION 25 
 
 I watch and dote upon the silver lakes 
 
 Pictured in western cloudiness, that takes 
 
 The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands, 
 
 Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands 
 
 With horses prancing o'er them, palaces 
 
 And towers of amethyst, — would I so tease 
 
 My pleasant days, because I could not mount 
 
 Into those regions ? The Morphean fount 
 
 Of that fine element that visions, dreams, 
 
 And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams 
 
 Into its airy channels with so subtle, 
 
 So thin a breathing, not the spider's shuttle, 
 
 Circled a million times within the space 
 
 Of a swallow's nest-door, could delay a trace, 
 
 A tinting of its quality : how light 
 
 Must dreams themselves be ; seeing they're more slight 
 
 Than the mere nothing that engenders them ! 
 
 Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem 
 
 Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick ? 
 
 Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick 
 
 For nothing but a dream ? " Hereat the youth 
 
 Look'd up : a conflicting of shame and ruth 
 
 Was in his plaited brow : yet his eyelids 
 
 Widen'd a little, as when Zephyr bids 
 
 A little breeze to creep between the fans 
 
 Of careless butterflies : amid his pains 
 
 He seem'd to taste a drop of manna-dew, 
 
 Full palatable ; and a colour grew 
 
 Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake. 
 
 V Peona ! ever have I long'd to slake 
 My thirst for the world's praises : nothing base, 
 No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace 
 The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared — 
 Though now 'tis tatter'd ; leaving my bark bared 
 And sullenly drifting : yet my higher hope 
 Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope, 
 
26 ENDYMION 
 
 To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks. 
 
 Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks 
 
 Our ready minds to fellowship divine, 
 
 A fellowship with essence ; till we shine, 
 
 Full alchemized, and free of space. Behold 
 
 The clear religion of heaven ! Fold 
 
 A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness, 
 
 And soothe thy lips : hist, when the airy stress 
 
 Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds, 
 
 And with a sympathetic touch unbinds 
 
 ^Eolian magic from their lucid wombs : 
 
 Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs ; 
 
 Old ditties sigh above their father's grave ; 
 
 Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave 
 
 Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot ; 
 
 Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, 
 
 Where long ago a giant battle was ; 
 
 And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass 
 
 In every place where infant Orpheus slept. 
 
 Feel we these things ? — that moment have we stept 
 
 Into a sort of oneness, and our state 
 
 Is like a floating spirit's. But there are 
 
 Richer entanglements, enthralments far 
 
 More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, 
 
 To the chief intensity : the crown of these 
 
 Is made of love and friendship, and sits high 
 
 Upon the forehead of humanity. 
 
 All its more ponderous and bulky worth 
 
 Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth 
 
 A steady splendour ; but at the tip-top, 
 
 There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop 
 
 Of light, and that is love : its influence, 
 
 Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense, 
 
 At which we start and fret ; till in the end, 
 
 Melting into its radiance, we blend, 
 
 Mingle, and so become a part of it, — 
 
 Nor with aught else can our souls interknit 
 
ENDYMION 27 
 
 So wingedly : when we combine therewith, 
 
 Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, 
 
 And we are nurtured like a pelican brood. 
 
 Aye, so delicious is the unsating food, 
 
 That men, who might have tower'd in the van 
 
 Of all the congregated world, to fan 
 
 And winnow from the coming step of time 
 
 All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime 
 
 Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, 
 
 Have been content to let occasion die, 
 
 Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium. 
 
 And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, 
 
 Than speak against this ardent listlessness : 
 
 For I have ever thought that it might bless 
 
 The world with benefits unknowingly ; 
 
 As does the nightingale, upperched high, 
 
 And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves — 
 
 She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives 
 
 How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. 
 
 Just so may love, although 'tis understood 
 
 The mere commingling of passionate breath, 
 
 Produce more than our searching witnesseth : 
 
 What I know not : but who, of men, can tell 
 
 That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell 
 
 To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, 
 
 The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, 
 
 The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, 
 
 The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, 
 
 Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, 
 
 If human souls did never kiss and greet? 
 
 " Now, if this earthly love has power to make 
 Men's being mortal, immortal ; to shake 
 Ambition from their memories, and brim 
 Their measure of content ; what merest whim 
 Seems all this poor endeavour after fame, 
 To one, who keeps within his steadfast aim 
 
28 ENDYMION 
 
 A love immortal, an immortal too. 
 
 Look not so wilder'd ; for these things are true, 
 
 And never can be born of atomies 
 
 That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies, 
 
 Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure, 
 
 My restless spirit never could endure 
 
 To brood so long upon one luxury, 
 
 Unless it did, though fearfully, espy 
 
 A hope beyond the shadow of a dream. 
 
 My sayings will the less obscured seem, 
 
 When I have told thee how my waking sight 
 
 Has made me scruple whether that same night 
 
 Was pass'd in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona ! 
 
 Beyond the matron-temple of Latona, 
 
 Which we should see but for these darkening boughs, 
 
 Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows 
 
 Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart, 
 
 And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught, 
 
 And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide 
 
 Past them, but he must brush on every side. 
 
 Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell, 
 
 Far as the slabbed margin of a well, 
 
 Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye 
 
 Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky. 
 
 Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set 
 
 Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet 
 
 Edges them round, and they have golden pits : 
 
 'Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits 
 
 In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat, 
 
 When all above was faint with mid-day heat. 
 
 And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed, 
 
 I'd bubble up the water through a reed ; 
 
 So reaching back to boyhood : make me ships 
 
 Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips, 
 
 With leaves stuck in them ; and the Neptune be 
 
 Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily, 
 
 When love-lorn hours had left me less a child, 
 
ENDYMION 29 
 
 I sat contemplating the figures wild 
 
 Of o'er-head clouds melting the mirror through. 
 
 Upon a day, while thus I watch'd, by flew 
 
 A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver ; 
 
 So plainly character'd, no breeze would shiver 
 
 The happy chance : so happy, I was fain 
 
 To follow it upon the open plain, 
 
 And, therefore, was just going ; when, behold ! 
 
 A wonder, fair as any I have told — 
 
 The same bright face I tasted in my sleep, 
 
 Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap 
 
 Through the cool depth. — It moved as if to flee — 
 
 I started up, when lo ! refreshfully, 
 
 There came upon my face, in plenteous showers, 
 
 Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers, 
 
 Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight, 
 
 Bathing my spirit in a new delight. 
 
 Ay, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss 
 
 Alone preserved me from the drear abyss 
 
 Of death, for the fair form had gone again. 
 
 Pleasure is oft a visitant ; but pain 
 
 Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth 
 
 On the deer's tender haunches : late, and loth, 
 
 'Tis scared away by slow returning pleasure. 
 
 How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure 
 
 Of weary days, made deeper exquisite, 
 
 By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night ! 
 
 Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still, 
 
 Than when I wander'd from the poppy hill : 
 
 And a whole age of lingering moments crept 
 
 Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept 
 
 Away at once the deadly yellow spleen. 
 
 Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen ; 
 
 Once more been tortured with renewed life. 
 
 When last the wintry gusts gave over strife 
 
 With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies 
 
 Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes 
 

 30 ENDYMION 
 
 In pity of the shatter'd infant buds, — 
 
 That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs, 
 
 My hunting cap, because I laugh'd and smiled, 
 
 Chatted with thee, and many days exiled 
 
 All torment from my breast ; — 'twas even then, 
 
 Straying about, yet, coop'd up in the den 
 
 Of helpless discontent, — hurling my lance 
 
 From place to place, and following at chance, 
 
 At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck, 
 
 And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck 
 
 In the middle of a brook, — whose silver ramble 
 
 Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble, 
 
 Tracing along, it brought me to a cave, 
 
 Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave 
 
 The nether sides of mossy stones and rock, — 
 
 'Mong which it gurgled blithe adieus, to mock 
 
 Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead, 
 
 Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread 
 
 Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph's home. 
 
 ' Ah ! impious mortal, whither do I roam ? ' 
 
 Said I, low voiced : ' Ah, whither ! 'Tis the grot 
 
 Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot, 
 
 Doth her resign ; and where her tender hands 
 
 She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands : 
 
 Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits, 
 
 And babbles thorough silence, till her wits 
 
 Are gone in tender madness, and anon, 
 
 Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone 
 
 Of sadness. O that she would take my vows, 
 
 And breathe them sighingly among the boughs, 
 
 To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head, 
 
 Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed, 
 
 And weave them dyingly — send honey-whispers 
 
 Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers 
 
 May sigh my love unto her pitying ! 
 
 O charitable echo ! hear, and sing 
 
 This ditty to her ! — tell her'— so I stay'd 
 
ENDYMION 31 
 
 My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid, 
 
 Stood stupefied with my own empty folly, 
 
 And blushing for the freaks of melancholy. 
 
 Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name 
 
 Most fondly lipp'd, and then these accents came : 
 
 ' Endymion ! the cave is secreter 
 
 Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir 
 
 No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise 
 
 Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys 
 
 And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.' 
 
 At that oppress'd I hurried in. — Ah ! where 
 
 Are those swift moments ? Whither are they fled ? 
 
 I'll smile no more, Peona ; nor will wed 
 
 Sorrow the way to death ; but patiently 
 
 Bear up against it : so farewell, sad sigh ; 
 
 And come instead demurest meditation, 
 
 To occupy me wholly, and to fashion 
 
 My pilgrimage for the world's dusky brink. 
 
 No more will I count over, link by link, 
 
 My chain of grief: no longer strive to find 
 
 A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind 
 
 Blustering about my ears : aye, thou shalt see, 
 
 Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be ; 
 
 What a calm round of hours shall make my days. 
 
 There is a paly flame of hope that plays 
 
 Where'er I look : but yet, I'll say 'tis naught — 
 
 And here I bid it die. Have not I caught, 
 
 Already, a more healthy countenance ? 
 
 By this the sun is setting ; we may chance 
 
 Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car." 
 
 This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star 
 Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand : 
 They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 O Sovereign power of love ! O grief! O balm ! 
 
 All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, 
 
 And shadowy, through the mist of passed years : 
 
 For others, good or bad, hatred and tears 
 
 Have become indolent ; but touching thine, 
 
 One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine, 
 
 One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days. 
 
 The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze, 
 
 Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, 
 
 Struggling, and blood, and shrieks — all dimly fades 
 
 Into some backward corner of the brain ; 
 
 Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain 
 
 The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. 
 
 Hence, pageant history ! hence, gilded cheat ! 
 
 Swart planet in the universe of deeds ! 
 
 Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds 
 
 Along the pebbled shore of memory ! 
 
 Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be 
 
 Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified 
 
 To goodly vessels ; many a sail of pride, 
 
ENDYMION 33 
 
 And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry. 
 
 But wherefore this ? What care, though owl did fly 
 
 About the great Athenian admiral's mast ? 
 
 What care, though striding Alexander past 
 
 The Indus with his Macedonian numbers ? 
 
 Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers 
 
 The glutted Cyclops, what care? — Juliet leaning 
 
 Amid her window-flowers, — sighing, — weaning 
 
 Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow, 
 
 Doth more avail than these : the silver flow 
 
 Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, 
 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 
 Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully 
 
 Must such conviction come upon his head, 
 
 Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread, 
 
 Without one muse's smile, or kind behest, 
 
 The path of love and poesy. But rest, 
 
 In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear 
 
 Than to be crush'd in striving to uprear 
 
 Love's standard on the battlements of song. 
 
 So once more days and nights aid me along, 
 
 Like legion'd soldiers. 
 
 Brain-sick shepherd-prince, 
 What promise hast thou faithful guarded since 
 The day of sacrifice ? Or, have new sorrows 
 Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows ? 
 Alas ! 'tis his old grief. For many days, 
 Has he been wandering in uncertain ways : 
 Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks ; 
 Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes 
 Of the lone woodcutter ; and listening still, 
 Hour after hour, to each lush-leaved rill. 
 Now he is sitting by a shady spring, 
 And elbow-deep with feverous fingering 
 Stems the upbursting cold : a wild rose tree 
 
 D 
 
34 ENDYMION 
 
 Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see 
 A bud which snares his fancy : lo ! but now 
 He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water : how ! 
 It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight ; 
 And, in the middle, there is softly pight 
 A golden butterfly ; upon whose wings 
 There must be surely character'd strange things, 
 For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft. 
 
 Lightly this little herald flew aloft, 
 Follow'd by glad Endymion's clasped hands : 
 Onward it flies. From languor's sullen bands 
 His limbs are loosed, and eager, on he hies 
 Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies. 
 It seem'd he flew, the way so easy was ; 
 And like a new-born spirit did he pass 
 Through the green evening quiet in the sun, 
 O'er many a heath, through many a woodland dun, 
 Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams 
 The summer time away. One track unseams 
 A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue 
 Of ocean fades upon him ; then, anew, 
 He sinks adown a solitary glen, 
 Where there was never sound of mortal men, 
 Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences 
 Melting to silence, when upon the breeze 
 Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet, 
 To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet 
 Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide, 
 Until it reach'd a splashing fountain's side 
 That, near a cavern's mouth, for ever pour'd 
 Unto the temperate air : then high it soar'd, 
 And, downward, suddenly began to dip, 
 As if, athirst with so much toil, 'twould sip 
 The crystal spout-head : so it did, with touch 
 Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch 
 Even with mealy gold the waters clear 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 But, at that very touch, to disappear 
 
 So fairy-quick, was strange ! Bewildered, 
 
 Endymion sought around, and shook each bed 
 
 Of covert flowers in vain ; and then he flung 
 
 Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue, 
 
 What whisperer disturbed his gloomy rest ? 
 
 It was a nymph uprisen to the breast 
 
 In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood 
 
 'Mong lilies, like the youngest of the brood. 
 
 To him her dripping hand she softly kist, 
 
 35 
 
 
 
 w u S J 
 
 
 lOhJlfl 
 
 
 III i"*Tjl 
 
 
 
 ^s 
 
 Vc|i^Mp> 
 
 ]|3r^^^VI|fijp 
 
 
 And anxiously began to plait and twist 
 Her ringlets round her fingers, saying : " Youth 1 
 Too long, alas, hast thou starved on the ruth, 
 The bitterness of love : too long indeed, 
 Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed 
 Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer 
 All the bright riches of my crystal coffer 
 To Amphitrite ; all my clear-eyed fish, 
 Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish, 
 Vermilion-tail'd, or finn'd with silvery gauze ; 
 Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws 
 A virgin light to the deep ; my grotto-sands 
 
36 ENDYMION 
 
 Tawny and gold, oozed slowly from far lands 
 
 By my diligent springs ; my level lilies, shells, 
 
 My charming rod, my potent river spells ; 
 
 Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup 
 
 Meander gave me, — for I bubbled up 
 
 To fainting creatures in a desert wild. 
 
 But woe is me, I am but as a child 
 
 To gladden thee ; and all I dare to say, 
 
 Is, that I pity thee ; that on this day 
 
 I've been thy guide ; that thou must wander far 
 
 In other regions, past the scanty bar 
 
 To mortal steps, before thou canst be ta'en 
 
 From every wasting sigh, from every pain, 
 
 Into the gentle bosom of thy love. 
 
 Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above : 
 
 But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewell ! 
 
 I have a ditty for my hollow cell." 
 
 Hereat, she vanish'd from Endymion's gaze, 
 Who brooded o'er the water in amaze : 
 The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool 
 Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool, 
 Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still, 
 And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill 
 Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer, 
 Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr 
 Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down ; 
 And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown 
 Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps, 
 Thus breathed he to himself: " Whoso encamps 
 To take a fancied city of delight, 
 O what a wretch is he ! and when 'tis his, 
 After long toil and travelling, to miss 
 The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile : 
 Yet, for him there 's refreshment even in toil ; 
 Another city doth he set about, 
 Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt 
 
ENDYMION 37 
 
 That he will seize on trickling honey-combs : 
 
 Alas, he finds them dry ; and then he foams, 
 
 And onward to another city speeds. 
 
 But this is human life : the war, the deeds, 
 
 The disappointment, the anxiety, 
 
 Imagination's struggles, far and nigh, 
 
 All human ; bearing in themselves this good, 
 
 That they are still the air, the subtle food, 
 
 To make us feel existence, and to show 
 
 How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow, 
 
 Whether to weeds or flowers ; but for me, 
 
 There is no depth to strike in : I can see 
 
 Naught earthly worth my compassing ; so stand 
 
 Upon a misty, jutting head of land — 
 
 Alone ? No, no ; and by the Orphean lute, 
 
 When mad Eurydice is listening to 't ; 
 
 I'd rather stand upon this misty peak, 
 
 With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek, 
 
 But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love, 
 
 Than be — I care not what. O meekest dove 
 
 Of heaven ! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair ! 
 
 From thy blue throne, now filling all the air, 
 
 Glance but one little beam of temper'd light 
 
 Into my bosom, that the dreadful might 
 
 And tyranny of love be somewhat scared ! 
 
 Yet do not so, sweet queen ; one torment spared, 
 
 Would give a pang to jealous misery, 
 
 Worse than the torment's self : but rather tie 
 
 Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out 
 
 My love's far dwelling. Though the playful rout 
 
 Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou, 
 
 Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow 
 
 Not to have dipp'd in love's most gentle stream. 
 
 O be propitious, nor severely deem 
 
 My madness impious ; for, by all the stars 
 
 That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars 
 
 That kept my spirit in are burst — that I 
 
38 ENDYMION 
 
 Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky ! 
 
 How beautiful thou art ! The world how deep ! 
 
 How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep 
 
 Around their axle ! Then these gleaming reins, 
 
 How lithe ! When this thy chariot attains 
 
 Its airy goal, haply some bower veils 
 
 Those twilight eyes ? Those eyes ! — my spirit fails — 
 
 Dear goddess, help ! or the wide-gaping air 
 
 Will gulph me — help ! " — At this with madden'd stare, 
 
 And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood ; 
 
 Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood, 
 
 Or blind Orion hungry for the morn. 
 
 And, but from the deep cavern there was borne 
 
 A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone ; 
 
 Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion'd moan 
 
 Had more been heard. Thus swell'd it forth : "Descend, 
 
 Young mountaineer ! descend where alleys bend 
 
 Into the sparry hollows of the world ! 
 
 Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd 
 
 As from thy threshold ; day by day hast been 
 
 A little lower than the chilly sheen 
 
 Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms 
 
 Into the deadening ether that still charms 
 
 Their marble being : now, as deep profound 
 
 As those are high, descend ! He ne'er is crown'd 
 
 With immortality, who fears to follow 
 
 Where airy voices lead : so through the hollow, 
 
 The silent mysteries of earth, descend ! " 
 
 He heard but the last words, nor could contend 
 One moment in reflection : for he fled 
 Into the fearful deep, to hide his head 
 From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness. 
 
 'Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness ; 
 Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite 
 To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light, 
 
ENDYMION 39 
 
 The region ; nor bright, nor sombre wholly, 
 
 But mingled up ; a gleaming melancholy ; 
 
 A dusky empire and its diadems ; 
 
 One faint eternal eventide of gems. 
 
 Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold, 
 
 Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told, 
 
 With all its lines abrupt and angular : 
 
 Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star, 
 
 Through a vast antre ; then the metal woof, 
 
 Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof 
 
 Curves hugely : now, far in the deep abyss, 
 
 It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss 
 
 Fancy into belief : anon it leads 
 
 Through winding passages, where sameness breeds 
 
 Vexing conceptions of some sudden change ; 
 
 Whether to silver grots, or giant range 
 
 Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge 
 
 Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge 
 
 Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath 
 
 Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth 
 
 A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come 
 
 But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb 
 
 His bosom grew, when first he, far away, 
 
 Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray 
 
 Old darkness from his throne : 'twas like the sun 
 
 Uprisen o'er chaos : and with such a stun 
 
 Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it, 
 
 He saw not fiercer wonders — past the wit 
 
 Of any spirit to tell, but one of those 
 
 Who, when this planet's sphering time doth close, 
 
 Will be its high remembrancers : who they ? 
 
 The mighty ones who have made eternal day 
 
 For Greece and England. While astonishment 
 
 With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went 
 
 Into a marble gallery, passing through 
 
 A mimic temple, so complete and true 
 
 In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear'd 
 
40 ENDYMION 
 
 To search it inwards ; whence far off appear'd, 
 
 Through a long pillar'd vista, a fair shrine, 
 
 And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine, 
 
 A quiver'd Dian. Stepping awfully, 
 
 The youth approach'd ; oft turning his veil'd eye 
 
 Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old. 
 
 And when, more near against the marble cold 
 
 He had touch'd his forehead, he began to thread 
 
 All courts and passages, where silence dead 
 
 Roused by his whispering footsteps murmur'd faint 
 
 And long he traversed to and fro, to acquaint 
 
 Himself with every mystery, and awe ; 
 
 Till, weary, he sat down before the maw 
 
 Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim, 
 
 To wild uncertainty and shadows grim. 
 
 There, when new wonders ceased to float before, 
 
 And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore 
 
 The journey homeward to habitual self! 
 
 A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf, 
 
 Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar, 
 
 Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire, 
 
 Into the bosom of a hated thing. 
 
 What misery most drowningly doth sing 
 In lone Endymion's ear, now he has caught 
 The goal of consciousness ? Ah, 'tis the thought, 
 The deadly feel of solitude : for lo ! 
 He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow 
 Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild 
 In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-piled, 
 The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west, 
 Like herded elephants ; nor felt, nor prest 
 Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air ; 
 But far from such companionship to wear 
 An unknown time, surcharged with grief, away, 
 Was now his lot. And must he patient stay, 
 Tracing fantastic figures with his spear ? 
 
ENDYMION 41 
 
 "No!" exclaimed he, "why should I tarry here?" 
 
 No ! loudly echoed times innumerable. 
 
 At which he straightway started, and 'gan tell 
 
 His paces back into the temple's chief; 
 
 Warming and glowing strong in the belief 
 
 Of help from Dian : so that when again 
 
 He caught her airy form, thus did he plain, 
 
 Moving more near the while : " O Haunter chaste 
 
 Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste, 
 
 Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen 
 
 Art thou now forested ? O woodland Queen, 
 
 What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos ? 
 
 Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos 
 
 Of thy disparted nymphs ? Through what dark tree 
 
 Glimmers thy crescent ? Wheresoe'er it be, 
 
 'Tis in the breath of heaven : thou dost taste 
 
 Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste 
 
 Thy loveliness in dismal elements ; 
 
 But, finding in our green earth sweet contents, 
 
 There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee 
 
 It feels Elysian, how rich to me, 
 
 An exiled mortal, sounds its pleasant name ! 
 
 Within my breast there lives a choking flame — 
 
 O let me cool it the zephyr-boughs among ! 
 
 A homeward fever parches up my tongue — 
 
 O let me slake it at the running springs ! 
 
 Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings — 
 
 O let me once more hear the linnet's note ! 
 
 Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float — 
 
 O let me 'noint them with the heaven's light ! 
 
 Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white ? 
 
 O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice ! 
 
 Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice ? 
 
 O think how this dry palate would rejoice ! 
 
 If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice, 
 
 O think how I should love a bed of flowers ! — 
 
 Young goddess ! let me see my native bowers ! 
 
42 ENDYMION 
 
 Deliver me from this rapacious deep ! " 
 
 Thus ending loudly, as he would o'erleap 
 His destiny, alert he stood : but when 
 Obstinate silence came heavily again, 
 Feeling about for its old couch of space 
 And airy cradle, lowly bow'd his face 
 Desponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill. 
 But 'twas not long ; for, sweeter than the rill 
 To its old channel, or a swollen tide 
 To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied, 
 And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns 
 Up heaping through the slab : refreshment drowns 
 Itself, and strives its own delights to hide — 
 Nor in one spot alone ; the floral pride 
 In a long whispering birth enchanted grew 
 Before his footsteps ; as when heaved anew 
 Old ocean rolls a lengthen'd wave to the shore, 
 Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, 
 Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence. 
 
 Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense, 
 Upon his fairy journey on he hastes ; 
 So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes 
 One moment with his hand among the sweets : 
 Onward he goes — he stops — his bosom beats 
 As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm 
 Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm, 
 This sleepy music, forced him walk tiptoe : 
 For it came more softly that the east could blow 
 Arion's magic to the Atlantic isles ; 
 Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles 
 Of throned Apollo, could breathe back the lyre 
 To seas Ionian and Tyrian. 
 
 O did he ever live, that lonely man, 
 Who loved — and music slew not ? Tis the pest 
 
ENDYMION 43 
 
 Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest ; 
 That things of delicate and tenderest worth 
 Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth, 
 By one consuming flame : it doth immerse 
 And suffocate true blessings in a curse. 
 Half-happy, by comparison of bliss, 
 Is miserable. 'Twas even so with this 
 Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian's ear ; 
 First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear, 
 Vanish'd in elemental passion. 
 
 And down some swart abysm he had gone, 
 Had not a heavenly guide benignant led 
 To where thick myrtle branches, 'gainst his head 
 Brushing, awaken'd : then the sounds again 
 Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain 
 Over a bower, where little space he stood ; 
 For as the sunset peeps into a wood 
 So saw he panting light, and towards it went 
 Through winding alleys ; and lo, wonderment ! 
 Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there, 
 Cupids a slumbering on their pinions fair. 
 
 After a thousand mazes overgone, 
 At last, with sudden step, he came upon 
 A chamber, myrtle wall'd, embower'd high, 
 Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy, 
 And more of beautiful and strange beside : 
 For on a silken couch of rosy pride, 
 In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth 
 Of fondest beauty ; fonder, in fair sooth, 
 Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach : 
 And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach, 
 Or ripe October's faded marigolds, 
 Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds — 
 Not hiding up an Apollonian curve 
 Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve 
 
44 ENDYMION 
 
 Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light ; 
 But rather, giving them to the fill'd sight 
 Officiously. Sideway his face reposed 
 On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed, 
 By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth 
 To slumbery pout; just as the morning south 
 Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head, 
 Four lily stalks did their white honours wed 
 To make a coronal ; and round him grew 
 All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue, 
 Together intertwined and trammel'd fresh : 
 The vine of glossy sprout ; the ivy mesh, 
 Shading its Ethiop berries ; and woodbine, 
 Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine ; 
 Convolvulus in streaked vases flush ; 
 The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush ; 
 And virgin's bower, trailing airily ; 
 With others of the sisterhood. Hard by, 
 Stood serene Cupids watching silently. 
 One, kneeling to a lyre, touch'd the strings, 
 Muffling to death the pathos with his wings ; 
 And, ever and anon, uprose to look 
 At the youth's slumber ; while another took 
 A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew, 
 And shook it on his hair ; another flew 
 In through the woven roof, and fluttering- wise 
 Rain'd violets upon his sleeping eyes. 
 
 At these enchantments, and yet many more, 
 The breathless Latmian wonder'd o'er and o'er ; 
 Until, impatient in embarrassment, 
 He forthright pass'd, and lightly treading went 
 To that same feather'd lyrist, who straightway, 
 Smiling, thus whisper'd : " Though from upper day 
 Thou art a wanderer, and thy presence here 
 Might seem unholy, be of happy cheer ! 
 For 'tis the nicest touch of human honour, 
 
SINCE ARIADNE WAS A VINTAGER 
 
ENDYMION 47 
 
 When some ethereal and high-favouring donor 
 
 Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense ; 
 
 As now 'tis done to thee, Endymion. Hence 
 
 Was I in no wise startled. So recline 
 
 Upon these living flowers. Here is wine, 
 
 Alive with sparkles — never, I aver, 
 
 Since Ariadne was a vintager, 
 
 So cool a purple : taste these juicy pears, 
 
 Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears 
 
 Were high about Pomona : here is cream, 
 
 Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam ; 
 
 Sweeter than that nurse Amalthea skimm'd 
 
 For the boy Jupiter : and here, undimm'd 
 
 By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums 
 
 Ready to melt between an infant's gums : 
 
 And here is manna pick'd from Syrian trees, 
 
 In starlight, by the three Hesperides. 
 
 Feast on, and meanwhile I will let thee know 
 
 Of all these things around us." He did so, 
 
 Still brooding o'er the cadence of his lyre ; 
 
 And thus : " I need not any hearing tire 
 
 By telling how the sea-born goddess pined 
 
 For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind 
 
 Him all in all unto her doting self. 
 
 Who would not be so prison'd ? but, fond elf, 
 
 He was content to let her amorous plea 
 
 Faint through his careless arms ; content to see 
 
 An unseized heaven dying at his feet ; 
 
 Content, O fool ! to make a cold retreat, 
 
 When on the pleasant grass such love, lovelorn, 
 
 Lay sorrowing ; when every tear was born 
 
 Of diverse passion ; when her lips and eyes 
 
 Were closed in sullen moisture, and quick sighs 
 
 Came vex'd and pettish through her nostrils small. 
 
 Hush ! no exclaim — yet, justly mightst thou call 
 
 Curses upon his head. — I was half glad, 
 
 But my poor mistress went distract and mad, 
 
48 ENDYMION 
 
 When the boar tusk'd him : so away she flew 
 
 To Jove's high throne, and by her plainings drew 
 
 Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer's beard ; 
 
 Whereon, it was decreed he should be rear'd 
 
 Each summer time to life. Lo ! this is he, 
 
 That same Adonis, safe in the privacy 
 
 Of this still region all his winter-sleep. 
 
 Aye, sleep ; for when our love-sick queen did weep 
 
 Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower 
 
 Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power, 
 
 Medicined death to a lengthen'd drowsiness : 
 
 The which she fills with visions, and doth dress 
 
 In all this quiet luxury ; and hath set 
 
 Us young immortals, without any let, 
 
 To watch his slumber through. 'Tis well nigh pass'd, 
 
 Even to a moment's filling up, and fast 
 
 She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through 
 
 The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew 
 
 Embower'd sports in Cytherea's isle. 
 
 Look ! how those winged listeners all this while 
 
 Stand anxious : see ! behold ! " — This clamant word 
 
 Broke through the careful silence ; for they heard 
 
 A rustling noise of leaves, and out there flutter'd 
 
 Pigeons and doves : Adonis something mutter'd, 
 
 The while one hand, that erst upon his thigh 
 
 Lay dormant, moved convulsed and gradually 
 
 Up to his forehead. Then there was a hum 
 
 Of sudden voices, echoing, " Come ! come ! 
 
 Arise ! awake ! Clear summer has forth walk'd 
 
 Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk'd 
 
 Full soothingly to every nested finch : 
 
 Rise, Cupids ! or we'll give the blue-bell pinch 
 
 To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin ! " 
 
 At this, from every side they hurried in, 
 
 Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists, 
 
 And doubling over head their little fists 
 
 In backward yawns. But all were soon alive : 
 
ENDYMION 49 
 
 For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive 
 
 In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair, 
 
 So from the arbour roof down swell'd an air 
 
 Odorous and enlivening ; making all 
 
 To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call 
 
 For their sweet queen : when lo ! the wreathed green 
 
 Disparted, and far upward could be seen 
 
 Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne, 
 
 Whose silent wheels, fresh wet from clouds of morn, 
 
 Spun off a drizzling dew, — which falling chill 
 
 On soft Adonis' shoulders, made him still 
 
 Nestle and turn uneasily about. 
 
 Soon were the whitedoves plain, with necks stretch'd out, 
 
 And silken traces lighten'd in descent ; 
 
 And soon, returning from love's banishment, 
 
 Queen Venus leaning downward open arm'd : 
 
 Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm'd 
 
 A tumult to his heart, and a new life 
 
 Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife, 
 
 But for her comforting ! unhappy sight, 
 
 But meeting her blue orbs ! Who, who can write 
 
 Of these first minutes ? The unchariest muse 
 
 To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse. 
 
 O it has ruffled every spirit there, 
 Saving Love's self, who stands superb to share 
 The general gladness : awfully he stands ; 
 A sovereign quell is in his waving hands ; 
 No sight can bear the lightning of his bow ; 
 His quiver is mysterious, none can know 
 What themselves think of it ; from forth his eyes 
 There darts strange light of varied hues and dyes : 
 A scowl is sometimes on his brow, but who 
 Look full upon it feel anon the blue 
 Of his fair eyes run liquid through their souls. 
 Endymion feels it, and no more controls 
 The burning prayer within him ; so, bent low, 
 
 E 
 
50 ENDYMION 
 
 He had begun a plaining of his woe. 
 
 But Venus, bending forward, said : " My child, 
 
 Favour this gentle youth ; his days are wild 
 
 With love — he — but alas ! too well I see 
 
 Thou know'st the deepness of his misery. 
 
 Ah, smile not so, my son : I tell thee true, 
 
 That when through heavy hours I used to rue 
 
 The endless sleep of this new-born Adon', 
 
 This stranger aye I pitied. For upon 
 
 A dreary morning once I fled away 
 
 Into the breezy clouds, to weep and pray 
 
 For this my love : for vexing Mars had teased 
 
 Me even to tears : thence, when a little eased, 
 
 Down-looking, vacant, through a hazy wood, 
 
 I saw this youth as he despairing stood : 
 
 Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind : 
 
 Those same full fringed lids a constant blind 
 
 Over his sullen eyes : I saw him throw 
 
 Himself on wither'd leaves, even as though 
 
 Death had come sudden ; for no jot he moved, 
 
 Yet mutter'd wildly. I could hear he loved 
 
 Some fair immortal, and that his embrace 
 
 Had zoned her through the night. There is no trace 
 
 Of this in heaven : I have mark'd each cheek, 
 
 And find it is the vainest thing to seek ; 
 
 And that of all things 'tis kept secretest. 
 
 Endymion ! one day thou wilt be blest : 
 
 So still obey the guiding hand that fends 
 
 Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends. 
 
 'Tis a concealment needful in extreme ; 
 
 And if I guess'd not so, the sunny beam 
 
 Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu ! 
 
 Here must we leave thee." — At these words upflew 
 
 The impatient doves, uprose the floating car, 
 
 Up went the hum celestial. High afar 
 
 The Latmian saw them minish into naught ; 
 
 And, when all were clear vanish'd, still he caught 
 
ENDYMION 51 
 
 A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow. 
 When all was darken'd, with ^tnean throe 
 The earth closed — gave a solitary moan — 
 And left him once again in twilight lone. 
 
 He did not rave, he did not stare aghast, 
 For all those visions were o'ergone, and past, 
 And he in loneliness : he felt assured 
 Of happy times, when all he had endured 
 Would seem a feather to the mighty prize. 
 So, with unusual gladness, on he hies 
 Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore, 
 Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor, 
 Black polish'd porticos of awful shade, 
 And, at the last, a diamond balustrade, 
 Leading afar past wild magnificence, 
 Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence 
 Stretching across a void, then guiding o'er 
 Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar, 
 Streams subterranean tease their granite beds ; 
 Then heighten 'd just above the silvery heads 
 Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash 
 The waters with his spear ; but at the splash, 
 Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose 
 Sudden a poplar's height, and 'gan to enclose 
 His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round 
 Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound, 
 Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells 
 Welcome the float of Thetis. Long he dwells 
 On this delight ; for, every minute's space, 
 The streams with changed magic interlace : 
 Sometimes like delicatest lattices, 
 Cover'd with crystal vines ; then weeping trees, 
 Moving about as in a gentle wind, 
 Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refined, 
 Pour'd into shapes of curtain'd canopies, 
 Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries 
 
52 ENDYMION 
 
 Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair. 
 
 Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare ; 
 
 And then the water, into stubborn streams 
 
 Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams, 
 
 Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof, 
 
 Of those dusk places in time far aloof, 
 
 Cathedrals call'd. He bade a loth farewell 
 
 To these founts Protean, passing gulph, and dell, 
 
 And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes, 
 
 Half seen through deepest gloom, and griesly gapes, 
 
 Blackening on every side, and overhead 
 
 A vaulted dome like Heaven's, far bespread 
 
 With starlight gems : aye, all so huge and strange, 
 
 The solitary felt a hurried change 
 
 Working within him into something dreary, — 
 
 Vex'd like a morning eagle, lost, and weary, 
 
 And purblind amid foggy, midnight wolds. 
 
 But he revives at once : for who beholds 
 
 New sudden things, nor casts his mental slough ? 
 
 Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below, 
 
 Came mother Cybele ! alone — alone — 
 
 In sombre chariot ; dark foldings thrown 
 
 About her majesty, and front death-pale, 
 
 With turrets crown'd. Four maned lions hale 
 
 The sluggish wheels ; solemn their toothed maws, 
 
 Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws 
 
 Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails 
 
 Cowering their tawny brushes. Silent sails 
 
 This shadowy queen athwart, and faints away 
 
 In another gloomy arch. 
 
 Wherefore delay, 
 Young traveller, in such a mournful place ? 
 Art thou wayworn, or canst not further trace 
 The diamond path ? And does it indeed end 
 Abrupt in middle air ? Yet earthward bend 
 Thy forehead, and to Jupiter cloud-borne 
 
ENDYMION 53 
 
 Call ardently ! He was indeed wayworn ; 
 Abrupt, in middle air, his way was lost ; 
 To cloud-borne Jove he bowed, and there crost 
 Towards him a large eagle, 'twixt whose wings, 
 Without one impious word, himself he flings, 
 Committed to the darkness and the gloom : 
 Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom, 
 Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell 
 Through unknown things ; till exhaled asphodel, 
 And rose, with spicy fannings interbreathed, 
 Came swelling forth where little caves were wreathed 
 So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem'd 
 Large honey-combs of green, and freshly teem'd 
 With airs delicious. In the greenest nook 
 The eagle landed him, and farewell took. 
 
 It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown 
 With golden moss. His every sense had grown 
 Ethereal for pleasure ; 'bove his head 
 Flew a delight half-graspable ; his tread 
 Was Hesperean ; to his capable ears 
 Silence was music from the holy spheres ; 
 A dewy luxury was in his eyes ; 
 The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs 
 And stirr'd them faintly. Verdant cave and cell 
 He wander'd through, oft wondering at such swell 
 Of sudden exaltation : but, " Alas ! " 
 Said he, " will all this gush of feeling pass 
 Away in solitude ? And must they wane 
 Like melodies upon a sandy plain, 
 Without an echo ? Then shall I be left 
 So sad, so melancholy, so bereft ! 
 Yet still I feel immortal ! O my love, 
 My breath of life, where art thou ? High above, 
 Dancing before the morning gates of heaven ? 
 Or keeping watch among those starry seven, 
 Old Atlas' children ? Art a maid of the waters, 
 
54 ENDYMION 
 
 One of shell-winding Triton's bright-hair'd daughters? 
 
 Or art, impossible ! a nymph of Dian's, 
 
 Weaving a coronal of tender scions 
 
 For very idleness ? Where'er thou art, 
 
 Methinks it now is at my will to start 
 
 Into thine arms ; to scare Aurora's train, 
 
 And snatch thee from the morning ; o'er the main 
 
 To scud like a wild bird, and take thee off 
 
 From thy sea-foamy cradle ; or to doff 
 
 Thy shepherd vest, and woo thee mid fresh leaves. 
 
 No, no, too eagerly my soul deceives 
 
 Its powerless self: I know this cannot be. 
 
 O let me then by some sweet dreaming flee 
 
 To her entrancements : hither sleep awhile ! 
 
 Hither most gentle sleep ! and soothing foil 
 
 For some few hours the coming solitude." 
 
 Thus spake he, and that moment felt endued 
 With power to dream deliciously ; so wound 
 Through a dim passage, searching till he found 
 The smoothest mossy bed and deepest, where 
 He threw himself, and just into the air 
 Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss ! 
 A naked waist : " Fair Cupid, whence is this ? " 
 A well-known voice sigh'd, " Sweetest, here am I ! " 
 At which soft ravishment, with doting cry 
 They trembled to each other. — Helicon ! 
 O fountain'd hill ! Old Homer's Helicon ! 
 That thou wouldst spout a little streamlet o'er 
 These sorry pages ; then the verse would soar 
 And sing above this gentle pair, like lark 
 Over his nested young : but all is dark 
 Around thine aged top, and thy clear fount 
 Exhales in mists to heaven. Aye, the count 
 Of mighty Poets is made up ; the scroll 
 Is folded by the Muses ; the bright roll 
 Is in Apollo's hand : our dazed eyes 
 
ENDYMION 55 
 
 Have seen a new tinge in the western skies : 
 
 The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet, 
 
 Although the sun of poesy is set, 
 
 These lovers did embrace, and we must weep 
 
 That there is no old power left to steep 
 
 A quill immortal in their joyous tears. 
 
 Long time in silence did their anxious fears 
 
 Question that thus it was ; long time they lay 
 
 Fondling and kissing every doubt away ; 
 
 Long time ere soft caressing sobs began 
 
 To mellow into words, and then there ran 
 
 Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips. 
 
 " O known Unknown ! from whom my being sips 
 
 Such darling essence, wherefore may I not 
 
 Be ever in these arms ? in this sweet spot 
 
 Pillow my chin for ever ? ever press 
 
 These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess ? 
 
 Why not for ever and for ever feel 
 
 That breath about my eyes ? Ah, thou wilt steal 
 
 Away from me again, indeed, indeed — 
 
 Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed 
 
 My lonely madness. Speak, delicious fair ! 
 
 Is — is it to be so ? No ! Who will dare 
 
 To pluck thee from me ? And, of thine own will, 
 
 Full well I feel thou wouldst not leave me. Still 
 
 Let me entwine thee surer, surer — now 
 
 How can we part ? Elysium ! who art thou ? 
 
 Who, that thou canst not be for ever here, 
 
 Or lift me with thee to some starry sphere ? 
 
 Enchantress ! tell me by this soft embrace, 
 
 By the most soft completion of thy face, 
 
 Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes, 
 
 And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties — 
 
 These tenderest, and by the nectar-wine, 
 
 The passion " " O doved Ida the divine ! 
 
 Endymion ! dearest ! Ah ! unhappy me ! 
 His soul will 'scape us — O felicity ! 
 
56 ENDYMION 
 
 How he does love me ! His poor temples beat 
 
 To the very tune of love — how sweet, sweet, sweet. 
 
 Revive, dear youth, or I shall faint and die ; 
 
 Revive, or these soft hours will hurry by 
 
 In tranced dulness ; speak, and let that spell 
 
 Affright this lethargy ! I cannot quell 
 
 Its heavy pressure, and will press at least 
 
 My lips to thine, that they may richly feast 
 
 Until we taste the life of love again. 
 
 What ! dost thou move ? dost kiss ? O bliss ! O pain 
 
 I love thee, youth, more than I can conceive ; 
 
 And so long absence from thee doth bereave 
 
 My soul of any rest : 3'et must I hence : 
 
 Yet, can I not to starry eminence 
 
 Uplift thee ; nor for very shame can own 
 
 Myself to thee. Ah, dearest, do not groan, 
 
 Or thou wilt force me from this secrecy, 
 
 And I must blush in heaven. O that I 
 
 Had done 't already ; that the dreadful smiles 
 
 At my lost brightness, my impassion'd wiles, 
 
 Had waned from Olympus' solemn height, 
 
 And from all serious Gods ; that our delight 
 
 Was quite forgotten, save of us alone ! 
 
 And wherefore so ashamed ? Tis but to atone 
 
 For endless pleasure, by some coward blushes : 
 
 Yet must I be a coward ! — Horror rushes 
 
 Too palpable before me — the sad look 
 
 Of Jove — Minerva's start — no bosom shook 
 
 With awe of purity — no Cupid pinion 
 
 In reverence vailed — my crystalline dominion 
 
 Half lost, and all old hymns made nullity ! 
 
 But what is this to love ? O I could fly 
 
 With thee into the ken of heavenly powers, 
 
 So thou wouldst thus, for many sequent hours, 
 
 Press me so sweetly. Now I swear at once 
 
 That I am wise, that Pallas is a dunce — 
 
 Perhaps her love like mine is but unknown — 
 
ENDYMION 57 
 
 I do think that I have been alone 
 
 In chastity : yes, Pallas has been sighing, 
 While every eve saw me my hair uptying 
 With ringers cool as aspen leaves. Sweet love, 
 
 1 was as vague as solitary dove, 
 
 Nor knew that nests were built. Now a soft kiss — 
 
 Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss, 
 
 An immortality of passion 's thine : 
 
 Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine 
 
 Of heaven ambrosial ; and we will shade 
 
 Ourselves whole summers by a river glade ; 
 
 And I will tell thee stories of the sky, 
 
 And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy. 
 
 My happy love will overwing all bounds ! 
 
 O let me melt into thee ; let the sounds 
 
 Of our close voices marry at their birth ; 
 
 Let us entwine hoveringly — O dearth 
 
 Of human words ! roughness of mortal speech ! 
 
 Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach 
 
 Thine honey'd tongue — lute-breathings, which I gasp 
 
 To have thee understand, now while I clasp 
 
 Thee thus, and weep for fondness — I am pain'd, 
 
 Endymion : woe ! woe ! is grief contain'd 
 
 In the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life ? " — 
 
 Hereat, with many sobs, her gentle strife 
 
 Melted into a languor. He return'd 
 
 Entranced vows and tears. 
 
 Ye who have yearn'd 
 With too much passion, will here stay and pity, 
 For the mere sake of truth ; as 'tis a ditty 
 Not of these days, but long ago 'twas told 
 By a cavern wind unto a forest old ; 
 And then the forest told it in a dream 
 To a sleeping lake, whose cool and level gleam 
 A poet caught as he was journeying 
 To Phcebus' shrine ; and in it he did fling 
 
58 ENDYMION 
 
 His weary limbs, bathing an hour's space, 
 
 And after, straight in that inspired place 
 
 He sang the story up into the air, 
 
 Giving it universal freedom. There 
 
 Has it been ever sounding for those ears 
 
 Whose tips are glowing hot. The legend cheers 
 
 Yon sentinel stars ; and he who listens to it 
 
 Must surely be self-doomed or he will rue it : 
 
 For quenchless burnings come upon the heart, 
 
 Made fiercer by a fear lest any part 
 
 Should be engulphed in the eddying wind. 
 
 As much as here is penn'd doth always find 
 
 A resting place, thus much comes clear and plain ; 
 
 Anon the strange voice is upon the wane — 
 
 And 'tis but echo'd from departing sound, 
 
 That the fair visitant at last unwound 
 
 Her gentle limbs, and left the youth asleep. — 
 
 Thus the tradition of the gusty deep. 
 
 Now turn we to our former chroniclers. — 
 Endymion awoke, that grief of hers 
 Sweet paining on his ear : he sickly guess'd 
 How lone he was once more, and sadly press'd 
 His empty arms together, hung his head, 
 And most forlorn upon that widow'd bed 
 Sat silently. Love's madness he had known : 
 Often with more than tortured lion's groan 
 Moanings had burst from him ; but now that rage 
 Had pass'd away : no longer did he wage 
 A rough-voiced war against the dooming stars. 
 No, he had felt too much for such harsh jars : 
 The lyre of his soul ^Eolian tuned 
 Forgot all violence, and but communed 
 With melancholy thought : O he had swoon'd 
 Drunken from pleasure's nipple ; and his love 
 Henceforth was dove-like. — Loth was he to move 
 From the imprinted couch, and when he did, 
 
ENDYMION 59 
 
 'Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid 
 
 In muffling hands. So temper'd, out he stray'd 
 
 Half seeing visions that might have dismay'd 
 
 Alecto's serpents ; ravishments more keen 
 
 Than Hermes' pipe, when anxious he did lean 
 
 Over eclipsing eyes : and at the last 
 
 It was a sounding grotto, vaulted, vast, 
 
 O'er studded with a thousand, thousand pearls, 
 
 And crimson mouthed shells with stubborn curls, 
 
 Of every shape and size, even to the bulk 
 
 In which whales harbour close, to brood and sulk 
 
 Against an endless storm. Moreover too, 
 
 Fish-semblances, of green and azure hue, 
 
 Ready to snort their streams. In this cool wonder 
 
 Endymion sat down, and 'gan to ponder 
 
 On all his life : his youth, up to the day 
 
 When 'mid acclaim, and feasts, and garlands gay, 
 
 He stept upon his shepherd throne : the look 
 
 Of his white palace in wild forest nook, 
 
 And all the revels he had lorded there : 
 
 Each tender maiden whom he once thought fair, 
 
 With every friend and fellow-woodlander — 
 
 Pass'd like a dream before him. Then the spur 
 
 Of the old bards to mighty deeds : his plans 
 
 To nurse the golden age 'mong shepherd clans : 
 
 That wondrous night : the great Pan-festival : 
 
 His sister's sorrow ; and his wanderings all, 
 
 Until into the earth's deep maw he rush'd : 
 
 Then all its buried magic, till it flush'd 
 
 High with excessive love. " And now," thought he, 
 
 " How long must I remain in jeopardy 
 
 Of blank amazements that amaze no more ? 
 
 Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core 
 
 All other depths are shallow : essences, 
 
 Once spiritual, are like muddy lees, 
 
 Meant but to fertilize my earthly root, 
 
 And make my branches lift a golden fruit 
 
60 ENDYMION 
 
 Into the bloom of heaven : other light, 
 Though it be quick and sharp enough to blight 
 The Olympian eagle's vision, is dark, 
 Dark as the parentage of chaos. Hark ! 
 My silent thoughts are echoing from these shells ; 
 Or they are but the ghosts, the dying swells 
 Of noises far away ? — list ! " — Hereupon 
 He kept an anxious ear. The humming tone 
 Came louder, and behold, there as he lay, 
 On either side outgush'd, with misty spray, 
 A copious spring ; and both together dash'd 
 Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash'd 
 Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot, 
 Leaving a trickling dew. At last they shot 
 Down from the ceiling's height, pouring a noise 
 As of some breathless racers whose hopes poise 
 Upon the last few steps, and with spent force 
 Along the ground they took a winding course. 
 Endymion follow'd — for it seem'd that one 
 Ever pursued, the other strove to shun — 
 Follow'd their languid mazes, till well nigh 
 He had left thinking of the mystery, — 
 And was now rapt in tender hoverings 
 Over the banish'd bliss. Ah ! what is it sings 
 His dream away ? What melodies are these ? 
 They sound as through the whispering of trees, 
 Not native in such barren vaults. Give ear ! 
 
 " O Arethusa, peerless nymph ! why fear 
 Such tenderness as mine ? Great Dian, why, 
 Why didst thou hear her prayer? O that I 
 Were rippling round her dainty fairness now, 
 Circling about her waist, and striving how 
 To entice her to a dive ! then stealing in 
 Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin. 
 O that her shining hair was in the sun, 
 And I distilling from it thence to run 
 
ENDYMION 61 
 
 In amorous rillets down her shrinking form ! 
 
 To linger on her lily shoulders, warm 
 
 Between her kissing breasts, and every charm 
 
 Touch raptured ! — See how painfully I flow : 
 
 Fair maid, be pitiful to my great woe. 
 
 Stay, stay thy weary course, and let me lead, 
 
 A happy wooer, to the flowery mead 
 
 Where all that beauty snared me." — " Cruel god, 
 
 Desist ! or my offended mistress' nod 
 
 Will stagnate all thy fountains : — tease me not 
 
 With syren words — Ah, have I really got 
 
 Such power to madden thee ? And is it true — 
 
 Away, away, or I shall dearly rue 
 
 My very thoughts : in mercy then away, 
 
 Kindest Alpheus, for should I obey 
 
 My own dear will, 'twould be a deadly bane. 
 
 O, Oread-Queen ! would that thou hadst a pain 
 
 Like this of mine, then would I fearless turn 
 
 And be a criminal. Alas, I burn, 
 
 I shudder — gentle river, get thee hence. 
 
 Alpheus ! thou enchanter ! every sense 
 
 Of mine was once made perfect in these woods. 
 
 Fresh breezes, bowery lawns, and innocent floods, 
 
 Ripe fruits, and lonely couch, contentment gave ; 
 
 But ever since I heedlessly did lave 
 
 In thy deceitful stream, a panting glow 
 
 Grew strong within me : wherefore serve me so, 
 
 And call it love ? Alas, 'twas cruelty. 
 
 Not once more did I close my happy eyes 
 
 Amid the thrush's song. Away ! Avaunt ! 
 
 O 'twas a cruel thing." — " Now thou dost taunt 
 
 So softly, Arethusa, that I think 
 
 If thou wast playing on my shady brink, 
 
 Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid ! 
 
 Stifle thine heart no more ; — nor be afraid 
 
 Of angry powers : there are deities 
 
 Will shade us with their wings. Those fitful sighs 
 
62 ENDYMION 
 
 Tis almost death to hear : O let me pour 
 
 A dewy balm upon them ! — fear no more, 
 
 Sweet Arethusa ! Dian's self must feel 
 
 Sometimes these very pangs. Dear maiden, steal 
 
 Blushing into my soul, and let us fly 
 
 These dreary caverns for the open sky. 
 
 I will delight thee all my winding course, 
 
 From the green sea up to my hidden source 
 
 About Arcadian forests ; and will show 
 
 The channels where my coolest waters flow 
 
 Through mossy rocks ; where, 'mid exuberant green, 
 
 I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen 
 
 Than Saturn in his exile ; where I brim 
 
 Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim 
 
 Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees 
 
 Buzz from their honey'd wings : and thou shouldst please 
 
 Thyself to choose the richest, where we might 
 
 Be incense-pillow'd every summer night. 
 
 Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness, 
 
 And let us be thus comforted ; unless 
 
 Thou couldst rejoice to see my hopeless stream 
 
 Hurry distracted from Sol's temperate beam, 
 
 And pour to death along some hungry sands." — 
 
 " What can I do, Alpheus ? Dian stands 
 
 Severe before me : persecuting fate ! 
 
 Unhappy Arethusa ! thou wast late 
 
 A huntress free in " — At this, sudden fell 
 
 Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell. 
 
 The Latmian listen'd, but he heard no more, 
 
 Save echo, faint repeating o'er and o'er 
 
 The name of Arethusa. On the verge 
 
 Of that dark gulph he wept, and said : " I urge 
 
 Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage, 
 
 By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage, 
 
 If thou art powerful, these lovers' pains ; 
 
 And make them happy in some happy plains." 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 63 
 
 He turn'd — there was a whelming sound — he stept, 
 There was a cooler light ; and so he kept 
 Towards it by a sandy path, and lo ! 
 More suddenly than doth a moment go, 
 The visions of the earth were gone and fled — 
 He saw the giant sea above his head. 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men 
 
 With most prevailing tinsel : who unpen 
 
 Their baaing vanities, to browse away 
 
 The comfortable green and juicy hay 
 
 From human pastures ; or, O torturing fact ! 
 
 Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd 
 
 Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe 
 
 Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge 
 
 Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight 
 
 Able to face an owl's, they still are dight 
 
 By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, 
 
 And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, 
 
 Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount 
 
64 ENDYMION 
 
 To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, 
 
 Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones- 
 
 Amid the fierce intoxicating tones 
 
 Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums, 
 
 And sudden cannon. Ah ! how all this hums, 
 
 In wakeful ears, like uproar past and gone — 
 
 Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon, 
 
 And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks. — 
 
 Are then regalities all gilded masks ? 
 
 No, there are throned seats unscalable 
 
 But by a patient wing, a constant spell, 
 
 Or by ethereal things that, unconfined, 
 
 Can make a ladder of the eternal wind, 
 
 And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents 
 
 To watch the abysm-birth of elements. 
 
 Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate 
 
 A thousand Powers keep religious state, 
 
 In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne ; 
 
 And, silent as a consecrated urn, 
 
 Hold sphery sessions for a season due. 
 
 Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few ! 
 
 Have bared their operations to this globe — 
 
 Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe 
 
 Our piece of heaven — whose benevolence 
 
 Shakes hand with our own Ceres ; every sense 
 
 Filling with spiritual sweets to plentitude, 
 
 As bees gorge full their cells. And, by the feud 
 
 'Twixt Nothing and Creation, I here swear, 
 
 Eterne Apollo ! that thy Sister fair 
 
 Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest. 
 
 When thy gold breath is misting in the west, 
 
 She unobserved steals unto her throne, 
 
 And there she sits most meek and most alone ; 
 
 As if she had not pomp subservient ; 
 
 As if thine eye, high Poet ! was not bent 
 
 Towards her with the Muses in thine heart ; 
 
 As if the ministring stars kept not apart, 
 
ENDYMION 65 
 
 Waiting for silver-footed messages. 
 O Moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees 
 Feel palpitations when thou lookest in : 
 O Moon ! old boughs lisp forth a holier din 
 The while they feel thine airy fellowship. 
 Thou dost bless everywhere, with silver lip 
 Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine, 
 Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine : 
 Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, 
 Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes ; 
 And yet thy benediction passeth not 
 One obscure hiding-place, one little spot 
 Where pleasure may be sent : the nested wren 
 Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken, 
 And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf 
 Takes glimpses of thee ; thou art a relief 
 To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps 
 Within its pearly house. — The mighty deeps, 
 The monstrous sea is thine — the myriad sea ! 
 O Moon ! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee, 
 And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load. 
 
 Cynthia ! where art thou now ? What far abode 
 Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine 
 Such utmost beauty ? Alas, thou dost pine 
 For one as sorrowful : thy cheek is pale 
 For one whose cheek is pale : thou dost bewail 
 His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh ? 
 Ah ! surely that light peeps from Vesper's eye, 
 Or what a thing is love ! 'Tis She, but lo ! 
 How changed, how full of ache, how gone in woe ! 
 She dies at the thinnest cloud ; her loveliness 
 Is wan on Neptune's blue : yet there 's a stress 
 Of love-spangles, just off yon cape of trees, 
 Dancing upon the waves, as if to please 
 The curly foam with amorous influence. 
 O, not so idle : for down-glancing thence 
 
 F 
 
66 ENDYMION 
 
 She fathoms eddies, and runs wild about 
 
 O'erwhelming water-courses ; scaring out 
 
 The thorny sharks from hiding-holes, and fright'ning 
 
 Their savage eyes with unaccustom'd lightning. 
 
 Where will the splendour be content to reach ? 
 
 O love ! how potent hast thou been to teach 
 
 Strange journey ings ! Wherever beauty dwells, 
 
 In gulph or aerie, mountains or deep dells, 
 
 In light, in gloom, in star or blazing sun, 
 
 Thou pointest out the way, and straight 'tis won. 
 
 Amid his toil thou gavest Leander breath ; 
 
 Thou leddest Orpheus through the gleams of death ; 
 
 Thou madest Pluto bear thin element ; 
 
 And now, O winged Chieftain ! thou hast sent 
 
 A moon-beam to the deep, deep water-world, 
 
 To find Endymion. 
 
 On gold sand impearl'd 
 With lily shells, and pebbles milky white, 
 Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light 
 Against his pallid face : he felt the charm 
 To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm 
 Of his heart's blood : 'twas very sweet ; he stay'd 
 His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid 
 His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds, 
 To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads, 
 Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails. 
 And so he kept, until the rosy veils 
 Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand 
 Were lifted from the water's breast, and fann'd 
 Into sweet air ; and sober'd morning came 
 Meekly through billows : — when like taper-flame 
 Left sudden by a dallying breath of air, 
 He rose in silence, and once more 'gan fare 
 Along his fated way. 
 
 Far had he roam'd, 
 
ENDYMION 67 
 
 With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd 
 
 Above, around, and at his feet ; save things 
 
 More dead than Morpheus' imaginings : 
 
 Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large 
 
 Of gone sea- warriors ; brazen beaks and targe ; 
 
 Rudders that for a hundred years had lost 
 
 The sway of human hand ; gold vase emboss'd 
 
 With long-forgotten story, and wherein 
 
 No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin 
 
 But those of Saturn's vintage ; mouldering scrolls, 
 
 Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls 
 
 Who first were on the earth ; and sculptures rude 
 
 In ponderous stone, developing the mood 
 
 Of ancient Nox ; — then skeletons of man, 
 
 Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan, 
 
 And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw 
 
 Of nameless monster. A cold leaden awe 
 
 These secrets struck into him ; and unless 
 
 Dian had chased away that heaviness, 
 
 He might have died : but now, with cheered feel, 
 
 He onward kept ; wooing these thoughts to steal 
 
 About the labyrinth in his soul of love. 
 
 "What is there in thee, Moon ! that thou shouldst move 
 My heart so potently ? When yet a child 
 I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smiled. 
 Thou seem'dst my sister : hand in hand we went 
 From eve to morn across the firmament. 
 No apples would I gather from the tree, 
 Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously : 
 No tumbling water ever spake romance, 
 But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance : 
 No woods were green enough, no bower divine, 
 Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine : 
 In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take, 
 Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake ; 
 And, in the summer tide of blossoming, 
 
68 ENDYMION 
 
 No one but thee hath heard me blithly sing 
 
 And mesh my dewy flowers all the night. 
 
 No melody was like a passing spright 
 
 If it went not to solemnize thy reign. 
 
 Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain 
 
 By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end ; 
 
 And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend 
 
 With all my ardours : thou wast the deep glen ; 
 
 Thou wast the mountain-top — the sage's pen — 
 
 The poet's harp — the voice of friends — the sun ; 
 
 Thou wast the river — thou wast glory won ; 
 
 Thou wast my clarion's blast — thou wast my steed- 
 
 My goblet full of wine — my topmost deed : — 
 
 Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon ! 
 
 O what a wild and harmonized tune 
 
 My spirit struck from all the beautiful ! 
 
 On some bright essence could I lean, and lull 
 
 Myself to immortality : I prest 
 
 Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest. 
 
 But, gentle Orb ! there came a nearer bliss — 
 
 My strange love came — Felicity's abyss ! 
 
 She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away — 
 
 Yet not entirely ; no, thy starry sway 
 
 Has been an under-passion to this hour. 
 
 Now I begin to feel thine orby power 
 
 Is coming fresh upon me : O be kind, 
 
 Keep back thine influence, and do not blind 
 
 My sovereign vision. — Dearest love, forgive 
 
 That I can think away from thee and live ! — 
 
 Pardon me, airy planet, that I prize 
 
 One thought beyond thine argent luxuries ! 
 
 How far beyond ! " At this a surprised start 
 
 Frosted the springing verdure of his heart ; 
 
 For as he lifted up his eyes to swear 
 
 How his own goddess was past all things fair, 
 
 He saw far in the concave green of the sea 
 
 An old man sitting calm and peacefully. 
 
ENDYMION 69 
 
 Upon a weeded rock this old man sat, 
 
 And his white hair was awful, and a mat 
 
 Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet ; 
 
 And, ample as the largest winding-sheet, 
 
 A cloak of blue wrapp'd up his aged bones, 
 
 O'erwrought with symbols by the deepest groans 
 
 Of ambitious magic : every ocean-form 
 
 Was woven in with black distinctness ; storm, 
 
 And calm, and whispering, and hideous roar 
 
 Quicksand, and whirlpool, and deserted shore, 
 
 Were emblem'd in the woof ; with every shape 
 
 That skims, or dives, or sleeps, 'twixt cape and cape. 
 
 The gulphing whale was like a dot in the spell, 
 
 Yet look upon it, and 'twould size and swell 
 
 To its huge self; and the minutest fish 
 
 Would pass the very hardest gazer's wish, 
 
 And show his little eye's anatomy. 
 
 Then there was pictured the regality 
 
 Of Neptune ; and the sea nymphs round his state, 
 
 In beauteous vassalage, look up and wait. 
 
 Beside this old man lay a pearly wand, 
 
 And in his lap a book, the which he conn'd 
 
 So steadfastly, that the new denizen 
 
 Had time to keep him in amazed ken, 
 
 To mark these shadowings, and stand in awe. 
 
 The old man raised his hoary head and saw 
 The wilder'd stranger — seeming not to see, 
 His features were so lifeless. Suddenly 
 He woke as from a trance ; his snow-white brows 
 Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs 
 Furrow'd deep wrinkles in his forehead large, 
 Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge, 
 Till round his wither'd lips had gone a smile. 
 Then up he rose, like one whose tedious toil 
 Had watch'd for years in forlorn hermitage, 
 Who had not from mid-life to utmost age 
 
70 ENDYMION 
 
 Eased in one accent his o'er-burden'd soul, 
 Even to the trees. He rose : he grasp'd his stole, 
 With convulsed clenches waving it abroad, 
 And in a voice of solemn joy, that awed 
 Echo into oblivion, he said : 
 
 " Thou art the man ! Now shall I lay my head 
 In peace upon my watery pillow : now 
 Sleep will come smoothly to my weary brow. 
 O Jove ! I shall be young again, be young ! 
 
 shell-borne Neptune, I am pierced and stung 
 With new-born life ! What shall I do ? Where go, 
 When I have cast this serpent-skin of woe ? — 
 
 I'll swim to the syrens, and one moment listen 
 
 Their melodies, and see their long hair glisten ; 
 
 Anon upon that giant's arm I'll be, 
 
 That writhes about the roots of Sicily : 
 
 To northern seas I'll in a twinkling sail, 
 
 And mount upon the snortings of a whale 
 
 To some black cloud ; thence down I'll madly sweep 
 
 On forked lightning, to the deepest deep, 
 
 Where through some sucking pool I will be hurl'd 
 
 With rapture to the other side of the world ! 
 
 O, I am full of gladness ! Sisters three, 
 
 1 bow full hearted to your old decree ! 
 
 Yes, every god be thank'd, and power benign, 
 For I no more shall wither, droop, and pine. 
 Thou art the man ! " Endymion started back 
 Dismay'd ; and, like a wretch from whom the rack 
 Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony, 
 Mutter'd : " What lonely death am I to die 
 In this cold region ? Will he let me freeze, 
 And float my brittle limbs o'er polar seas ? 
 Or will he touch me with his searing hand, 
 And leave a black memorial on the sand ? 
 Or tear me piece-meal with a bony saw, 
 And keep me as a chosen food to draw 
 
ENDYMION 71 
 
 His magian fish through hated fire and flame ? 
 
 O misery of hell ! resistless, tame, 
 
 Am I to be burnt up ? No, I will shout, 
 
 Until the gods through heaven's blue look out ! — 
 
 Tartarus ! but some few days agone 
 Her soft arms were entwining me, and on 
 
 Her voice I hung like fruit among green leaves : 
 Her lips were all my own, and — ah, ripe sheaves 
 Of happiness ! ye on the stubble droop, 
 But never may be garner'd. I must stoop 
 My head, and kiss death's foot. Love ! love, farewell ! 
 Is there no hope from thee ? This horrid spell 
 Would melt at thy sweet breath. — By Dian's hind 
 Feeding from her white fingers, on the wind 
 
 1 see thy streaming hair ! and now, by Pan, 
 I care not for this old mysterious man ! " 
 
 He spake, and walking to that aged form, 
 Look'd high defiance. Lo ! his heart 'gan warm 
 With pity, for the grey-hair'd creature wept. 
 Had he then wrong'd a heart where sorrow kept ? 
 Had he, though blindly contumelious, brought 
 Rheum to kind eyes, a sting to humane thought, 
 Convulsion to a mouth of many years ? 
 He had in truth ; and he was ripe for tears. 
 The penitent shower fell, as down he knelt 
 Before that care-worn sage, who trembling felt 
 About his large dark locks, and faltering spake : 
 
 " Arise, good youth, for sacred Phoebus' sake ! 
 I know thine inmost bosom, and I feel 
 A very brother's yearning for thee steal 
 Into mine own : for why ? thou openest 
 The prison gates that have so long opprest 
 My weary watching. Though thou know'st it not, 
 Thou art commission'd to this fated spot 
 For great enfranchisement. O weep no more ; 
 
72 ENDYMION 
 
 I am a friend to love, to loves of yore : 
 
 Aye, hadst thou never loved an unknown power 
 
 I had been grieving at this joyous hour. 
 
 But even now most miserable old, 
 
 I saw thee, and my blood no longer cold 
 
 Gave mighty pulses : in this tottering case 
 
 Grew a new heart, which at this moment plays 
 
 As dancingly as thine. Be not afraid, 
 
 For thou shalt hear this secret all display'd, 
 
 Now as we speed towards our joyous task." 
 
 So saying, this young soul in age's mask 
 Went forward with the Carian side by side : 
 Resuming quickly thus ; while ocean's tide 
 Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands 
 Took silently their foot-prints. 
 
 " My soul stands 
 Now past the midway from mortality, 
 And so I can prepare without a sigh 
 To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain. 
 I was a fisher once, upon this main, 
 And my boat danced in every creek and bay ; 
 Rough billows were my home by night and day, — 
 The sea-gulls not more constant ; for I had 
 No housing from the storm and tempests mad, 
 But hollow rocks, — and they were palaces 
 Of silent happiness, of slumberous ease : 
 Long years of misery have told me so. 
 Aye, thus it was one thousand years ago. 
 One thousand years ! — Is it then possible 
 To look so plainly through them ? to dispel 
 A thousand years with backward glance sublime ? 
 To breathe away as 'twere all scummy slime 
 From off a crystal pool, to see its deep, 
 And one's own image from the bottom peep ? 
 Yes : now I am no longer wretched thrall, 
 
ENDYMION 73 
 
 My long captivity and moanings all 
 
 Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum, 
 
 The which I breathe away, and thronging come 
 
 Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures. 
 
 " I touch'd no lute, I sang not, trod no measures : 
 I was a lonely youth on desert shores. 
 My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars, 
 And craggy isles, and sea-mew's plaintive cry 
 Plaining discrepant between sea and sky. 
 Dolphins were still my playmates ; shapes unseen 
 Would let me feel their scales of gold and green, 
 Nor be my desolation ; and, full oft, 
 When a dread waterspout had rear'd aloft 
 Its hungry hugeness, seeming ready ripe 
 To burst with hoarsest thunderings, and wipe 
 My life away like a vast sponge of fate, 
 Some friendly monster, pitying my sad state, 
 Has dived to its foundations, gulph'd it down, 
 And left me tossing safely. But the crown 
 Of all my life was utmost quietude : 
 More did I love to lie in cavern rude, 
 Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice, 
 And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice ! 
 There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer 
 My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear 
 The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep, 
 Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep : 
 And never was a day of summer shine, 
 But I beheld its birth upon the brine : 
 For I would watch all night to see unfold 
 Heaven's gates, and ^Ethon snort his morning gold 
 Wide o'er the swelling streams : and constantly 
 At brim of day-tide, on some grassy lea, 
 My nets would be spread out, and I at rest. 
 The poor folk of the sea-country I blest 
 With daily boon of fish most delicate : 
 
;4 ENDYMION 
 
 They knew not whence this bounty, and elate 
 Would strew sweet flowers on a sterile beach. 
 
 " Why was I not contented ? Wherefore reach 
 At things which, but for thee, O Latmian ! 
 Had been my dreary death ? Fool ! I began 
 To feel distemper'd longings : to desire 
 The utmost privilege that ocean's sire 
 Could grant in benediction : to be free 
 Of all his kingdom. Long in misery 
 I wasted, ere in one extremest fit 
 I plunged for life or death. To interknit 
 One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff 
 Might seem a work of pain ; so not enough 
 Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt, 
 And buoyant round my limbs. At first I dwelt 
 Whole days and days in sheer astonishment ; 
 Forgetful utterly of self-intent ; 
 Moving but with the mighty ebb and flow. 
 Then, like a new fledg'd bird that first doth show 
 His spreaded feathers to the morrow chill, 
 I tried in fear the pinions of my will. 
 'Twas freedom ! and at once I visited 
 The ceaseless wonders of this ocean-bed. 
 No need to tell thee of them, for I see 
 That thou hast been a witness — it must be — 
 For these I know thou canst not feel a drouth, 
 By the melancholy corners of that mouth. 
 So I will in my story straightway pass 
 To more immediate matter. Woe, alas ! 
 That love should be my bane ! Ah, Scylla fair ! 
 Why did poor Glaucus ever — ever dare 
 To sue thee to his heart ? Kind stranger-youth ! 
 I loved her to the very white of truth, 
 And she would not conceive it. Timid thing ! 
 She fled me swift as sea-bird on the wing, 
 Round every isle and point, and promontory 
 
ENDYMION 75 
 
 From where large Hercules wound up his story 
 
 Far as Egyptian Nile. My passion grew 
 
 The more, the more I saw her dainty hue 
 
 Gleam delicately through the azure clear : 
 
 Until 'twas too fierce agony to bear ; 
 
 And in that agony, across my grief 
 
 It flash'd, that Circe might find some relief — 
 
 Cruel enchantress ! So above the water 
 
 I rear'd my head, and look'd for Phcebus' daughter. 
 
 iEaea's isle was wondering at the moon : — 
 
 It seem'd to whirl around me, and a swoon 
 
 Left me dead-drifting to that fatal power. 
 
 " When I awoke, 'twas in a twilight bower ; 
 Just when the light of morn, with hum of bees, 
 Stole though its verdurous matting of fresh trees. 
 How sweet, and sweeter ! for I heard a lyre, 
 And over it a sighing voice expire. 
 It ceased — I caught light footsteps ; and anon 
 The fairest face that morn e'er look'd upon 
 Push'd through a screen of roses. Starry Jove ! 
 With tears, and smiles, and honey-words she wove 
 A net whose thraldom was more bliss than all 
 The range of flower'd Elysium. Thus did fall 
 The dew of her rich speech : * Ah ! Art awake ? 
 
 let me hear thee speak, for Cupid's sake ! 
 
 1 am so oppress'd with joy ! Why, I have shed 
 An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead ; 
 And now I find thee living, I will pour 
 
 From these devoted eyes their silver store, 
 Until exhausted of the latest drop, 
 So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop 
 Here, that I too may live : but if beyond 
 Such cool and sorrowful offerings, thou art fond 
 Of soothing warmth, of dalliance supreme ; 
 If thou art ripe to taste a long love dream ; 
 If smiles, if dimples, tongues for ardour mute, 
 
76 ENDYMION 
 
 Hang in thy vision like a tempting fruit, 
 
 let me pluck it for thee.' Thus she link'd 
 Her charming syllables, till indistinct 
 Their music came to my o'er-sweeten'd soul ; 
 And then she hover'd over me, and stole 
 
 So near, that if no nearer it had been 
 This furrow'd visage thou hadst never seen. 
 
 " Young man of Latmus ! thus particular 
 Am I, that thou may'st plainly see how far 
 This fierce temptation went : and thou may'st not 
 Exclaim, How then, was Scylla quite forgot ? 
 
 " Who could resist ? Who in this universe ? 
 She did so breathe ambrosia ; so immerse 
 My fine existence in a golden clime. 
 She took me like a child of suckling time, 
 And cradled me in roses. Thus condemn'd, 
 The current of my former life was stemm'd, 
 And to this arbitrary queen of sense 
 
 1 bow'd a tranced vassal : nor would thence 
 
 Have moved, even though Amphion's harp had woo'd 
 
 Me back to Scylla o'er the billows rude. 
 
 For as Apollo each eve doth devise 
 
 A new apparelling for western skies ; 
 
 So every eve, nay every spendthrift hour 
 
 Shed balmy consciousness within that bower. 
 
 And I was free of haunts umbrageous ; 
 
 Could wander in the mazy forest-house 
 
 Of squirrels, foxes shy, and antler'd deer, 
 
 And birds from coverts innermost and drear 
 
 Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrow — 
 
 To me new born delights ! 
 
 " Now let me borrow, 
 For moments few, a temperament as stern 
 As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn 
 
ENDYMION 77 
 
 These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell 
 How specious heaven was changed to real hell. 
 
 " One morn she left me sleeping : half awake 
 I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake 
 My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts ; 
 But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts 
 Of disappointment stuck in me so sore, 
 That out I ran and search'd the forest o'er. 
 Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom 
 Damp awe assail'd me ; for there 'gan to boom 
 A sound of moan, an agony of sound, 
 Sepulchral from the distance all around. 
 Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled 
 That fierce complain to silence : while I stumbled 
 Down a precipitous path, as if impell'd. 
 I came to a dark valley. — Groanings swell'd 
 Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew, 
 The nearer I approach'd a flame's gaunt blue, 
 That glared before me through a thorny brake. 
 This fire, like the eye of gordian snake, 
 Bewitch'd me towards ; and I soon was near 
 A sight too fearful for the feel of fear : 
 In thicket hid I cursed the haggard scene — 
 The banquet of my arms, my arbour queen, 
 Seated upon an uptorn forest root ; 
 And all around her shapes, wizard and brute, 
 Laughing, and wailing, grovelling, serpenting, 
 Showing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting ! 
 O such deformities ! Old Charon's self, 
 Should he give up awhile his penny pelf, 
 And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian, 
 It could not be so phantasied. Fierce, wan, 
 And tyrannizing was the lady's look, 
 As over them a gnarled staff she shook. 
 Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out, 
 And from a basket emptied to the rout 
 
7% ENDYMION 
 
 Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick 
 
 And roar'd for more ; with many a hungry lick 
 
 About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow, 
 
 Anon she took a branch of mistletoe, 
 
 And emptied on 't a black dull-gurgling phial: 
 
 Groan'd one and all, as if some piercing trial 
 
 Was sharpening for their pitiable bones. 
 
 She lifted up the charm : appealing groans 
 
 From their poor breasts went sueing to her ear 
 
 In vain ; remorseless as an infant's bier 
 
 She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil. 
 
 Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil, 
 
 Increasing gradual to a tempest rage, 
 
 Shrieks, yells, and groans of torture-pilgrimage; 
 
 Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat 
 
 And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat : 
 
 Then was appalling silence : then a sight 
 
 More wildering than all that hoarse affright ; 
 
 For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen, 
 
 Went through the dismal air like one huge Python 
 
 Antagonizing Boreas, — and so vanish'd. 
 
 Yet there was not a breath of wind : she banish'd 
 
 These phantoms with a nod. Lo ! from the dark 
 
 Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs stark, 
 
 With dancing and loud revelry, — and went 
 
 Swifter than centaurs after rapine bent. — 
 
 Sighing an elephant appear'd and bow'd 
 
 Before the fierce witch, speaking thus aloud 
 
 In human accent : * Potent goddess ! chief 
 
 Of pains resistless ! make my being brief, 
 
 Or let me from this heavy prison fly : 
 
 Or give me to the air, or let me die ! 
 
 I sue not for my happy crown again ; 
 
 I sue not for my phalanx on the plain ; 
 
 I sue not for my lone, my widow'd wife ; 
 
 I sue not for my ruddy drops of life, 
 
 My children fair, my lovely girls and boys 1 
 
ENDYMION 79 
 
 I will forget them ; I will pass these joys ; 
 Ask naught so heavenward, so too — too high : 
 Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die, 
 Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh, 
 From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh, 
 And merely given to the cold bleak air. 
 Have mercy, Goddess ! Circe, feel my prayer ! ! 
 
 " That curst magician's name fell icy numb 
 Upon my wild conjecturing : truth had come 
 Naked and sabre-like against my heart. 
 I saw a fury whetting a death-dart ; 
 And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright, 
 Fainted away in that dark lair of night. 
 Think, my deliverer, how desolate 
 My waking must have been ! disgust, and hate, 
 And terrors manifold divided me 
 A spoil amongst them. I prepared to flee 
 Into the dungeon core of that wild wood : 
 I fled three days — when lo ! before me stood 
 Glaring the angry witch. O Dis, even now, 
 A clammy dew is beading on my brow, 
 At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse. 
 ' Ha ! ha ! Sir Dainty ! there must be a nurse 
 Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express, 
 To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee : yes, 
 I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch : 
 My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch. 
 So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies 
 Unheard of yet ; and it shall still its cries 
 Upon some breast more lily-feminine. 
 Oh, no— it shall not pine, and pine, and pine 
 More than one pretty, trifling thousand years ; 
 And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears 
 Cut short its immortality. Sea-flirt ! 
 Young dove of the waters ! truly I'll not hurt 
 One hair of thine : see how I weep and sigh 
 
80 ENDYMION 
 
 That our heart-broken parting is so nigh. 
 
 And must we part ? Ah, yes, it must be so. 
 
 Yet ere thou leavest me in utter woe, 
 
 Let me sob over thee my last adieus, 
 
 And speak a blessing : Mark me ! thou hast thews 
 
 Immortal, for thou art of heavenly race : 
 
 But such a love is mine, that here I chase 
 
 Eternally away from thee all bloom 
 
 Of youth, and destine thee towards a tomb. 
 
 Hence shalt thou quickly to the watery vast ; 
 
 And there, ere many days be overpast, 
 
 Disabled age shall seize thee ; and even then 
 
 Thou shalt not go the way of aged men ; 
 
 But live and wither, cripple and still breathe 
 
 Ten hundred years : which gone, I then bequeath 
 
 Thy fragile bones to unknown burial. 
 
 Adieu, sweet love, adieu ! ' — As shot stars fall, 
 
 She fled ere I could groan for mercy. Stung 
 
 And poison'd was my spirit : despair sung 
 
 A war-song of defiance 'gainst all hell. 
 
 A hand was at my shoulder to compel 
 
 My sullen steps ; another 'fore my eyes 
 
 Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise 
 
 Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam 
 
 I found me ; by my fresh, my native home. 
 
 Its tempering coolness, to my life akin, 
 
 Came salutary as I waded in ; 
 
 And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave 
 
 Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave 
 
 Large froth before me, while there yet remained 
 
 Hale strength, nor from my bones all marrow drain'd. 
 
 " Young lover, I must weep — such hellish spite 
 With dry cheek who can tell ? While thus my might 
 Proving upon this element, dismay'd, 
 Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid ; 
 I look'd — 'twas Scylla ! Cursed, cursed Circe ! 
 
ENDYMION 81 
 
 vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy ? 
 Could not thy harshest vengeance be content, 
 But thou must nip this tender innocent 
 Because I loved her ? — Cold, O cold indeed 
 Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed 
 The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was 
 
 1 clung about her waist, nor ceased to pass 
 Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine, 
 Until there shone a fabric crystalline, 
 
 Ribb'd and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl. 
 Headlong I darted ; at one eager swirl 
 Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold ! 
 'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold ; 
 And all around — But wherefore this to thee 
 Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see ? — 
 I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. 
 My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread 
 Met palsy half way : soon these limbs became 
 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame. 
 
 " Now let me pass a cruel, cruel space, 
 Without one hope, without one faintest trace 
 Of mitigation, or redeeming bubble 
 Of colour'd phantasy ; for I fear 'twould trouble 
 Thy brain to loss of reason : and next tell 
 How a restoring chance came down to quell 
 One half of the witch in me. 
 
 " On a day, 
 Sitting upon a rock above the spray, 
 I saw grow up from the horizon's brink 
 A gallant vessel : soon she seem'd to sink 
 Away from me again, as though her course 
 Had been resumed in spite of hindering force — 
 So vanish'd : and not long, before arose 
 Dark clouds, and muttering of winds morose. 
 Old iEolus would stifle his mad spleen, 
 
82 ENDYMION 
 
 But could not : therefore all the billows green 
 Toss'd up the silver spume against the clouds. 
 The tempest came : I saw that vessel's shrouds 
 In perilous bustle ; while upon the deck 
 Stood trembling creatures. I beheld the wreck ; 
 The final gulphing ; the poor struggling souls : 
 I heard their cries amid loud thunder-rolls. 
 
 they had all been saved but crazed eld 
 Annull'd my vigorous cravings : and thus quell'd 
 And curb'd, think on 't, O Latmian ! did I sit 
 Writhing with pity, and a cursing fit 
 
 Against that hell-born Circe. The crew had gone, 
 
 By one and one, to pale oblivion ; 
 
 And I was gazing on the surges prone, 
 
 With many a scalding tear and many a groan, 
 
 When at my feet emerged an old man's hand, 
 
 Grasping this scroll, and this same slender wand. 
 
 1 knelt with pain — reached out my hand — had grasp'd 
 These treasures— touch'd the knuckles— theyunclasp'd— 
 I caught a finger : but the downward weight 
 O'erpowered me — it sank. Then 'gan abate 
 
 The storm, and through chill aguish gloom outburst 
 
 The comfortable sun. I was athirst 
 
 To search the book, and in the warming air 
 
 Parted its dripping leaves with eager care. 
 
 Strange matters did it treat of, and drew on 
 
 My soul page after page, till well nigh won 
 
 Into forgetfulness ; when, stupefied, 
 
 I read these words, and read again, and tried 
 
 My eyes against the heavens, and read again. 
 
 O what a load of misery and pain 
 
 Each Atlas-line bore off ! — a shine of hope 
 
 Came gold around me, cheering me to cope 
 
 Strenuous with hellish tyranny. Attend ! 
 
 For thou hast brought their promise to an end. 
 
 " In the wide sea there lives a forlorn wretch y 
 
ENDYMION 83 
 
 Dootrid with enfeebled carcase to outstretch 
 His loath' d existence through ten centuries. 
 And then to die alone. Who can devise 
 A total opposition ? No one. So 
 One million times ocean must ebb and flow, 
 And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die, 
 These things accomplish *d: — If he utterly 
 Scans all the depths of magic, and expounds 
 The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds ; 
 If he explores all forms and substances 
 Straight homeward to their symbol-essences ; 
 He shall not die. Moreover, and in chief, 
 He must pursue this task of joy and grief 
 Most piously ; — all lovers tempest-tost, 
 And in the savage overwhelming lost, 
 He shall deposit side by side, until 
 Time's creeping shall the dreary space fulfil ; 
 Which done, and all these labours ripened, 
 A youth, by heavenly power loved and led, 
 Shall stand before him ; whom he shall direct 
 How to consummate all. The youth elect 
 Must do the thing, or both will be destroy } d" — 
 
 " Then," cried the young Endymion, overjoy'd, 
 " We are twin brothers in this destiny ! 
 Say, I intreat thee, what achievement high 
 Is, in this restless world, for me reserved. 
 What ! if from thee my wandering feet had swerved, 
 Had we both perish'd ? " — " Look ! " the sage replied, 
 " Dost thou not mark a gleaming through the tide, 
 Of divers brilliances ? 'tis the edifice 
 I told thee of, where lovely Scylla lies ; 
 And where I have enshrined piously 
 All lovers, whom fell storms have doom'd to die 
 Throughout my bondage." Thus discoursing, on 
 They went till unobscured the porches shone ; 
 Which hurryingly they gain'd, and enter'd straight. 
 
84 ENDYMION 
 
 Sure never since king Neptune held his state 
 
 Was seen such wonder underneath the stars. 
 
 Turn to some level plain where haughty Mars 
 
 Has legion'd all his battle ; and behold 
 
 How every soldier, with firm foot, doth hold 
 
 His even breast : see, many steeled squares, 
 
 And rigid ranks of iron — whence who dares 
 
 One step ? Imagine further, line by line, 
 
 These warrior thousands on the field supine : — 
 
 So in that crystal place, in silent rows, 
 
 Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes. — 
 
 The stranger from the mountains, breathless, traced 
 
 Such thousands of shut eyes in order placed ; 
 
 Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips 
 
 All ruddy, — for here death no blossom nips. 
 
 He mark'd their brows and foreheads ; saw their hair 
 
 Put sleekly on one side with nicest care ; 
 
 And each one's gentle wrists, with reverence, 
 
 Put cross-wise to its heart. 
 
 " Let us commence," 
 Whisper'd the guide, stuttering with joy, " even now." 
 He spake, and, trembling like an aspen-bough, 
 Began to tear his scroll in pieces small, 
 Uttering the while some mumblings funeral. 
 He tore it into pieces small as snow 
 That drifts unfeather'd when bleak northerns blow ; 
 And having done it, took his dark blue cloak 
 And bound it round Endymion : then struck 
 His wand against the empty air times nine. — 
 " What more there is to do, young man, is thine : 
 But first a little patience ; first undo 
 This tangled thread, and wind it to a clue. 
 Ah, gentle ! 'tis as weak as spider's skein ; 
 And shouldst thou break it — What, is it done so clean ? 
 A power overshadows thee ! Oh, brave ! 
 The spite of hell is tumbling to its grave. 
 
ENDYMION 85 
 
 Here is a shell ; 'tis pearly blank to me, 
 Nor mark'd with any sign or charactery — 
 Canst thou read aught ? O read for pity's sake ! 
 Olympus ! we are safe ! Now, Carian, break 
 This wand against yon lyre on the pedestal." 
 
 'Twas done : and straight with sudden swell and fall 
 Sweet music breathed her soul away, and sigh'd 
 A lullaby to silence. — " Youth ! now strew 
 These minced leaves on me, and passing through 
 Those files of dead, scatter the same around, 
 And thou wilt see the issue." — 'Mid the sound 
 Of flutes and viols, ravishing his heart, 
 Endymion from Glaucus stood apart, 
 And scatter'd in his face some fragments light. 
 How lightning-swift the change ! a youthful wight 
 Smiling beneath a coral diadem, 
 Out-sparkling sudden like an upturn'd gem, 
 Appear'd, and, stepping to a beauteous corse, 
 Kneel'd down beside it, and with tenderest force 
 Press'd its cold hand, and wept — and Scylla sigh'd ! 
 Endymion, with quick hand, the charm applied — 
 The nymph arose : he left them to their joy, 
 And onward went upon his high employ, 
 Showering those powerful fragments on the dead. 
 And, as he pass'd, each lifted up its head, 
 As doth a flower at Apollo's touch. 
 Death felt it to his inwards ; 'twas too much : 
 Death fell a weeping in his charnel-house. 
 The Latmian persevered along, and thus 
 All were re-animated. There arose 
 A noise of harmony, pulses and throes 
 Of gladness in the air — while many, who 
 Had died in mutual arms devout and true, 
 Sprang to each other madly ; and the rest 
 Felt a high certainty of being blest. 
 They gazed upon Endymion. Enchantment 
 
86 ENDYMION 
 
 Grew drunken, and would have its head and bent. 
 
 Delicious symphonies, like airy flowers, 
 
 Budded, and swell'd, and, full-blown, shed full showers 
 
 Of light, soft, unseen leaves of sounds divine. 
 
 The two deliverers tasted a pure wine 
 
 Of happiness, from fairy-press oozed out. 
 
 Speechless they eyed each other, and about 
 
 The fair assembly wander'd to and fro, 
 
 Distracted with the richest overflow 
 
 Of joy that ever pour'd from heaven. 
 
 "Away!" 
 
 Shouted the new-born god ; " Follow, and pay 
 
 Our piety to Neptunus supreme ! " — 
 
 Then Scylla, blushing sweetly from her dream, 
 
 They led on first, bent to her meek surprise, 
 
 Through portal columns of a giant size, 
 
 Into the vaulted, boundless emerald. 
 
 Joyous all follow'd, as the leader call'd, 
 
 Down marble steps ; pouring as easily 
 
 As hour-glass sand — and fast, as you might see 
 
 Swallows obeying the south summer's call, 
 
 Or swans upon a gentle waterfall. 
 
 Thus went that beautiful multitude, nor far, 
 Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar, 
 Just within ken, they saw descending thick 
 Another multitude. Whereat more quick 
 Moved either host. On a wide sand they met, 
 And of those numbers every eye was wet ; 
 For each their old love found. A murmuring rose 
 Like what was never heard in all the throes 
 Of wind and waters : 'tis past human wit 
 To tell ; 'tis dizziness to think of it. 
 
 This mighty consummation made, the host 
 Moved on for many a league ; and gain'd, and lost 
 
ENDYMION 87 
 
 Huge sea-marks ; vanward swelling in array, 
 
 And from the rear diminishing away, — 
 
 Till a faint dawn surprised them. Glaucus cried, 
 
 m Behold ! behold, the palace of his pride ! 
 
 God Neptune's palaces ! " With noise increased, 
 
 They shoulder'd on towards that brightening east 
 
 At every onward step proud domes arose 
 
 In prospect, — diamond gleams, and golden glows 
 
 Of amber 'gainst their faces levelling. 
 
 Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring, 
 
 Still onward ; still the splendour gradual swell'd. 
 
 Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld 
 
 By jasper pillars, letting through their shafts 
 
 A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts 
 
 Each gazer drank ; and deeper drank more near : 
 
 For what poor mortals fragment up, as mere 
 
 As marble was there lavish, to the vast 
 
 Of one fair palace, that far, far surpass'd, 
 
 Even for common bulk, those olden three, 
 
 Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh. 
 
 As large, as bright, as colour'd as the bow 
 Of Iris, when unfading it doth show 
 Beyond a silvery shower, was the arch 
 Through which this Paphian army took its march, 
 Into the outer courts of Neptune's state: 
 Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate, 
 To which the leaders sped ; but not half raught 
 Ere it burst open swift as fairy thought, 
 And made those dazzled thousands veil their eyes 
 Like callow eagles at the first sunrise. 
 Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze 
 Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze, 
 And then, behold ! large Neptune on his throne 
 Of emerald deep : yet not exalt alone ; 
 At his right hand stood winged Love, and on 
 His left sat smiling Beauty's paragon. 
 
88 ENDYMION 
 
 Far as the mariner on highest mast 
 Can see all round upon the calmed vast, 
 So wide was Neptune's hall : and as the blue 
 Doth vault the waters, so the waters drew 
 Their doming curtains, high, magnificent, 
 Awed from the throne aloof ; — and when storm-rent 
 Disclosed the thunder-gloomings in Jove's air ; 
 But sooth'd as now, flash'd sudden everywhere, 
 Noiseless, sub-marine cloudlets, glittering 
 Death to a human eye : for there did spring 
 From natural west, and east, and south, and north, 
 A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth 
 A gold-green zenith, 'bove the Sea-God's head. 
 Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread 
 As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe 
 Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through 
 The delicatest air : air verily, 
 But for the portraiture of clouds and sky : 
 This palace floor breath-air, — but for the amaze 
 Of deep-seen wonders motionless, — and blaze 
 Of the dome pomp, reflected in extremes, 
 Globing a golden sphere. 
 
 They stood in dreams 
 Till Triton blew his horn. The palace rang ; 
 The Nereids danced ; the Syrens faintly sang ; 
 And the great Sea-King bow'd his dripping head. 
 Then Love took wing, and from his pinions shed 
 On all the multitude a nectarous dew. 
 The ooze-born Goddess beckoned and drew 
 Fair Scylla and her guides to conference ; 
 And when they reach'd the throned eminence 
 She kist the sea-nymph's cheek, — who sat her down 
 A toying with the doves. Then, — " Mighty crown 
 And sceptre of this kingdom ! " Venus said, 
 " Thy vows were on a time to Nais paid : 
 Behold ! " — Two copious tear-drops instant fell 
 
ENDYMION 89 
 
 From the God's large eyes ; he smiled delectable, 
 
 And over Glaucus held his blessing hands. — 
 
 " Endymion ! Ah ! still wandering in the bands 
 
 Of love ? Now this is cruel. Since the hour 
 
 I met thee in earth's bosom, all my power 
 
 Have I put forth to serve thee. What, not yet 
 
 Escaped from dull mortality's harsh net ? 
 
 A little patience, youth ! 'twill not be long, 
 
 Or I am skilless quite : an idle tongue, 
 
 A humid eye, and steps luxurious, 
 
 Where these are new and strange, are ominous. 
 
 Aye, I have seen these signs in one of heaven, 
 
 When others were all blind ; and were I given 
 
 To utter secrets, haply I might say 
 
 Some pleasant words : — but Love will have his day. 
 
 So wait awhile expectant. Pr'ythee soon, 
 
 Even in the passing of thine honey-moon, 
 
 Visit thou my Cythera : thou wilt find 
 
 Cupid well-natured, my Adonis kind ; 
 
 And pray persuade with thee — Ah, I have done, 
 
 All blisses be upon thee, my sweet son ! " — 
 
 Thus the fair goddess : while Endymion 
 
 Knelt to receive those accents halcyon. 
 
 Meantime a glorious revelry began 
 Before the Water- Monarch. Nectar ran 
 In courteous fountains to all cups outreach'd; 
 And plunder'd vines, teeming exhaustless, pleach'd 
 New growth about each shell and pendent lyre; 
 The which, in disentangling for their fire, 
 Pull'd down fresh foliage and coverture 
 For dainty toying. Cupid, empire-sure, 
 Flutter'd and laugh'd, and oft-times through the throng 
 Made a delighted way. Then dance, and song, 
 And garlanding grew wild ; and pleasure reign'd. 
 In harmless tendril they each other chain'd, 
 And strove who should be smother'd deepest in 
 
90 ENDYMION 
 
 Fresh crush of leaves. 
 
 O 'tis a very sin 
 For one so weak to venture his poor verse 
 In such a place as this. O do not curse, 
 High Muses ! let him hurry to the ending. 
 
 All suddenly were silent. A soft blending 
 Of dulcet instruments came charmingly ; 
 And then a hymn. 
 
 " King of the stormy sea ! 
 Brother of Jove, and co-inheritor 
 Of elements ! Eternally before 
 Thee the waves awful bow. Fast, stubborn rock, 
 At thy fear'd trident shrinking, doth unlock 
 Its deep foundations, hissing into foam. 
 All mountain-rivers, lost in the wide home 
 Of thy capacious bosom, ever flow. 
 Thou frownest, and old yEolus thy foe 
 Skulks to his cavern, 'mid the gruff complaint 
 Of all his rebel tempests. Dark clouds faint 
 When, from thy diadem, a silver gleam 
 Slants over blue dominion. Thy bright team 
 Gulphs in the morning light, and scuds along 
 To bring thee nearer to that golden song 
 Apollo singeth, while his chariot 
 Waits at the doors of heaven. Thou art not 
 For scenes like this : an empire stern hast thou ; 
 And it hath furrow'd that large front : yet now, 
 As newly come of heaven, dost thou sit 
 To blend and interknit 
 Subdued majesty with this glad time. 
 O shell-borne King sublime ! 
 We lay our hearts before thee evermore — 
 We sing, and we adore ! 
 
ENDYMION 91 
 
 " Breathe softly, flutes ; 
 Be tender of your strings, ye soothing lutes ; 
 Nor be the trumpet heard ! O vain, O vain ; 
 Not flowers budding in an April rain, 
 Nor breath of sleeping dove, nor river's flow, — 
 No, nor the JEolean twang of Love's own bow, 
 Can mingle music fit for the soft ear 
 Of goddess Cytherea ! 
 
 Yet deign, white Queen of Beauty, thy fair eyes 
 On our souls' sacrifice. 
 
 " Bright-winged Child ! 
 Who has another care when thou hast smiled ? 
 Unfortunates on earth, we see at last 
 All death-shadows, and glooms that overcast 
 Our spirits, fann'd away by thy light pinions. 
 O sweetest essence ! sweetest of all minions ! 
 God of warm pulses, and dishevell'd hair, 
 And panting bosoms bare ! 
 Dear unseen light in darkness ! eclipser 
 Of light in light ! delicious poisoner ! 
 Thy venom'd goblet will we quaff until 
 We fill— we fill ! 
 And by thy Mother's lips " 
 
 Was heard no more 
 For clamour, when the golden palace door 
 Opened again, and from without, in shone 
 A new magnificence. On oozy throne 
 Smooth-moving came Oceanus the old, 
 To take a latest glimpse at his sheep-fold, 
 Before he went into his quiet cave 
 To muse for ever — Then, a lucid wave, 
 Scoop'd from its trembling sisters of mid-sea, 
 Afloat, and pillowing up the majesty 
 Of Doris, and the JEgean seer, her spouse — 
 Next, on a dolphin, clad in laurel boughs, 
 
92 ENDYMION 
 
 Theban Amphion leaning on his lute : 
 His fingers went across it — All were mute 
 To gaze on Amphitrite, queen of pearls, 
 And Thetis pearly too. — 
 
 The palace whirls 
 Around giddy Endymion ; seeing he 
 Was there far strayed from mortality. 
 He could not bear it — shut his eyes in vain ; 
 Imagination gave a dizzier pain. 
 "OI shall die ! sweet Venus, be my stay ! 
 Where is my lovely mistress ? Well-away ! 
 I die — I hear her voice — I feel my wing — " 
 At Neptune's feet he sank. A sudden ring 
 Of Nereids were about him, in kind strife 
 To usher back his spirit into life : 
 But still he slept. At last they interwove 
 Their cradling arms, and purposed to convey 
 Towards a crystal bower far away. 
 
 Lo ! while slow carried through the pitying crowd, 
 To his inward senses these words spake aloud ; 
 Written in star-light on the dark above : 
 Dearest Endymion ! my entire love ! 
 How have I dwelt in fear of fate : 'tis done — 
 Immortal bliss for me too hast thou won. 
 Arise tlien ! for the hen-dove shall not hatch 
 Her ready eggs, before I'll kissing snatch 
 Thee into endless heaven. Awake ! awake ! 
 
 The youth at once arose : a placid lake 
 Came quiet to his eyes ; and forest green, 
 Cooler than all the wonders he had seen, 
 LulPd with its simple song his fluttering breast, 
 How happy once again in grassy nest ! 
 

 
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 BOOK IV 
 
 Muse of my native land ! loftiest Muse ! 
 
 O first-born on the mountains ! by the hues 
 
 Of heaven on the spiritual air begot : 
 
 Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot, 
 
 While yet our England was a wolfish den ; 
 
 Before our forests heard the talk of men ; 
 
 Before the first of Druids was a child ;— 
 
 Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild 
 
 Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude. 
 
 There came an eastern voice of solemn mood : — 
 
 Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine, 
 
 Apollo's garland : — yet didst thou divine 
 
 Such home-bred glory, that they cried in vain, 
 
 * Come hither, Sister of the Island !" Plain 
 
 Spake fair Ausonia ; and once more she spake 
 
 A higher summons : — still didst thou betake 
 
 Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won 
 
 A full accomplishment ! The thing is done, 
 
 Which undone, these our latter days had risen 
 
 On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison 
 
 Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets 
 
 Our spirit's wings : despondency besets 
 
94 ENDYMION 
 
 Our pillows ; and the fresh to-morrow morn 
 Seems to give forth its light in very scorn 
 Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives. 
 Long have I said, how happy he who shrives 
 To thee ! But then I thought on poets gone, 
 And could not pray : — nor can I now — so on 
 I move to the end in lowliness of heart. 
 
 " Ah, woe is me ! that I should fondly part 
 From my dear native land ! Ah, foolish maid ! 
 Glad was the hour, when, with thee, myriads bade 
 Adieu to Ganges and their pleasant fields ! 
 To one so friendless the clear freshet yields 
 A bitter coolness ; the ripe grape is sour : 
 Yet I would have, great gods ! but one short hour 
 Of native air — let me but die at home." 
 
 Endymion to heaven's airy dome 
 Was offering up a hecatomb of vows, 
 When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows 
 His head through thorny-green entanglement 
 Of underwood, and to the sound is bent, 
 Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn. 
 
 " Is no one near to help me ? No fair dawn 
 Of life from charitable voice ? No sweet saying 
 To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing ? 
 No hand to toy with mine ? No lips so sweet 
 That I may worship them ? No eyelids meet 
 To twinkle on my bosom ? No one dies 
 Before me, till from these enslaving eyes 
 Redemption sparkles ! — I am sad and lost." 
 
 Thou, Carian lord, hadst better have been tost 
 Into a whirlpool. Vanish into air, 
 Warm mountaineer ! for canst thou only bear 
 A woman's sigh alone and in distress ? 
 
ENDYMION 95 
 
 See not her charms ! Is Phcebe passionless ? 
 Phoebe is fairer far — O gaze no more : — 
 Yet if thou wilt behold all beauty's store, 
 Behold her panting in the forest grass ! 
 Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass 
 For tenderness the arms so idly lain 
 Amongst them ? Feelest not a kindred pain, 
 To see such lovely eyes in swimming search 
 After some warm delight, that seems to perch 
 Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond 
 Their upper lids ? — Hist ! 
 
 " O for Hermes' wand, 
 To touch this flower into human shape ! 
 That woodland Hyacinthus could escape 
 From his green prison, and here kneeling down 
 Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown ! 
 Ah me, how I could love ! — My soul doth melt 
 For the unhappy youth — Love ! I have felt • 
 So faint a kindness, such a meek surrender 
 To what my own full thoughts had made too tender, 
 That but for tears my life had fled away ! — 
 Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day, 
 And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true, 
 There is no lightning, no authentic dew 
 But in the eye of love : there 's not a sound, 
 Melodious howsoever, can confound 
 The heavens and earth in one to such a death 
 As doth the voice of love : there's not a breath 
 Will mingle kindly with the meadow air, 
 Till it has panted round, and stolen a share 
 Of passion from the heart ! " — 
 
 Upon a bough 
 He leant, wretched. He surely cannot now 
 Thirst for another love : O impious, 
 That he can even dream upon it thus ! — 
 
96 ENDYMION 
 
 Thought he, " Why am I not as are the dead, 
 
 Since to a woe like this I have been led 
 
 Through the dark earth, and through the wondrous sea? 
 
 Goddess ! I love thee not tne less : from thee 
 
 By Juno's smile I turn not — no, no, no — 
 
 While the great waters are at ebb and flow. — 
 
 I have a triple soul ! O fond pretence — 
 
 For both, for both my love is so immense, 
 
 I feel my heart is cut for them in twain." 
 
 And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain. 
 The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see 
 Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously. 
 He sprang from his green covert : there she lay, 
 Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay ; 
 With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes 
 Shut softly up alive. To speak he tries. 
 " Fair damsel, pity me ! forgive that I 
 Thus violate thy bower's sancity ! 
 
 pardon me, for I am full of grief — 
 
 Grief born of thee, young angel ! fairest thief ! 
 Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith 
 
 1 was to top the heavens. Dear maid, sith 
 Thou art my executioner, and I feel 
 Loving and hatred, misery and weal, 
 
 Will in a few short hours be nothing to me, 
 And all my story that much passion slew me; 
 Do smile upon the evening of my days : 
 And, for my tortured brain begins to craze, 
 Be thou my nurse ; and let me understand 
 How dying I shall kiss that lily hand. — 
 Dost weep for me ? Then should I be content. 
 Scowl on, ye fates ! until the firmament 
 Outblackens Erebus, and the full-cavern'd earth 
 Crumbles into itself. By the cloud girth 
 Of Jove, those tears have given me a thirst 
 To meet oblivion." — As her heart would burst 
 
ENDYMION 9; 
 
 The maiden sobb'd awhile, and then replied : 
 
 " Why must such desolation betide 
 
 As that thou speak'st of? Are not these green nooks 
 
 Empty of all misfortune ? Do the brooks 
 
 Utter a gorgon voice ? Does yonder thrush, 
 
 Schooling its half-fledged little ones to brush 
 
 About the dewy forest, whisper tales ? — 
 
 Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails 
 
 Will slime the rose to night. Though if thou wilt, 
 
 Methinks 'twould be a guilt — a very guilt — 
 
 Not to companion thee, and sigh away 
 
 The light— the dusk— the dark— till break of day ! " 
 
 " Dear lady," said Endymion, " 'tis past : 
 
 I love thee ! and my days can never last 
 
 That I may pass in patience still speak: 
 
 Let me have music dying, and I seek 
 
 No more delight — I bid adieu to all. 
 
 Didst thou not after other climates call, 
 
 And murmur about Indian streams ? " — Then she, 
 
 Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree, 
 
 For pity sang this roundelay 
 
 " O Sorrow, 
 , Why dost borrow 
 
 The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips ? — 
 To give maiden blushes 
 To the white rose bushes ? 
 Or is 't thy dewy hand the daisy tips ? 
 
 H 
 
98 ENDYMION 
 
 " O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye ? — 
 
 To give the glow-worm light ? 
 
 Or, on a moonless night, 
 To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry ? 
 
 " O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue ?— 
 
 To give at evening pale 
 
 Unto the nightingale, 
 That thou mayst listen the cold dews among ? 
 
 " O Sorrow, 
 
 Why dost borrow 
 Heart's lightness from the merriment of May ? — 
 
 A lover would not tread 
 
 A cowslip on the head, 
 Though he should dance from eve till peep of day- 
 
 Nor any drooping flower 
 
 Held sacred for thy bower, 
 Wherever he may sport himself and play. 
 
 " To Sorrow, 
 
 I bade good-morrow, 
 
 And thought to leave her far away behind ; 
 But cheerly, cheerly, 
 She loves me dearly ; 
 
 She is so constant to me, and so kind : 
 I would deceive her 
 And so leave her, 
 
 But ah ! she is so constant and so kind. 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 " Beneath my palm trees, by the river side, 
 I sat a weeping : in the whole world wide 
 There was no one to ask me why I wept, — 
 
 And so I kept 
 Brimming the water-lily cups with tears 
 
 Cold as my fears. 
 
 " Beneath my palm trees, by the river side, 
 I sat a weeping : what enamour'd bride, 
 Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds, 
 
 But hides and shrouds 
 Beneath dark palm trees by a river side ? 
 
 99 
 
 " And as I sat, over the light blue hills 
 There came a noise of revellers : the rills 
 Into the wide stream came of purple hue — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his crew ! 
 The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills 
 From kissing cymbals made a merry din — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his kin ! 
 Like to a moving vintage down they came, 
 Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame ; 
 All madly dancing through the pleasant valley, 
 
 To scare thee, Melancholy ! 
 
ioo ENDYMION 
 
 O then, O then, thou wast a simple name ! 
 And I forgot thee, as the berried holly 
 By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June, 
 Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon : — 
 I rush'd into the folly ! 
 
 " Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, 
 Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood, 
 
 With sidelong laughing ; 
 And little rills of crimson wine imbrued 
 His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white 
 
 For Venus' pearly bite ; 
 And near him rode Silenus on his ass, 
 Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 
 
 Tipsily quaffing. 
 
 " Whence came ye, merry Damsels ! whence came ye 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 Why have ye left your bowers desolate, 
 
 Your lutes, and gentler fate ? — 
 * We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing, 
 
 A conquering ! 
 Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide, 
 We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide :— 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our wild minstrelsy ! ' 
 
ENDYMION 101 
 
 " Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye ! 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left 
 
 Your nuts in oak-tree cleft ? — 
 * For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; 
 For wine we left our heath and yellow brooms, 
 
 And cold mushrooms ; 
 For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth ; 
 Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our mad minstrelsy ! ' 
 
 " Over wide streams and mountains great we went, 
 And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, 
 Onward the tiger and the leopard pants, 
 
 With Asian elephants : 
 Onward these myriads — with song and dance, 
 With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance, 
 Web-footed alligators, crocodiles, 
 Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files, 
 Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil 
 Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil : 
 With toying oars and silken sails they glide, 
 
 Nor care for wind and tide. 
 
 " Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, 
 From rear to van they scour about the plains ; 
 A three days' journey in a moment done : 
 And always, at the rising of the sun, 
 About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn, 
 On spleenful unicorn. 
 
 ■ I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown 
 
 Before the vine-wreath crown ! 
 I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing 
 
102 ENDYMION 
 
 To the silver cymbals' ring ! 
 I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce ! 
 
 Old Tartary the fierce ! 
 The kings of Inde their jewel-sceptres vail, 
 And from their treasures scatter pearled hail ; 
 Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans, 
 
 And all his priesthood moans ; 
 Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale.- 
 
 Into these regions came I following him, 
 Sick hearted, weary — so I took a whim 
 To stray away into these forests drear 
 
 Alone, without a peer : 
 And I have told thee all thou mayest hear. 
 
 " Young stranger ! 
 
 I've been a ranger 
 In search of pleasure throughout every clime 
 
 Alas ! 'tis not for me I 
 
 Bewitch'd I sure must be, 
 To lose in grieving all my maiden prime. 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 " Come then, Sorrow ! 
 
 Sweetest Sorrow ! 
 Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast 
 
 I thought to leave thee 
 
 And deceive thee, 
 But now of all the world I love thee best 
 
 " There is not one, 
 
 No, no, not one 
 But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid ; 
 
 Thou art her mother 
 
 And her brother, 
 Her playmate, and her wooer m the shade." 
 
 103 
 
 O what a sigh she gave in finishing, 
 And look, quite dead to every worldly thing ! 
 Endymion could not speak, but gazed on her 
 And listen'd to the wind that now did stir 
 About the crisped oaks full drearily, 
 Yet with as sweet a softness as might be 
 Remember'd from its velvet summer song. 
 
104 ENDYMION 
 
 At last he said : " Poor lady, how thus long 
 
 Have I been able to endure that voice ? 
 
 Fair Melody ! kind Syren ! I've no choice ; 
 
 I must be thy sad servant evermore : 
 
 I cannot choose but kneel here and adore. 
 
 Alas, I must not think — by Phcebe, no ! 
 
 Let me think, soft Angel ! shall it be so ? 
 
 Say, beautifullest, shall I never think ? 
 
 O thou couldst foster me beyond the brink 
 
 Of recollection ! make my watchful care 
 
 Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair ! 
 
 Do gently murder half my soul, and I 
 
 Shall feel the other half so utterly ! — 
 
 I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth ; 
 
 O let it blush so ever ! let it soothe 
 
 My madness ! let it mantle rosy-warm 
 
 With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm. — 
 
 This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is ; 
 
 And this is sure thine other softling — this 
 
 Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near ! 
 
 Wilt fall asleep ? O let me sip that tear ! 
 
 And whisper one sweet word that I may know 
 
 This is this world — sweet dewy blossom ! " — Woe I 
 
 Woe ! Woe to that Endymion ! Where is he ? — 
 
 Even these words went echoing dismally 
 
 Through the wide forest — a most fearful tone, 
 
 Like one repenting in his latest moan ; 
 
 And while it died away a shade pass'd by, 
 
 As of a thunder cloud. When arrows fly 
 
 Through the thick branches, poor ring-doves sleek forth 
 
 Their timid necks and tremble ; so these both 
 
 Leant to each other trembling, and sat so 
 
 Waiting for some destruction — when lo, 
 
 Foot-feather'd Mercury appear'd sublime 
 
 Beyond the tall tree tops ; and in less time 
 
 Than shoots the slanted hail-storm, down he dropt 
 
 Towards the ground ; but rested not, nor stopt 
 
FOOT-FEATHER'D MERCURY APPEAR'D SUBLIME 
 
ENDYMION 107 
 
 One moment from his home : only the sward 
 He with his wand light touch'd, and heavenward 
 Swifter than sight was gone — even before 
 The teeming earth a sudden witness bore 
 Of his swift magic. Diving swans appear 
 Above the crystal circlings white and clear ; 
 And catch the cheated eye in wild surprise, 
 How they can dive in sight and unseen rise — 
 So from the turf outsprang two steeds jet-black, 
 Each with large dark blue wings upon his back. 
 The youth of Caria placed the lovely dame 
 On one, and felt himself in spleen to tame 
 The other's fierceness. Through the air they flew, 
 High as the eagles. Like two drops of dew 
 Exhaled to Phoebus' lips, away they are gone, 
 Far from the earth away — unseen, alone, 
 Among cool clouds and winds, but that the free, 
 The buoyant life of song can floating be 
 Above their heads, and follow them untired. — 
 Muse of my native land, am I inspired ? 
 This is the giddy air, and I must spread 
 Wide pinions to keep here ; nor do I dread 
 Or height, or depth, or width, or any chance 
 Precipitous : I have beneath my glance 
 Those towering horses and their mournful freight. 
 Could I thus sail, and see, and thus await 
 Fearless for power of thought, without thine aid ? — 
 There is a sleepy dusk, an odorous shade 
 From some approaching wonder, and behold 
 Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold 
 Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire, 
 Dying to embers from their native fire ! 
 
 There curl'd a purple mist around them ; soon, 
 It seem'd as when around the pale new moon 
 Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow : 
 'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow. 
 
108 ENDYMION 
 
 For the first time, since he came nigh dead born 
 
 From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn 
 
 Had he left more forlorn ; for the first time, 
 
 He felt aloof the day and morning's prime — 
 
 Because into his depth Cimmerian 
 
 There came a dream, showing how a young man, 
 
 Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin, 
 
 Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win 
 
 An immortality, and how espouse 
 
 Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house. 
 
 Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate, 
 
 That he might at the threshold one hour wait 
 
 To hear the marriage melodies, and then 
 
 Sink downward to his dusky cave again. 
 
 His litter of smooth semilucent mist, 
 
 Diversely tinged with rose and amethyst, 
 
 Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought ; 
 
 And scarcely for one moment could be caught 
 
 His sluggish form reposing motionless. 
 
 Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress 
 
 Of vision search'd for him, as one would look 
 
 Athwart the sallows of a river nook 
 
 To catch a glance at silver throated eels, — 
 
 Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals 
 
 His rugged forehead in a mantle pale, 
 
 With an eye-guess towards some pleasant vale 
 
 Descry a favourite hamlet faint and far. 
 
 These raven horses, though they foster'd are 
 Of earth's splenetic fire, dully drop 
 Their full-vein'd ears, nostrils blood wide, and stop ; 
 Upon the spiritless mist have they outspread 
 Their ample feathers, are in slumber dead, — 
 And on those pinions, level in mid air, 
 Endymion sleepeth and the lady fair. 
 Slowly they sail, slowly as icy isle 
 Upon a calm sea drifting : and meanwhile 
 
ENDYMION 109 
 
 The mournful wanderer dreams. Behold ! he walks 
 
 On heaven's pavement ; brotherly he talks 
 
 To divine powers : from his hand full fain 
 
 Juno's proud birds are pecking pearly grain : 
 
 He tries the nerve of Phoebus' golden bow, 
 
 And asketh where the golden apples grow : 
 
 Upon his arm he braces Pallas' shield, 
 
 And strives in vain to unsettle and wield 
 
 A Jovian thunderbolt : arch Hebe brings 
 
 A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings 
 
 And tantalizes long ; at last he drinks, 
 
 And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks, 
 
 Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand ; 
 
 He blows a bugle, — an ethereal band 
 
 Are visible above : the Seasons four, — 
 
 Green-kirtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store 
 
 In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar, 
 
 Join dance with shadowy Hours ; while still the blast, 
 
 In swells unmitigated, still doth last 
 
 To sway their floating morris. " Whose is this ? 
 
 Whose bugle ? " he inquires : they smile — " O Dis ! 
 
 Why is this mortal here ? Dost thou not know 
 
 Its mistress' lips ? Not thou ? — 'Tis Dian's : lo ! 
 
 She rises crescented ! " He looks, 'tis she, 
 
 His very goddess : good-bye earth, and sea, 
 
 And air, and pains, and care, and suffering ; 
 
 Good-bye to all but love ! Then doth he spring 
 
 Towards her, and awakes — and, strange, o'erhead 
 
 Of those same fragrant exhalations bred, 
 
 Beheld awake his very dream : the gods 
 
 Stood smiling ; merry Hebe laughs and nods ; 
 
 And Phoebe bends towards him crescented. 
 
 O state perplexing ! On the pinion bed, 
 
 Too well awake, he feels the panting side 
 
 Of his delicious lady. He who died 
 
 For soaring too audacious in the sun, 
 
 Where that same treacherous wax began to run, 
 
no ENDYMION 
 
 Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion. 
 
 His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne, 
 
 To that fair shadow'd passion pulsed its way — 
 
 Ah, what perplexity ! Ah, well a day ! 
 
 So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow, 
 
 He could not help but kiss her : then he grew 
 
 Awhile forgetful of all beauty save 
 
 Young Phoebe's, golden hair'd ; and so 'gan crave 
 
 Forgiveness : yet he turn'd once more to look 
 
 At the sweet sleeper, — all his soul was shook, — 
 
 She press'd his hand in slumber ; so once more 
 
 He could not help but kiss her and adore. 
 
 At this the shadow wept, melting away. 
 
 The Latmian started up : " Bright goddess, stay ! 
 
 Search my most hidden breast ! By truth's own tongue, 
 
 I have no daedale heart : why is it wrung 
 
 To desperation ? Is there naught for me, 
 
 Upon the bourne of bliss, but misery ? " 
 
 These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses : 
 Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses 
 With 'haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath. 
 " Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe 
 This murky phantasm ! thou contented seem'st 
 Pillow'd in lovely idleness, nor dream'st 
 What horrors may discomfort thee and me. 
 Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery ! — 
 Yet did she merely weep — her gentle soul 
 Hath no revenge in it : as it is whole 
 In tenderness, would I were whole in love ! 
 Can I prize thee, fair maid, all price above, 
 Even when I feel as true as innocence ? 
 I do, I do. — What is this soul then ? Whence 
 Came it ? It does not seem my own, and I 
 Have no self-passion or identity. 
 Some fearful end must be : where, where is it ? 
 By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit 
 
ENDYMION in 
 
 Alone about the dark — Forgive me, sweet : 
 Shall we away ? " He roused the steeds : they beat 
 Their wings chivalrous into the clear air, 
 Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair. 
 
 The good-night blush of eve was waning slow, 
 And Vesper, risen star, began to throe 
 In the dusk heavens silverly, when they 
 Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy. 
 Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange — 
 Eternal oaths and vows they interchange, 
 In such wise, in such temper, so aloof 
 Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof, 
 So witless of their doom, that verily 
 'Tis well nigh past man's search their hearts to see ; 
 Whether they wept, or laugh'd, or grieved, or toy'd — 
 Most like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy'd. 
 
 Full facing their swift flight, from ebon streak, 
 The moon put forth a little diamond peak, 
 No bigger than an unobserved star, 
 Or tiny point of fairy scimetar ; 
 Bright signal that she only stoop'd to tie 
 Her silver sandals, ere deliciously 
 She bow'd into the heavens her timid head. 
 Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled, 
 While to his lady meek the Carian turn'd, 
 To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern'd 
 This beauty in its birth — Despair ! despair ! 
 He saw her body fading gaunt and spare 
 In the cold moonshine. Straight he seized her wrist ; 
 It melted from his grasp : her hand he kiss'd, 
 And, horror ! kiss'd his own — he was alone. 
 Her steed a little higher soar'd, and then 
 Dropt hawkwise to the earth. 
 
 There lies a den, 
 
H2 ENDYMION 
 
 Beyond the seeming confines of the space 
 Made for the soul to wander in and trace 
 Its own existence, of remotest glooms. 
 Dark regions are around it, where the tombs 
 Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce 
 One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce 
 Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart : 
 And in these regions many a venom'd dart 
 At random flies ; they are the proper home 
 Of every ill : the man is yet to come 
 Who hath not journeyed in this native hell. 
 But few have ever felt how calm and well 
 Sleep may be had in that deep den of all. 
 There anguish does not sting ; nor pleasure pall : 
 Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate, 
 Yet all is still within and desolate. 
 Beset with painful gusts, within ye hear 
 No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier 
 The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none 
 Who strive therefore : on the sudden it is won. 
 Just when the sufferer begins to burn, 
 Then it is free to him ; and from an urn, 
 Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught — 
 Young Semele such richness never quaft 
 In her maternal longing. Happy gloom ! 
 Dark Paradise ! where pale becomes the bloom 
 Of health by due ; where silence dreariest 
 Is most articulate ; where hopes infest ; 
 Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep 
 Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep. 
 O happy spirit-home ! O wondrous soul ! 
 Pregnant with such a den to save the whole 
 In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian ! 
 For, never since thy griefs and woes began, 
 Hast thou felt so content : a grievous feud 
 Hath let thee to this Cave of Quietude. 
 Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne 
 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 With dangerous speed : and so he did not mourn 
 Because he knew not whither he was going. 
 So happy was he, not the aerial blowing 
 Of trumpets at clear parley from the east 
 Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast. 
 They stung the feather'd horse : with fierce alarm 
 He flapp'd towards the sound. Alas, no charm 
 Could lift Endymion's head, or he had view'd 
 A skyey mask, a pinion'd multitude, — 
 And silvery was its passing : voices sweet 
 Warbling the while as if to lull and greet 
 The wanderer in his path. Thus warbled they, 
 While past the vision went in bright array. 
 
 i*3 
 
 " Who, who from Dian's feast would be away ? 
 For all the golden bowers of the day 
 Are empty left ? Who, who away would be 
 From Cynthia's wedding and festivity ? 
 Not Hesperus : lo ! upon his silver wings 
 He leans away for highest heaven and sings, 
 
 I 
 
H4 
 
 ENDYMION 
 
 Snapping his lucid fingers merrily ! — 
 Ah, Zephyrus ! art here, and Flora too ! 
 Ye tender bibbers of the rain and dew, 
 Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, 
 Be careful, ere ye enter in, to fill 
 
 Your baskets high 
 With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines, 
 Savory, latter-mint, and columbines, 
 Cool parsley, basil sweet, and sunny thyme ; 
 Yea, every flower and leaf of every clime, 
 All gather'd in the dewy morning : hie 
 
 Away ! fly, fly ! — 
 Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven, 
 Aquarius ! to whom king Jove has given 
 Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings, 
 Two fan-like fountains, — thine illuminings 
 
 For Dian play : 
 Dissolve the frozen purity of air ; 
 Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare 
 Show cold through watery pinions ; make more bright 
 The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night : 
 
 Haste, haste away ! — 
 Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see ! 
 And of the Bear has Pollux mastery : 
 A third is in the race ! who is the third, 
 
ENDYMION 115 
 
 Speeding away swift as the eagle bird ? 
 
 The ramping Centaur ! 
 The Lion's mane 's on end : the Bear how fierce ! 
 The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce 
 Some enemy : far forth his bow is bent 
 Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent, 
 
 Pale unrelentor, 
 When he shall hear the wedding lute 's a playing. — 
 Andromeda ! sweet woman ! why delaying 
 So timidly among the stars : come hither ! 
 Join this bright throng, and nimbly follow whither 
 
 They all are going. 
 Danae's Son, before Jove newly bow'd, 
 Has wept for thee, calling to Jove aloud. 
 Thee, gentle lady, did he disenthral : 
 Ye shall for ever live and love, for all 
 
 Thy tears are flowing. — 
 By Daphne's fright, behold Apollo ! — " 
 
 More 
 Endymion heard not : down his steed him bore, 
 Prone to the green head of a misty hill. 
 
 His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill. 
 " Alas ! " said he, " were I but always borne 
 Through dangerous winds, had but my footsteps worn 
 
u6 ENDYMION 
 
 A path in hell, for ever would I bless 
 
 Horrors which nourish an uneasiness 
 
 For my own sullen conquering : to him 
 
 Who lives beyond earth's boundary, grief is dim, 
 
 Sorrow is but a shadow : now I see 
 
 The grass ; I feel the solid ground — Ah, me ! 
 
 It is thy voice — divinest ! Where ? — who ? who 
 
 Left thee so quiet on this bed of dew ? 
 
 Behold upon this happy earth we are ; 
 
 Let us aye love each other ; let us fare 
 
 On forest-fruits, and never, never go 
 
 Among the abodes of mortals here below, 
 
 Or be by phantoms duped. O destiny ! 
 
 Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly, 
 
 But with thy beauty will I deaden it. 
 
 Where didst thou melt to ? By thee will I sit 
 
 For ever : let our fate stop here — a kid 
 
 I on this spot will offer : Pan will bid 
 
 Us live in peace, in love and peace among 
 
 His forest wildernesses. I have clung 
 
 To nothing, loved a nothing, nothing seen 
 
 Or felt but a great dream ! O I have been 
 
 Presumptuous against love, against the sky, 
 
 Against all elements, against the tie 
 
 Of mortals each to each, against the blooms 
 
 Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs 
 
 Of heroes gone ! Against his proper glory 
 
 Has my own soul conspired : so my story 
 
 Will I to children utter, and repent. 
 
 There never lived a mortal man, who bent 
 
 His appetite beyond his natural sphere, 
 
 But starved and died. My sweetest Indian, here, 
 
 Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast 
 
 My life from too thin breathing : gone and past 
 
 Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell I 
 
 And air of visions, and the monstrous swell 
 
 Of visionary seas ! No, never more 
 
ENDYMION 117 
 
 Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore 
 
 Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast. 
 
 Adieu, my daintiest Dream ! although so vast 
 
 My love is still for thee. The hour may come 
 
 When we shall meet in pure elysium. 
 
 On earth I may not love thee ; and therefore 
 
 Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store 
 
 All through the teeming year : so thou wilt shine 
 
 On me, and on this damsel fair of mine, 
 
 And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss ! 
 
 My river-lily bud ! one human kiss ! 
 
 One sigh of real breath — one gentle squeeze, 
 
 Warm as a dove's nest among summer trees, 
 
 And warm with dew at ooze from living blood ! 
 
 Whither didst melt ? Ah, what of that !— all good 
 
 We'll talk about — no more of dreaming. — Now, 
 
 Where shall our dwelling be ? Under the brow 
 
 Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun 
 
 Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none ; 
 
 And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through, 
 
 Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew ? 
 
 O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place ; 
 
 Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace 
 
 Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclined : 
 
 For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find, 
 
 And by another, in deep dell below, 
 
 See, through the trees, a little river go 
 
 All in its mid-day gold and glimmering. 
 
 Honey from out the gnarled hive I'll bring, 
 
 And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee, — 
 
 Cresses that grow where no man may them see, 
 
 And sorrel untorn by the dew-clew'd stag : 
 
 Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag, 
 
 That thou mayst always know whither I roam, 
 
 When it shall please thee in our quiet home 
 
 To listen and think of love. Still let me speak ; 
 
 Still let me dive into the joy I seek, — 
 
n8 ENDYMION 
 
 For yet the past doth prison me. The rill, 
 
 Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill 
 
 With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn, 
 
 And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel's barn. 
 
 Its bottom will I strew with amber shells, 
 
 And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells. 
 
 Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine, 
 
 And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine. 
 
 I will entice this crystal rill to trace 
 
 Love's silver name upon the meadow's face. 
 
 I'll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire ; 
 
 And to god Phoebus, for a golden lyre ; 
 
 To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear ; 
 
 To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear, 
 
 That I may see thy beauty through the night ; 
 
 To Flora, and a nightingale shall light 
 
 Tame on thy finger ; to the River-gods, 
 
 And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods 
 
 Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress. 
 
 Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness ! 
 
 Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be 
 
 'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee : 
 
 Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak 
 
 Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek, 
 
 Trembling or steadfastness to this same voice, 
 
 And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice : 
 
 And that affectionate light, those diamond things, 
 
 Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs, 
 
 Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure. 
 
 Say, is not bliss within our perfect seizure ? 
 
 O that I could not doubt ! " 
 
 The mountaineer 
 Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear 
 His briar'd path to some tranquillity. 
 It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye, 
 And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow ; 
 
ENDYMION 119 
 
 Answering thus, just as the golden morrow 
 
 Beam'd upward from the valleys of the east : 
 
 " O that the flutter of this heart had ceased, 
 
 Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away. 
 
 Young feather'd tyrant ! by a swift decay 
 
 Wilt thou devote this body to the earth : 
 
 And I do think that at my very birth 
 
 I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly; 
 
 For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee, 
 
 With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven. 
 
 Art thou not cruel ? Ever have I striven 
 
 To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do ! 
 
 When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew 
 
 Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave 
 
 To the void air, bidding them find out love : 
 
 But when I came to feel how far above 
 
 All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, 
 
 All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, 
 
 Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss, — 
 
 Even then, that moment, at the thought of this, 
 
 Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers, 
 
 And languish'd there three days. Ye milder powers, 
 
 Am I not cruelly wrong'd ? Believe, believe 
 
 Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave 
 
 With my own fancies garlands of sweet life, 
 
 Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife ! 
 
 I may not be thy love : I am forbidden — 
 
 Indeed I am — thwarted, affrighted, chidden, 
 
 By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath. 
 
 Twice hast thou ask'd whither I went : henceforth 
 
 Ask me no more ! I may not utter it, 
 
 Nor may I be thy love. We might commit 
 
 Ourselves at once to vengeance ; we might die ; 
 
 We might embrace and die : voluptuous thought ! 
 
 Enlarge not to my hunger, or I'm caught 
 
 In trammels of perverse deliciousness. 
 
 No, no, that shall not be : thee will I bless, 
 
120 ENDYMION 
 
 And bid a long adieu." 
 
 The Carian 
 No word return'd : both lovelorn, silent, wan, 
 Into the valleys green together went. 
 Far wandering, they were perforce content 
 To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree ; 
 Nor at each other gazed, but heavily 
 Pored on its hazel cirque of shedded leaves. 
 
 Endymion ! unhappy ! it nigh grieves 
 Me to behold thee thus in last extreme : 
 Enskied ere this, but truly that I deem 
 Truth the best music in a first-born song. 
 Thy lute-voiced brother will I sing ere long, 
 And thou shalt aid — hast thou not aided me ? 
 Yes, moonlight Emperor ! felicity 
 Has been thy meed for many thousand years ; 
 Yet often have I, on the brink of tears, 
 Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a forester ; — 
 Forgetting the old tale. 
 
 He did not stir 
 His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse 
 Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls 
 Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays 
 Through the old garden-ground of boyish days. 
 A little onward ran the very stream 
 By which he took his first soft poppy dream ; 
 And on the very bark 'gainst which he leant 
 A crescent he had carved, and round it spent 
 His skill in little stars. The teeming tree 
 Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery, 
 But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope 
 Up which he had not fear'd the antelope ; 
 And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade 
 He had not with his tamed leopards play'd. 
 
ENDYMION 121 
 
 Nor could an arrow light, or javelin, 
 
 Fly in the air where his had never been — 
 
 And yet he knew it not. 
 
 O treachery ! 
 Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye 
 With all his sorrowing ? He sees her not. 
 But who so stares on him ? His sister sure ! 
 Peona of the woods ! — Can she endure — 
 Impossible — -how dearly they embrace ! 
 His lady smiles ; delight is in her face ; 
 It is no treachery. 
 
 " Dear brother mine ! 
 Endymion, weep not so ! Why shouldst thou pine 
 When all great Latmus so exalt wilt be ? 
 Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly ; 
 And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more. 
 Sure I will not believe thou hast such store 
 Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again. 
 Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain, 
 Come hand in hand with one so beautiful. 
 Be happy both of you ! for I will pull 
 The flowers of autumn for your coronals. 
 Pan's holy priest for young Endymion calls ; 
 And when he is restored, thou, fairest dame, 
 Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame 
 To see ye thus, — not very, very sad ? 
 Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad : 
 O feel as if it were a common day ; 
 Free-voiced as one who never was away. 
 No tongue shall ask, whence come ye ? but ye shall 
 Be gods of your own rest imperial. 
 Not even I, for one whole month, will pry 
 Into the hours that have pass'd us by, 
 Since in my arbour I did sing to thee. 
 O Hermes ! on this very night will be 
 
122 ENDYMION 
 
 A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light ; 
 
 For the soothsayers old saw yesternight 
 
 Good visions in the air, — whence will befall 
 
 As say these sages, health perpetual 
 
 To shepherds and their flocks ; and furthermore, 
 
 In Dian's face they read the gentle lore : 
 
 Therefore for her these vesper-carols are. 
 
 Our friends will all be there from nigh and far. 
 
 Many upon thy death have ditties made ; 
 
 And many, even now, their foreheads shade 
 
 With cypress, on a day of sacrifice. 
 
 New singing for our maids shalt thou devise, 
 
 And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen's brows. 
 
 Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse 
 
 This wayward brother to his rightful joys ! 
 
 His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise 
 
 His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray, 
 
 To lure — Endymion, dear brother, say 
 
 What ails thee ? " He could bear no more, and so 
 
 Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow, 
 
 And twang'd it inwardly, and calmly said : 
 
 " I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid ! 
 
 My only visitor ! not ignorant though, 
 
 That those deceptions which for pleasure go 
 
 'Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be : 
 
 But there are higher ones I may not see, 
 
 If impiously an earthly realm I take. 
 
 Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake 
 
 Night after night, and day by day, until 
 
 Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill. 
 
 Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me 
 
 More happy than betides mortality. 
 
 A hermit young, I'll live in mossy cave, 
 
 Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave 
 
 Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell. 
 
 Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well ; 
 
 For to thy tongue will I all health confide. 
 
ENDYMION 123 
 
 And, for my sake, let this young maid abide 
 
 With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone, 
 
 Peona, mayst return to me. I own 
 
 This may sound strangely : but when, dearest girl, 
 
 Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl 
 
 Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair ! 
 
 Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share 
 
 This sister's love with me ? " Like one resign'd 
 
 And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind 
 
 In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown : 
 
 " Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown, 
 
 Of jubilee to Dian : — truth I heard? 
 
 Well then, I see there is no little bird, 
 
 Tender soever, but is Jove's own care. 
 
 Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware, 
 
 Behold I find it ! so exalted too ! 
 
 So after my own heart ! I knew, I knew 
 
 There was a place untenanted in it : 
 
 In that same void white Chastity shall sit, 
 
 And monitor me nightly to lone slumber. 
 
 With sanest lips I vow me to the number 
 
 Of Dian's sisterhood ; and, kind lady, 
 
 With thy good help, this very night shall see 
 
 My future days to her fane consecrate." 
 
 As feels a dreamer what doth most create 
 His own particular fright, so these three felt : 
 Or like one who, in after ages, knelt 
 To Lucifer or Baal, when he'd pine 
 After a little sleep : or when in mine 
 Far under-ground, a sleeper meets his friends 
 Who know him not. Each diligently bends 
 Towards common thoughts and things for very fear ; 
 Striving their ghastly malady to cheer, 
 By thinking it a thing of yes and no, 
 That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow 
 Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last 
 
124 ENDYMION 
 
 Endymion said : " Are not our fates all cast ? 
 
 Why stand we here ? Adieu, ye tender pair ! 
 
 Adieu ! " Whereat those maidens, with wild stare, 
 
 Walk'd dizzily away. Pained and hot 
 
 His eyes went after them, until they got 
 
 Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw, 
 
 In one swift moment, would what then he saw 
 
 Engulph for ever. " Stay ! " he cried, " ah, stay ! 
 
 Turn, damsels ! hist ! one word I have to say. 
 
 Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again. 
 
 It is a thing I dote on : so I'd fain, 
 
 Peona, ye should hand in hand repair 
 
 Into those holy groves, that silent are 
 
 Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon, 
 
 At vesper's earliest twinkle — they are gone — 
 
 But once, once, once again — " At this he press'd 
 
 His hands against his face, and then did rest 
 
 His head upon a mossy hillock green, 
 
 And so remain'd as he a corpse had been 
 
 All the long day ; save when he scantly lifted 
 
 His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted 
 
 With the slow move of time, — sluggish and weary 
 
 Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary, 
 
 Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose, 
 
 And, slowly as that very river flows, 
 
 Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament 
 
 " Why such a golden eve ? The breeze is sent 
 
 Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall 
 
 Before the serene father of them all 
 
 Bows down his summer head below the west. 
 
 Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possest, 
 
 But at the setting I must bid adieu 
 
 To her for the last time. Night will strew 
 
 On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves, 
 
 And with them shall I die ; nor much it grieves 
 
 To die, when summer dies on the cold sward. 
 
 Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 125 
 
 ll^^^il l^fflfj^ c^^^i 
 
 ST" - fjlfw 1 
 
 IMV ml 
 
 Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies, 
 Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses ; 
 My kingdom 's at its death, and just it is 
 That I should die with it : so in all this 
 We miscall grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe, 
 What is there to plain of ? By Titan's foe 
 I am but rightly served." So saying, he 
 Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee ; 
 Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun, 
 As though they jests had been : nor had he done 
 His laugh at nature's holy countenance, 
 Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance, 
 And then his tongue with sober seemlihed 
 Gave utterance as he entered : " Ha ! I said, 
 King of the butterflies ; but by this gloom, 
 And by old Rhadamanthus' tongue of doom, 
 This dusk religion, pomp of solitude, 
 And the Promethean clay by thief endued, 
 By old Saturnus' forelock, by his head 
 Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed 
 
126 ENDYMION 
 
 Myself to things of light from infancy ; 
 
 And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die, 
 
 Is sure enough to make a mortal man 
 
 Grow impious." So he inwardly began 
 
 On things for which no wording can be found ; 
 
 Deeper and deeper sinking, until drown'd 
 
 Beyond the reach of music : for the choir 
 
 Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar 
 
 Nor muffling thicket interposed to dull 
 
 The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full, 
 
 Though the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles. 
 
 He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles, 
 
 Wan as primroses gather'd at midnight 
 
 By chilly finger'd spring. " Unhappy wight ! 
 
 Endymion ! " said Peona, " we are here ! 
 
 What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on bier ? " 
 
 Then he embraced her, and his lady's hand 
 
 Press'd, saying : " Sister, I would have command, 
 
 If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate." 
 
 At which that dark-eyed stranger stood elate 
 
 And said, in a new voice, but sweet as love, 
 
 To Endymion's amaze : " By Cupid's dove, 
 
 And so thou shalt ! and by the lily truth 
 
 Of my own breast thou shalt, beloved youth ! " 
 
 And as she spake, into her face there came 
 
 Light, as reflected from a silver flame : 
 
 Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display 
 
 Full golden ; in her eyes a brighter day 
 
 Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld 
 
 Phcebe, his passion ! joyous she upheld 
 
 Her lucid bow, continuing thus : " Drear, drear 
 
 Has our delaying been ; but foolish fear 
 
 Withheld me first ; and then decrees of fate ; 
 
 And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state 
 
 Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change 
 
 Be spiritualized. Peoria, we shall range 
 
 These forests, and to thee they safe shall be 
 
ENDYMION 
 
 As was thy cradle ; hither shalt thou flee 
 
 To meet us many a time." Next Cynthia bright 
 
 Peona kiss'd, and bless'd with fair good night : 
 
 Her brother kiss'd her too, and knelt adown 
 
 Before his goddess, in a blissful swoon. 
 
 She gave her fair hands to him, and behold, 
 
 Before three swiftest kisses he had told, 
 
 They vanish'd far away ! — Peona went 
 
 Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment. 
 
 127 
 
PART I 
 
 Upon a time, before the faery broods 
 Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, 
 Before King Oberon's bright diadem, 
 Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, 
 Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns 
 From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, 
 The ever-smitten Hermes empty left 
 His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft : 
 From high Olympus had he stolen light, 
 On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight 
 Of his great summoner, and made retreat 
 Into a forest on the shores of Crete. 
 For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt 
 A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt ; 
 At whose white feet the languid Tritons pour'd 
 Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored. 
 Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont, 
 And in those meads where sometime she might haunt, 
 Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, 
 Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose. 
 Ah, what a world of love was at her feet ! 
 So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat 
 Burnt from his winged heels to either ear, 
 That from a whiteness, as the lily clear, 
 Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair, 
 
 K 
 
130 LAMIA 
 
 Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare. 
 
 From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew, 
 
 Breathing upon the flowers his passion new, 
 
 And wound with many a river to its head, 
 
 To find where this sweet nymph prepared her secret bed : 
 
 In vain ; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found, 
 
 And so he rested, on the lonely ground, 
 
 Pensive, and full of painful jealousies 
 
 Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees. 
 
 There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice, 
 
 Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys 
 
 All pain but pity : thus the lone voice spake : 
 
 " When from this wretched tomb shall I awake ! 
 
 When move in a sweet body fit for life, 
 
 And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife 
 
 Of hearts and lips ! Ah, miserable me ! " 
 
 The God, dove-footed, glided silently 
 
 Round bush and tree, soft-brushing in his speed, 
 
 The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, 
 
 Until he found a palpitating snake, 
 
 Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake. 
 
 She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, 
 Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue ; 
 Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, 
 Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd ; 
 And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, 
 Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed 
 Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries — 
 So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries, 
 She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf, 
 Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. 
 Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire 
 Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar : 
 Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet ! 
 She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete 
 And for her eyes : what could such eyes do there 
 
LAMIA 131 
 
 But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair ? 
 As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air. 
 Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake 
 Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love's sake, 
 And thus ; while Hermes on his pinions lay, 
 Like a stoop'd falcon ere he takes his prey. 
 
 " Fair Hermes, crown'd with feathers, fluttering light, 
 I had a splendid dream of thee last night : 
 I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold, 
 Among the Gods, upon Olympus old, 
 The only sad one ; for thou didst not hear 
 The soft, lute-finger'd Muses chaunting clear, 
 Nor even Apollo when he sang alone, 
 Deaf to his throbbing throat's long, long melodious moan. 
 I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes, 
 Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks, 
 And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart, 
 Strike for the Cretan isle ; and here thou art ! 
 Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid ? " 
 Whereat the star of Lethe not delay'd 
 His rosy eloquence, and thus inquired : 
 " Thou smooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high inspired I 
 Thou beauteous wreath, with melancholy eyes, 
 Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise, 
 Telling me only where my nymph is fled, — 
 Where she doth breathe!" "Bright planet, thou hast said," 
 Return'd the snake, " but seal with oaths, fair God ! " 
 " I swear," said Hermes, " by my serpent rod, 
 And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown ! " 
 Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown. 
 Then thus again the brilliance feminine : 
 " Too frail of heart ! for this lost nymph of thine, 
 Free as the air, invisibly, she strays 
 About these thornless wilds ; her pleasant days 
 She tastes unseen ; unseen her nimble feet 
 Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet ; 
 
132 LAMIA 
 
 From weary tendrils, and bow'd branches green, 
 
 She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen : 
 
 And by my power is her beauty veil'd 
 
 To keep it unaffronted, unassail'd 
 
 By the love-glances of unlovely eyes, 
 
 Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear'd Silenus' sighs. 
 
 Pale grew her immortality, for woe 
 
 Of all these lovers, and she grieved so 
 
 I took compassion on her, bade her steep 
 
 Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep 
 
 Her loveliness invisible, yet free 
 
 To wander as she loves, in liberty. 
 
 Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone, 
 
 If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon ! " 
 
 Then, once again, the charmed God began 
 
 An oath and through the serpent's ears it ran 
 
 Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian. 
 
 Ravish'd, she lifted her Circean head, 
 
 Blush'd a live damask, and swift-lisping said, 
 
 " I was a woman, let me have once more 
 
 A woman's shape, and charming as before. 
 
 I love a youth of Corinth — O the bliss ! 
 
 Give me my woman's form, and place me where he is. 
 
 Stoop, Hermes, let me breathe upon thy brow, 
 
 And thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now/' 
 
 The God on half-shut feathers sank serene, 
 
 She breath'd upon his eyes, and swift was seen 
 
 Of both the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green. 
 
 It was no dream ; or say a dream it was, 
 
 Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass 
 
 Their pleasures in a long immortal dream. 
 
 One warm, flush'd moment, hovering, it might seem 
 
 Dash'd by the wood-nymph's beauty, so he burn'd ; 
 
 Then, lighting on the printless verdure, turn'd 
 
 To the swoon'd serpent, and with languid arm, 
 
 Delicate, put to proof the lithe Caducean charm. 
 
 So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent, 
 
LAMIA 133 
 
 Full of adoring tears and blandishment, 
 
 And towards her stept : she, like a moon in wane, 
 
 Faded before him, cower'd, nor could restrain 
 
 Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower 
 
 That faints into itself at evening hour : 
 
 But the God fostering her chilled hand, 
 
 She felt the warmth, her eyelids open'd bland, 
 
 And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, 
 
 Bloom'd, and gave up her honey to the lees. 
 
 Into the green-recessed woods they flew ; 
 
 Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do. 
 
 Left to herself, the serpent now began 
 To change ; her elfin blood in madness ran, 
 Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, 
 Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent ; 
 Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, 
 Hot, glazed, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, 
 Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. 
 The colours all inflamed throughout her train, 
 She writh'd about, convulsed with scarlet pain : 
 A deep volcanian yellow took the place 
 Of all her milder-mooned body's grace ; 
 And, as the lava ravishes the mead, 
 Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede ; 
 Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars, 
 Eclipsed her crescents, and lick'd up her stars: 
 So that, in moments few, she was undrest 
 Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst, 
 And rubious-argent : of all these bereft, 
 Nothing but pain and ugliness were left. 
 Still shone her crown ; that vanish'd, also she 
 Melted and disappear'd as suddenly ; 
 And in the air, her new voice luting soft, 
 Cried, " Lycius ! gentle Lycius ! " — Borne aloft 
 With the bright mists about the mountains hoar 
 These words dissolved : Crete's forests heard no more. 
 
134 LAMIA 
 
 Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright, 
 A full-born beauty new and exquisite ? 
 She fled into that valley they pass o'er 
 Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas' shore ; 
 And rested at the foot of those wild hills 
 The rugged founts of the Peraean rills, 
 And of that other ridge whose barren back 
 Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack, 
 South-westward to Cleone. There she stood 
 About a young bird's flutter from a wood, 
 Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread, 
 By a clear pool, wherein she passioned 
 To see herself escaped from so sore ills, 
 While her robes flaunted with the daffodils. 
 
 Ah, happy Lycius ! — for she was a maid 
 More beautiful than ever twisted braid, 
 Or sigh'd, or blush'd, or on spring-flower'd lea 
 Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy : 
 A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore 
 Of love deep learned to the red heart's core : 
 Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain 
 To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain ; 
 Define their pettish limits, and estrange 
 Their points of contact, and swift counterchange ; 
 Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart 
 Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art ; 
 As though in Cupid's college she had spent 
 Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent, 
 And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment 
 
 Why this fair creature chose so fairily 
 By the wayside to linger, we shall see ; 
 But first 'tis fit to tell how she could muse 
 And dream, when in the serpent prison-house, 
 Of all she list, strange or magnificent : 
 How, ever, where she will'd, her spirit went ; 
 
WHILE HER ROBES FLAUNTED WITH THE DAFFODILS 
 
LAMIA 137 
 
 Whether to faint Elysium, or where 
 
 Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair 
 
 Wind into Thetis' bower by many a pearly stair ; 
 
 Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine, 
 
 Stretch'd out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine ; 
 
 Or where in Pluto's gardens palatine 
 
 Mulciber's columns gleam in far piazzian line. 
 
 And sometimes into cities she would send 
 
 Her dream, with feast and rioting to blend ; 
 
 And once, while among mortals dreaming thus, 
 
 She saw the young Corinthian Lycius 
 
 Charioting foremost in the envious race, 
 
 Like a young Jove with calm uneager face, 
 
 And fell into a swooning love of him. 
 
 Now on the moth-time of that evening dim 
 
 He would return that way, as well she knew, 
 
 To Corinth from the shore ; for freshly blew 
 
 The eastern soft wind, and his galley now 
 
 Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow 
 
 In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle 
 
 Fresh anchor'd ; whither he had been awhile 
 
 To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there 
 
 Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense ra- . 
 
 Jove heard his vows, and better'd his desire ; 
 
 For by some freakful chance he made retire 
 
 From his companions, and set forth to walk, 
 
 Perhaps grown weary of their Corinth talk : 
 
 Over the solitary hills he fared, 
 
 Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared 
 
 His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, 
 
 In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades, 
 
 Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near — 
 
 Close to her passing, in indifference drear, 
 
 His silent sandals swept the mossy green ; 
 
 So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen 
 
 She stood : he pass'd, shut up in mysteries, 
 
 His mind wrapp'd like his mantle, while her eyes 
 
138 LAMIA 
 
 Follow'd his steps, and her neck regal white 
 
 Turn'd — syllabling thus, " Ah, Lycius bright, 
 
 And will you leave me on the hills alone ? 
 
 Lycius, look back ! and be some pity shown." 
 
 He did ; not with cold wonder fearingly, 
 
 But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice ; 
 
 For so delicious were the words she sung, 
 
 It seem'd he had loved them a whole summer long : 
 
 And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, 
 
 Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, 
 
 And still the cup was full, — while he, afraid 
 
 Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid 
 
 Due adoration, thus began to adore ; 
 
 Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure : 
 
 " Leave thee alone ! Look back ! Ah, Goddess, see 
 
 Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee ! 
 
 For pity do not this sad heart belie — 
 
 Even as thou vanishest so I shall die. 
 
 Stay ! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay ! 
 
 To thy far wishes will thy streams obey : 
 
 Stay ! though the greenest woods be thy domain, 
 
 Alone they can drink up the morning rain : 
 
 Though a descended Pleiad, will not one 
 
 Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune 
 
 Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine ? 
 
 So sweetly to these ravish'd ears of mine 
 
 Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade 
 
 Thy memory will waste me to a shade : — 
 
 For pity do not melt ! " — " If I should stay," 
 
 Said Lamia, " here, upon this floor of clay, 
 
 And pain my steps upon these flowers too rough, 
 
 What canst thou say or do of charm enough 
 
 To dull the nice remembrance of my home ? 
 
 Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam 
 
 Over these hills and vales, where no joy is, — 
 
 Empty of immortality and bliss ! 
 
 Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know 
 
LAMIA 139 
 
 That finer spirits cannot breathe below 
 
 In human climes, and live : Alas ! poor youth, 
 
 What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe 
 
 My essence ? What serener palaces 
 
 Where I may all my many senses please, 
 
 And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease 
 
 It cannot be — Adieu ! " So said, she rose 
 
 Tiptoe with white arms spread. He, sick to lose 
 
 The amorous promise of her lone complain, 
 
 Swoon'd, murmuring of love, and pale with pain. 
 
 The cruel lady, without any show 
 
 Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe, 
 
 But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, 
 
 With brighter eyes and slow amenity, 
 
 Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh 
 
 The life she had so tangled in her mesh : 
 
 And as he from one trance was wakening 
 
 Into another, she began to sing, 
 
 Happy in beauty, life, and love, and everything, 
 
 A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, 
 
 While,like held breath, the stars drewin their panting fires 
 
 And then she whisper'd in such trembling tone, 
 
 As those who, safe together met alone 
 
 For the first time through many anguish'd days, 
 
 Use other speech than looks ; bidding him raise 
 
 His drooping head, and clear his soul of doubt, 
 
 For that she was a woman, and without 
 
 Any more subtle fluid in her veins 
 
 Than throbbing blood, and that the self-same pains 
 
 Inhabited her frail-strung heart as his. 
 
 And next she wonder'd how his eyes could miss 
 
 Her face so long in Corinth, where, she said, 
 
 She dwelt but half retired, and there had led 
 
 Days happy as the gold coin could invent 
 
 Without the aid of love ; yet in content 
 
 Till she saw him, as once she pass'd him by, 
 
 Where 'gainst a column he leant thoughtfully 
 
140 LAMIA 
 
 At Venus' temple porch, 'mid baskets heap'd 
 
 Of amorous herbs and flowers, newly reap'd 
 
 Late on that eve, as 'twas the night before 
 
 The Adonian feast ; whereof she saw no more, 
 
 But wept alone those days, for why should she adore ? 
 
 Lycius from death awoke into amaze, 
 
 To see her still, and singing so sweet lays ; 
 
 Then from amaze into delight he fell 
 
 To hear her whisper woman's lore so well ; 
 
 And every word she spake enticed him on 
 
 To unperplex'd delight and pleasure known. 
 
 Let the mad poets say whate'er they please 
 
 Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses, 
 
 There is not such a treat among them all, 
 
 Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall, 
 
 As a real woman, lineal indeed 
 
 From Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed. 
 
 Thus gentle Lamia judged, and judged aright, 
 
 That Lycius could not love in half a fright, 
 
 So threw the goddess off, and won his heart 
 
 More pleasantly by playing woman's part, 
 
 With no more awe than what her beauty gave, 
 
 That, while it smote, still guaranteed to save. 
 
 Lycius to all made eloquent reply, 
 
 Marrying to every word a twinborn sigh ; 
 
 And last, pointing to Corinth, ask'd her sweet, 
 
 If 'twas too far that night for her soft feet. 
 
 The way was short, for Lamia's eagerness 
 
 Made, by a spell, the triple league decrease 
 
 To a few paces ; not at all surmised 
 
 By blinded Lycius, so in her comprised. 
 
 They pass'd the city gates, he knew not how, 
 
 So noiseless, and he never thought to know. 
 
 As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all, 
 Throughout her palaces imperial, 
 And all her populous streets and temples lewd. 
 
LAMIA 141 
 
 Mutter'd, like tempest in the distance brew'd, 
 To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. 
 Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours, 
 Shuffled their sandals o'er the pavement white, 
 Companion'd or alone ; while many a light 
 Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals, 
 And threw their moving shadows on the walls, 
 Or found them cluster'd in the corniced shade 
 Of some arch'd temple door, or dusky colonnade. 
 
 Muffling his face, of greeting friends in fear, 
 Her fingers he press'd hard, as one came near 
 With curl'd gray beard, sharp eyes, and smooth bald crown, 
 Slow-stepp'd,' and robed in philosophic gown : 
 Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past, 
 Into his mantle, adding wings to haste, 
 While hurried Lamia trembled : " Ah/' said he, 
 " Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully ? 
 Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew ? " — 
 " I'm wearied," said fair Lamia : " tell me who 
 Is that old man ? I cannot bring to mind 
 His features : — Lycius ! wherefore did you blind 
 Yourself from his quick eyes ? " Lycius replied, 
 " 'Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide 
 And good instructor ; but to-night he seems 
 The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams." 
 
 While yet he spake they had arrived before 
 A pillar'd porch, with lofty portal door, 
 Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow 
 Reflected in the slabbed steps below, 
 Mild as a star in water ; for so new, 
 And so unsullied was the marble's hue, 
 So through the crystal polish, liquid fine, 
 Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine 
 Could e'er have touch'd there. Sounds yEolian 
 Breathed from the hinges, as the ample span 
 
142 
 
 LAMIA 
 
 Of the wide doors disclosed a place unknown 
 
 Some time to any, but those two alone, 
 
 And a few Persian mutes, who that same year 
 
 Were seen about the markets : none knew where 
 
 They could inhabit ; the most curious 
 
 Were foil'd, who watch'd to trace them to their house : 
 
 And but the flitter-winged verse must tell, 
 
 For truth's sake, what woe afterwards befell, 
 
 'T would humour many a heart to leave them thus, 
 
 Shut from the busy world of more incredulous. 
 
 PART II 
 
 Love in a hut, with water and a crust, 
 
 Is — Love, forgive us ! — cinders, ashes, dust ; 
 
 Love in a palace is perhaps at last 
 
 More grievous torment than a hermit's fast : — 
 
 That is a doubtful tale from faery land, 
 
 Hard for the non-elect to understand. 
 
 Had Lycius lived to hand his story down, 
 
 He might have given the moral a fresh frown, 
 
 Or clench'd it quite : but too short was their bliss 
 
 To breed distrust and hate, that make the softvoice hiss. 
 
 Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare, 
 
 Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair, 
 
 Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar, 
 
LAMIA 143 
 
 Above the lintel of their chamber door, 
 
 And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor. 
 
 For all this came a ruin : side by side 
 They were enthroned, in the even tide, 
 Upon a couch, near to a curtaining 
 Whose airy texture, from a golden string, 
 Floated into the room, and let appear 
 Unveil'd the summer heaven, blue and clear, 
 Betwixt two marble shafts : — there they reposed, 
 Where use had made it sweet, with eyelids closed, 
 Saving a tithe which love still open kept, 
 That they might see each other while they almost slept ; 
 When from the slope side of a suburb hill, 
 Deafening the swallow's twitter, came a thrill 
 Of trumpets — Lycius started — the sounds fled, 
 But left a thought, a buzzing in his head. 
 For the first time, since first he harbour'd in 
 That purple-lined palace of sweet sin, 
 His spirit pass'd beyond its golden bourn 
 Into the noisy world almost forsworn. 
 The lady, ever watchful, penetrant, 
 Saw this with pain, so arguing a want 
 Of something more, more than her empery 
 Of joys ; and she began to moan and sigh 
 Because he mused beyond her, knowing well 
 That but a moment's thought is passion's passing bell. 
 " Why do you sigh fair creature ? " whisper'd he : 
 " Why do you think ? " return'd she tenderly : 
 " You have deserted me ; — where am I now ? 
 Not in your heart while care weighs on your brow : 
 No, no, you have dismiss'd me ; and I go 
 From your breast houseless : ay, it must be so." 
 He answer'd, bending to her open eyes, 
 Where he was mirror'd small in paradise. 
 " My silver planet, both of eve and morn ! 
 Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn, 
 
144 LAMIA 
 
 While I am striving how to fill my heart 
 
 With deeper crimson, and a double smart ? 
 
 How to entangle, trammel up and snare 
 
 Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there 
 
 Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose ? 
 
 Ay, a sweet kiss — you see your mighty woes. 
 
 My thoughts ! shall I unveil them ? Listen then ! 
 
 What mortal hath a prize, that other men 
 
 May be confounded and abash'd withal, 
 
 But lets it sometimes pace abroad majestical, 
 
 And triumph, as in thee I should rejoice 
 
 Amid the hoarse alarm of Corinth's voice. 
 
 Let my foes choke, and my friends shout afar, 
 
 While through the thronged streets your bridal car 
 
 Wheels round its dazzling spokes." — The lady's cheek 
 
 Trembled ; she nothing said, but, pale and meek, 
 
 Arose and knelt before him, wept a rain 
 
 Of sorrows at his words ; at last with pain 
 
 Beseeching him, the while his hand she wrung, 
 
 To change his purpose. He thereat was stung, 
 
 Perverse, with stronger fancy to reclaim 
 
 Her wild and timid nature to his aim : 
 
 Besides, for all his love, in self despite, 
 
 Against his better self, he took delight 
 
 Luxurious in her sorrows, soft and new. 
 
 His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue 
 
 Fierce and sanguineous as 'twas possible 
 
 In one whose brow had no dark veins to swell. 
 
 Fine was the mitigated fury, like 
 
 Apollo's presence when in act to strike 
 
 The serpent — Ha, the serpent ! certes, she 
 
 Was none. She burnt, she loved the tyranny, 
 
 And, all subdued, consented to the hour 
 
 When to the bridal he should lead his paramour. 
 
 Whispering in midnight silence, said the youth, 
 
 " Sure some sweet name thou hast, though, by my truth, 
 
 I have not ask'd it, ever thinking thee 
 
LAMIA 145 
 
 Not mortal, but of heavenly progeny, 
 
 As still I do. Hast any mortal name, 
 
 Fit appellation for this dazzling frame ? 
 
 Or friends or kinsfolk on the citied earth, 
 
 To share our marriage feast and nuptial mirth ? " 
 
 " I have no friends," said Lamia, " no, not one ; 
 
 My presence in wide Corinth hardly known : 
 
 My parents' bones are in their dusty urns 
 
 Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns, 
 
 Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me, 
 
 And I neglect the holy rite for thee. 
 
 Even as you lht invite your many guests ; 
 
 But if, as now it seems, your vision rests 
 
 With any pleasure on me, do not bid 
 
 Old Apollonius — from him keep me hid." 
 
 Lycius, perplex'd at words so blind and blank, 
 
 Made close inquiry ; from whose touch she shrank, 
 
 Feigning a sleep ; and he to the dull shade 
 
 Of deep sleep in a moment was betray'd. 
 
 It was the custom then to bring away 
 The bride from home at blushing shut of day, 
 Veil'd, in a chariot, heralded along 
 By strewn flowers, torches, and a marriage song, 
 With other pageants : but this fair unknown 
 Had not a friend. So being left alone, 
 (Lycius was gone to summon all his kin) 
 And knowing surely she could never win 
 His foolish heart from its mad pompousness, 
 She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress 
 The misery in fit magnificence. 
 She did so, but 'tis doubtful how and whence 
 Came, and who were her subtle servitors. 
 About the halls, and to and from the doors, 
 There was a noise of wings, till in short space 
 The glowing banquet-room shone with wide-arched grace. 
 A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone 
 
 L 
 
146 LAMIA 
 
 Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan 
 
 Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade. 
 
 Fresh carved cedar, mimicking a glade 
 
 Of palm and plantain, met from either side, 
 
 High in the midst, in honour of the bride : 
 
 Two palms and then two plantains, and so on, 
 
 From either side their stems branch'd one to one 
 
 All down the aisled place; and beneath all 
 
 There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall. 
 
 So canopied, lay an untasted feast 
 
 Teeming with odours. Lamia, regal drest, 
 
 Silently paced about, and as she went, 
 
 In pale contented sort of discontent, 
 
 Mission'd her viewless servants to enrich 
 
 The fretted splendour of each nook and niche. 
 
 Between the tree-stems, marbled plain at first, 
 
 Come jasper panels ; then, anon, there burst 
 
 Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, 
 
 And with the larger wove in small intricacies. 
 
 Approving all, she faded at self-will, 
 
 And shut the chamber up, close, hush'd and still, 
 
 Complete and ready for the revels rude, 
 
 When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude. 
 
 The day appear'd, and all the gossip rout. 
 O senseless Lycius ! Madman ! wherefore flout 
 The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister'd hours, 
 And show to common eyes these secret bowers ? 
 The herd approach'd ; each guest, with busy brain, 
 Arriving at the portal, gazed amain, 
 And enter'd marvelling : for they knew the street, 
 Remember'd it from childhood all complete 
 Without a gap, yet ne'er before had seen 
 That royal porch, that high-built fair demesne ; 
 So in they hurried all, mazed, curious and keen : 
 Save one, who look'd thereon with eye severe, 
 And with calm-planted steps walk'd in austere ; 
 
LAMIA 147 
 
 'Twas Apollonius : something too he laugh'd, 
 As though some knotty problem, that had daft 
 His patient thought, had now begun to thaw, 
 And solve and melt : — 'twas just as he foresaw. 
 
 He met within the murmurous vestibule 
 His young disciple. " 'Tis no common rule, 
 Lycius," said he, " for uninvited guest 
 To force himself upon you, and infest 
 With an unbidden presence the bright throng 
 Of younger friends ; yet must I do this wrong, 
 And you forgive me." Lycius blush'd, and led 
 The old man through the inner doors broad-spread ; 
 With reconciling words and courteous mien 
 Turning into sweet milk the sophist's spleen. 
 
 Of wealthy lustre was the banquet-room, 
 Fill'd with pervading brilliance and perfume : 
 Before each lucid panel fuming stood 
 A censer fed with myrrh and spiced wood, 
 Each by a sacred tripod held aloft, 
 Whose slender feet wide-swerved upon the soft 
 Wool-woofed carpets : fifty wreaths of smoke 
 From fifty censers their light voyage took 
 To the high roof, still mimick'd as they rose 
 Along the mirror'd walls by twin-clouds odorous. 
 Twelve sphered tables, by silk seats insphered, 
 High as the level of a man's breast rear'd 
 On libbard's paws, upheld the heavy gold 
 Of cups and goblets, and the store thrice told 
 Of Ceres' horn, and, in huge vessels, wine 
 Came from the gloomy tun with merry shine. 
 Thus loaded with a feast the tables stood, 
 Each shrining in the midst the image of a God. 
 
 When in an antechamber every guest 
 Had felt the cold full sponge to pleasure press'd, 
 
148 LAMIA 
 
 By minist'ring slaves, upon his hands and feet, 
 
 And fragrant oils with ceremony meet 
 
 Pour'd on his hair, they all moved to the feast 
 
 In white robes, and themselves in order placed 
 
 Around the silken couches, wondering 
 
 Whence all this mighty cost and blaze of wealth could spring. 
 
 Soft went the music the soft air along, 
 While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong 
 Kept up among the guests, discoursing low 
 At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow ; 
 But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, 
 Louder they talk, and louder come the strains 
 Of powerful instruments : — the gorgeous dyes, 
 The space, the splendour of the draperies, 
 The roof of awful richness, nectarous cheer, 
 Beautiful slaves, and Lamia's self, appear, 
 Now, when the wine has done its rosy deed, 
 And every soul from human trammels freed, 
 No more so strange ; for merry wine, sweet wine, 
 Will make Elysian shades not too fair, too divine. 
 Soon was God Bacchus at meridian height ; 
 Flush'd were their cheeks, and bright eyes double bright : 
 Garlands of every green and every scent 
 From vales deflower'd or forest-trees branch-rent, 
 In baskets of bright osier'd gold were brought 
 High as the handles heap'd, to suit the thought 
 Of every guest ; that each, as he did please, 
 Might fancy-fit his brows, silk-pillow'd at his ease. 
 
 What wreath for Lamia ? What for Lycius ? 
 What for the sage, old Apollonius ? 
 Upon her aching forehead be there hung 
 The leaves of willow and of adder's tongue ; 
 And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him 
 The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim 
 Into forgetfulness ; and, for the sage, 
 
HE GAZED INTO HER EYES, AND NOT A JOT 
 OWN'D THEY THE LOVELORN PITEOUS APPEAL 
 
LAMIA 151 
 
 Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage 
 War on his temples. Do not all charms fly 
 At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? 
 There was an awful rainbow once in heaven : 
 We know her woof, her texture ; she is given 
 In the dull catalogue of common things. 
 Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, 
 Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, 
 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine — 
 Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made 
 The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade. 
 
 By her glad Lycius sitting, in chief place, 
 Scarce saw in all the room another face, 
 Till, checking his love trance, a cup he took 
 Full brimm'd, and opposite sent forth a look 
 'Cross the broad table, to beseech a glance 
 From his old teacher's wrinkled countenance, 
 And pledge him. The bald-head philosopher 
 Had fix'd his eye, without a twinkle or stir 
 Full on the alarmed beauty of the bride, 
 Brow-beating her fair form, and troublingher sweet pride, 
 Lycius then press'd her hand, with devout touch, 
 As pale it lay upon the rosy couch : 
 'Twas icy, and the cold ran through his veins ; 
 Then sudden it grew hot, and all the pains 
 Of an unnatural heat shot to his heart. 
 " Lamia, what means this ? Wherefore dost thou start ? 
 Know'st thou that man ? " Poor Lamia answer'd not. 
 He gazed into her eyes, and not a jot 
 Own'd they the lovelorn piteous appeal : 
 More, more he gazed : his human senses reel : 
 Some hungry spell that loveliness absorbs ; 
 There was no recognition in those orbs. 
 " Lamia ! " he cried — and no soft-toned reply. 
 The many heard, and the loud revelry 
 Grew hush ; the stately music no more breathes ; 
 
152 LAMIA 
 
 The myrtle sicken'd in a thousand wreaths. 
 
 By faint degrees, voice, lute, and pleasure ceased ; 
 
 A deadly silence step by step increased, 
 
 Until it seem'd a horrid presence there, 
 
 And not a man but felt the terror in his hair. 
 
 " Lamia ! " he shriek'd ; and nothing but the shriek 
 
 With its sad echo did the silence break. 
 
 " Begone, foul dream ! " he cried, gazing again 
 
 In the bride's face, where now no azure vein 
 
 Wander'd on fair-spaced temples ; no soft bloom 
 
 Misted the cheek ; no passion to illume 
 
 The deep-recessed vision : — all was blight ; 
 
 Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white. 
 
 " Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man ! 
 
 Turn them aside, wretch ! or the righteous ban 
 
 Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images 
 
 Here represent their shadowy presences, 
 
 May pierce them on the sudden with the thorn 
 
 Of painful blindness ; leaving thee forlorn, 
 
 In trembling dotage to the feeblest fright 
 
 Of conscience, for their long offended might, 
 
 For all thine impious proud-heart sophistries, 
 
 Unlawful magic, and enticing lies. 
 
 Corinthians ! look upon that gray-beard wretch ! 
 
 Mark how, possess'd, his lashless eyelids stretch 
 
 Around his demon eyes ! Corinthians, see ! 
 
 My sweet bride withers at their potency." 
 
 11 Fool ! " said the sophist, in an under-tone 
 
 Gruff with contempt ; with a death-nighing moan 
 
 From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost, 
 
 He sank supine beside the aching ghost. 
 
 " Fool ! Fool ! " repeated he, while his eyes still 
 
 Relented not, nor moved ; " from every ill 
 
 Of life have I preserved thee to this day, 
 
 And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey ? " 
 
 Then Lamia breath'd death breath ; the sophist's eye, 
 
 Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly, 
 
LAMIA 153 
 
 Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging : she, as well 
 
 As her weak hand could any meaning tell, 
 
 Motion'd him to be silent ; vainly so, 
 
 He look'd and look'd again a level — No ! 
 
 " A serpent ! " echoed he ; no sooner said, 
 
 Than with a frightful scream she vanished : 
 
 And Lycius' arms were empty of delight, 
 
 As were his limbs of life, from that same night. 
 
 On the high couch he lay ! — his friends came round — 
 
 Supported him — no pulse, or breath they found, 
 
 And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound. 
 
 NOTE TO LAMIA. 
 
 " Philostratus, in his fourth book ' De Vita Apollonii,' hath 
 a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of 
 one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, 
 that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm 
 in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the 
 hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, 
 and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would 
 tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink 
 such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him ; 
 but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him, that 
 was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, 
 otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, 
 though not this of love, tarried with her a while to his great con- 
 tent, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other 
 guests, came Apollonius ; who, by some probable conjectures, 
 found her out to be a serpent, a lamia ; and that all her furniture 
 was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance but 
 mere illusions.* When she saw herself descried, she wept, and 
 desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and 
 thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in 
 an instant : many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was 
 done in the midst of Greece."— Burton's "Anatomy of Me- 
 lancholy," Part. 3, Sect. 2, Memb. 1, Subs. 1. 
 
ISABELLA 
 ORTHE POT 
 OFBASIL 
 
 
 A STORY FROM BOCCACCIO 
 
 FAIR Isabel, poor simple Isabel ! 
 
 Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye ! 
 They could not in the self-same mansion dwell 
 
 Without some stir of heart, some malady ; 
 They could not sit at meals but feel how well 
 
 It soothed each to be the other by ; 
 They could not, sure, beneath the same roof sleep 
 But to each other dream, and nightly weep. 
 
ISABELLA 155 
 
 11 
 With every morn their love grew tenderer, 
 
 With every eve deeper and tenderer still ; 
 He might not in house, field, or garden stir, 
 
 But her full shape would all his seeing fill ; 
 And his continual voice was pleasanter 
 
 To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill ; 
 Her lute-string gave an echo of his name, 
 She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same. 
 
 Ill 
 He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch, 
 
 Before the door had given her to his eyes ; 
 And from her chamber-window he would catch 
 
 Her beauty farther than the falcon spies ; 
 And constant as her vespers would he watch, 
 
 Because her face was turn'd to the same skies ; 
 And with sick longing all the night outwear, 
 To hear her morning-step upon the stair. 
 
 IV 
 
 A whole long month of May in this sad plight 
 Made their cheeks paler by the break of June : 
 
 " To-morrow will I bow to my delight, 
 To-morrow will I ask my lady's boon." — 
 
 " O may I never see another night, 
 
 Lorenzo, if thy lips breathe not love's tune." — 
 
 So spake they to their pillows ; but, alas, 
 
 Honey less days and days did he let pass ; 
 
 V 
 Until sweet Isabella's untouch'd cheek 
 
 Fell sick within the rose's just domain, 
 Fell thin as a young mother's, who doth seek 
 
 By every lull to cool her infant's pain : 
 " How ill she is," said he, " I may not speak, 
 
 And yet I will, and tell my love all plain : 
 
156 ISABELLA 
 
 If looks speak love-laws, I will drink her tears, 
 And at the least 'twill startle all her cares." 
 
 VI 
 So said he one fair morning, and all day 
 
 His heart beat awfully against his side ; 
 And to his heart he inwardly did pray 
 
 For power to speak ; but still the ruddy tide 
 Stifled his voice, and pulsed resolve away — 
 
 Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride, 
 Yet brought him to the meekness of a child : 
 Alas ! when passion is both meek and wild ! 
 
 VII 
 
 So once more he had waked and anguished 
 
 A dreary night of love and misery, 
 If Isabel's quick eye had not been wed 
 
 To every symbol on his forehead high ; 
 She saw it waxing very pale and dead, 
 
 And straight all flush'd ; so, lisped tenderly, 
 " Lorenzo ! " — here she ceased her timid quest, 
 But in her tone and look he read the rest. 
 
 VIII 
 " O Isabella, I can half perceive 
 
 That I may speak my grief into thine ear ; 
 If thou didst ever any thing believe, 
 
 Believe how I love thee, believe how near 
 My soul is to its doom : I would not grieve 
 
 Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear 
 Thine eyes by gazing ; but I cannot live 
 Another night, and not my passion shrive. 
 
 IX 
 " Love ! thou art leading me from wintry cold, 
 Lady ! thou leadest me to summer clime, 
 
ISABELLA 157 
 
 And I must taste the blossoms that unfold 
 
 In its ripe warmth this gracious morning time." 
 
 So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold, 
 And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme : 
 
 Great bliss was with them, and great happiness 
 
 Grew, like a lusty flower in June's caress. 
 
 x 
 
 Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air, 
 Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart 
 
 Only to meet again more close, and share 
 The inward fragrance of each other's heart. 
 
 She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair 
 Sang, of delicious love and honey'd dart ; 
 
 He with light steps went up a western hill, 
 
 And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd his fill. 
 
 XI 
 
 All close they met again, before the dusk 
 Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil, 
 
 All close they met, all eves, before the dusk 
 Had taken from the stars its pleasant veil, 
 
 Close in a bower of hyacinth and musk, 
 
 Unknown of any, free from whispering tale. 
 
 Ah ! better had it been for ever so, 
 
 Than idle ears should pleasure in their woe. 
 
 XII 
 
 Were they unhappy then ? — It cannot be — 
 Too many tears for lovers have been shed, 
 
 Too many sighs give we to them in fee, 
 Too much of pity after they are dead, 
 
 Too many doleful stories do we see 
 
 Whose matter in bright gold were best to read ; 
 
 Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse 
 
 Over the pathless waves towards him bows. 
 
158 ISABELLA 
 
 XIII 
 
 But, for the general award of love, 
 
 The little sweet doth kill much bitterness ; 
 
 Though Dido silent is in under-grove, 
 And Isabella's was a great distress, 
 
 Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove 
 Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less — 
 
 Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers, 
 
 Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. 
 
 XIV 
 With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt, 
 
 Enriched from ancestral merchandize, 
 And for them many a weary hand did swelt 
 
 In torched mines and noisy factories, 
 And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt 
 
 In blood from stinging whip ; — with hollow eyes 
 Many all day in dazzling river stood, 
 To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood. 
 
 xv 
 For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, 
 
 And went all naked to the hungry shark ; 
 For them his ears gush'd blood ; for them in death 
 
 The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark 
 Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe 
 
 A thousand men in troubles wide and dark : 
 Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel, 
 That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because their marble founts 
 Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears ? — 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because fair orange-mounts 
 Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs ? — 
 
 Why were they proud ? Because red-lined accounts 
 Were richer than the songs of Grecian years ? — 
 
ISABELLA 159 
 
 Why were they proud ? again we ask aloud, 
 Why in the name of Glory were they proud ? 
 
 XVII 
 Yet were these Florentines as self-retired 
 
 In hungry pride and gainful cowardice, 
 As two close Hebrews in that land inspired, 
 
 Paled in and vineyarded from beggar-spies ; 
 The hyawks of ship-mast forests — the untired 
 
 And pannier'd mules for ducats and old lies — 
 Quick cat's-paws on the generous stray-away, — 
 Great wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay. 
 
 XVIII 
 How was it these same ledger-men could spy 
 
 Fair Isabella in her downy nest ? 
 How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye 
 
 A straying from his toil ? Hot Egypt's pest 
 Into their vision covetous and sly ! 
 
 How could these money-bags see east and west ? — 
 Yet so they did — and every dealer fair 
 Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare. 
 
 XIX 
 
 O eloquent and famed Boccaccio ! 
 
 Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon, 
 And of thy spicy myrtles as they blow, 
 
 And of thy roses amorous of the moon, 
 And of thy lilies, that do paler grow 
 
 Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune, 
 For venturing syllables that ill beseem 
 The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme. 
 
 XX 
 
 Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale 
 Shall move on soberly, as it is meet ; 
 
160 ISABELLA 
 
 There is no other crime, no mad assail 
 
 To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet 
 But it is done — succeed the verse or fail — 
 
 To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet ; 
 To stead thee as a verse in English tongue, 
 An echo of thee in the north-wind sung. 
 
 XXI 
 
 These brethren having found by many signs 
 What love Lorenzo for their sister had, 
 
 And how she loved him too, each unconfines 
 His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad 
 
 That he, the servant of their trade designs, 
 Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad 
 
 When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees 
 
 To some high noble and his olive-trees. 
 
 XXII 
 
 And many a jealous conference had they, 
 And many times they bit their lips alone, 
 
 Before they fix'd upon a surest way 
 
 To make the youngster for his crime atone ; 
 
 And at the last, these men of cruel clay 
 Cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone ; 
 
 For they resolved in some forest dim 
 
 To kill Lorenzo, and there bury him. 
 
 XXIII 
 So on a pleasant morning, as he leant 
 
 Into the sun-rise, o'er the balustrade 
 Of the garden-terrace, towards him they bent 
 
 Their footing through the dews ; and to him said, 
 " You seem there in the quiet of content, 
 
 Lorenzo, and we are most loth to invade 
 Calm speculation ; but if you are wise, 
 Bestride your steed while cold is in the skies. 
 
LORENZO AND ISABELLA 
 
 M 
 
ISABELLA 163 
 
 XXIV 
 " To-day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount 
 
 To spur three leagues towards the Apennine ; 
 Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count 
 
 His dewy rosary on the eglantine." 
 Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont, 
 
 Bow'd a fair greeting to these serpents' whine ; 
 And went in haste, to get in readiness, 
 With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress. 
 
 XXV 
 
 And as he to the court-yard pass'd along, 
 Each third step did he pause, and listen'd oft 
 
 If he could hear his lady's matin-song, 
 Or the light whisper of her footstep soft ; 
 
 And as he thus over his passion hung, 
 He heard a laugh full musical aloft ; 
 
 When, looking up, he saw her features bright 
 
 Smile through an in-door lattice, all delight. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 " Love, Isabel ! " said he, " I was in pain 
 
 Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow : 
 
 Ah ! what if I should lose thee, when so fain 
 I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow 
 
 Of a poor three hours' absence ? but we'll gain 
 Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow. 
 
 Good bye! I'll soon be back." — "Good bye! "said she: — 
 
 And as he went she chanted merrily. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 So the two brothers and their murder'd man 
 Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream 
 
 Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan 
 Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream 
 
 Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan 
 The brothers' faces in the ford did seem. 
 
164 ISABELLA 
 
 Lorenzo's flush with love. — They pass'd the water 
 Into a forest quiet for the slaughter. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 There was Lorenzo slain and buried in, 
 
 There in that forest did his great love cease ; 
 
 Ah ! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, 
 It aches in loneliness — is ill at peace 
 
 As the break-covert blood-hounds of such sin : 
 
 They dipp'd their swords in the water, and did tease 
 
 Their horses homeward, with convulsed spur, 
 
 Each richer by his being a murderer. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 They told their sister how, with sudden speed, 
 Lorenzo had ta'en ship for foreign lands, 
 
 Because of some great urgency and need 
 In their affairs, requiring trusty hands. 
 
 Poor girl ! put on thy stifling widow's weed, 
 
 And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands ; 
 
 To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, 
 
 And the next day will be a day of sorrow. 
 
 xxx 
 She weeps alone for pleasures not to be ; 
 
 Sorely she wept, until the night came on, 
 And then, instead of love, O misery ! 
 
 She brooded o'er the luxury alone : 
 His image in the dusk she seem'd to see, 
 
 And to the silence made a gentle moan, 
 Spreading her perfect arms upon the air, 
 And on her couch low murmuring, "Where? O where?" 
 
 XXXI 
 
 But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long 
 Its fiery vigil in her single breast ; 
 
EACH THIRD STEP DID HE PAUSE, AND LISTEN'D OFT 
 IF HE COULD HEAR HIS LADY'S MATIN-SONG 
 
ISABELLA 167 
 
 She fretted for the golden hour, and hung 
 
 Upon the time with feverish unrest — 
 Not long — for soon into her heart a throng 
 
 Of higher occupants, a richer zest, 
 Came tragic ; passion not to be subdued, 
 And sorrow for her love in travels rude. 
 
 XXXII 
 In the mid days of autumn, on their eves 
 
 The breath of Winter comes from far away, 
 And the sick west continually bereaves 
 
 Of some gold tinge, and plays a roundelay 
 Of death among the bushes and the leaves, 
 
 To make all bare before he dares to stray 
 From his north cavern. So sweet Isabel 
 By gradual decay from beauty fell, 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Because Lorenzo came not. Oftentimes 
 She ask'd her brothers, with an eye all pale, 
 
 Striving to be itself, what dungeon climes 
 
 Could keep him off so long ? They spake a tale 
 
 Time after time, to quiet her. Their crimes 
 
 Came on them, like a smoke from Hinnom's vale ; 
 
 And every night in dreams they groan'd aloud, 
 
 To see their sister in her snowy shroud. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 And she had died in drowsy ignorance, 
 But for a thing more deadly dark than all ; 
 
 It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance, 
 Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall 
 
 For some few gasping moments ; like a lance, 
 Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall 
 
 With cruel pierce, and bringing him again 
 
 Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain. 
 
168 ISABELLA 
 
 xxxv 
 It was a vision. — In the drowsy gloom, 
 
 The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot 
 Lorenzo stood, and wept : the forest tomb 
 
 Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot 
 Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom 
 
 Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute 
 From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears 
 Had made a miry channel for his tears. 
 
 xxxvi 
 
 Strange sound it was, when the pale shadow spake : 
 For there was striving, in its piteous tongue, 
 
 To speak as when on earth it was awake, 
 And Isabella on its music hung : 
 
 Languor there was in it, and tremulous shake, 
 As in a palsied Druid's harp unstrung ; 
 
 And through it moan'd a ghostly under-song, 
 
 Like hoarse night-gusts sepulchral briars among. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy bright 
 With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof 
 
 From the poor girl by magic of their light, 
 The while it did unthread the horrid woof 
 
 Of the late darken'd time, — the murderous spite 
 Of pride and avarice, — the dark pine roof 
 
 In the forest, — and the sodden turfed dell, 
 
 Where, without any word, from stabs he fell. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 Saying moreover, " Isabel, my sweet ! 
 
 Red whortle-berries droop above my head, 
 And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet ; 
 
 Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed 
 Their leaves and prickly nuts ; a sheep-fold bleat 
 
 Comes from beyond the river to my bed : 
 
THEY TOLD THEIR SISTER HOW, WITH SUDDEN SPEED, 
 LORENZO HAD TA'EN SHIP FOR FOREIGN LANDS 
 
ISABELLA 171 
 
 Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, 
 And it shall comfort me within the tomb. 
 
 xxxix 
 
 " I am a shadow now, alas ! alas ! 
 
 Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling 
 Alone : I chant alone the holy mass, 
 
 While little sounds of life are round me knelling, 
 And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass, 
 
 And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, 
 Paining me through : those sounds grow strange to me, 
 And thou art distant in Humanity. 
 
 XL 
 " I know what was, I feel full well what is, 
 
 And I should rage, if spirits could go mad ; 
 Though I forget the taste of earthly bliss, 
 
 That paleness warms my grave, as though I had 
 A Seraph chosen from the bright abyss 
 
 To be my spouse : thy paleness makes me glad ; 
 Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel 
 A greater love through all my essence steal." 
 
 XLI 
 
 The Spirit mourn'd " Adieu ! " — dissolved, and left 
 The atom darkness in a slow turmoil ; 
 
 As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft, 
 Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil, 
 
 We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft, 
 
 And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil : 
 
 It made sad Isabella's eyelids ache, 
 
 And in the dawn she started up awake ; 
 
 XLII 
 " Ha ! ha ! " said she, " I knew not this hard life, 
 I thought the worst was simple misery ; 
 
i;2 ISABELLA 
 
 I thought some Fate with pleasure or with strife 
 Portion'd us — happy days, or else to die ; 
 
 But there is crime — a brother's bloody knife ! 
 Sweet Spirit, thou hast school'd my infancy : 
 
 I'll visit thee for this, and kiss thine eyes, 
 
 And greet thee morn and even in the skies." 
 
 XLIII 
 When the full morning came, she had devised 
 
 How she might secret to the forest hie ; 
 How she might find the clay, so dearly prized, 
 
 And sing to it one latest lullaby ; 
 How her short absence might be unsurmised, 
 
 While she the inmost of the dream would try. 
 Resolved, she took with her an aged nurse, 
 And went into that dismal forest-hearse. 
 
 XLIV 
 See, as they creep along the river side, 
 
 How she doth whisper to that aged Dame, 
 And, after looking round the champaign wide, 
 
 Shows her a knife. — " What feverous hectic flame 
 Burns in thee, child ? — What good can thee betide, 
 
 That thou shouldst smile again?" — The evening came, 
 And they had found Lorenzo's earthy bed ; 
 The flint was there, the berries at his head. 
 
 XLV 
 Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard, 
 
 And let his spirit, like a demon-mole, 
 Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard, 
 
 To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole ; 
 Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd, 
 
 And filling it once more with human soul ? 
 Ah ! this is holiday to what was felt 
 When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt. 
 
ISABELLA 173 
 
 XLVI 
 She gazed into the fresh-thrown mould, as though 
 
 One glance did fully all its secrets tell ; 
 Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know 
 
 Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well ; 
 Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow, 
 
 Like to a native lily of the dell : 
 Then with her knife, all sudden, she began 
 To dig more fervently than misers can. 
 
 XLVII 
 Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon 
 
 Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies, 
 She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone, 
 
 And put it in her bosom, where it dries 
 And freezes utterly unto the bone 
 
 Those dainties made to still an infant's cries : 
 Then 'gan she work again ; nor stay'd her care, 
 But to throw back at times her veiling hair. 
 
 XLVIII 
 That old nurse stood beside her wondering, 
 
 Until her heart felt pity to the core 
 At sight of such a dismal labouring, 
 
 And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar, 
 And put her lean hands to the horrid thing : 
 
 Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore ; 
 At last they felt the kernel of the grave, 
 And Isabella did not stamp and rave. 
 
 XLIX 
 Ah ! wherefore all this wormy circumstance ? 
 
 Why linger at the yawning tomb so long ? 
 O for the gentleness of old Romance, 
 
 The simple plaining of a minstrel's song ! 
 Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance, 
 
 For here, in truth, it doth not well belong 
 
174 ISABELLA 
 
 To speak : — O turn thee to the very tale, 
 And taste the music of that vision pale. 
 
 L 
 With duller steel than the Persean sword 
 
 They cut away no formless monster's head, 
 But one, whose gentleness did well accord 
 
 With death, as life. The ancient harps have said, 
 Love never dies, but lives, immortal Lord : 
 
 If Love impersonate was ever dead, 
 Pale Isabella kiss'd it, and low moan'd. 
 'Twas love ; cold, — dead indeed, but not dethroned. 
 
 LI 
 
 In anxious secrecy they took it home, 
 And then the prize was all for Isabel : 
 
 She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb, 
 And all around each eye's sepulchral cell 
 
 Pointed each fringed lash ; the smeared loam 
 With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, 
 
 She drench'd away : — and still she comb'd, and kept 
 
 Sighing all day — and still she kiss'd, and wept. 
 
 LII 
 Then in a silken scarf, — sweet with the dews 
 
 Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby, 
 And divine liquids come with odorous ooze 
 
 Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, — 
 She wrapp'd it up ; and for its tomb did choose 
 
 A garden-pot, wherein she laid it by, 
 And cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set 
 Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. 
 
 LIII 
 And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, 
 And she forgot the blue above the trees, 
 
PALE ISABELLA KISS'D IT AND LOW MOAN'D 
 
ISABELLA 177 
 
 And she forgot the dells where waters run, 
 And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze ; 
 
 She had no knowledge when the day was done, 
 And the new morn she saw not : but in peace 
 
 Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, 
 
 And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. 
 
 LIV 
 And so she ever fed it with thin tears, 
 
 Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew, 
 So that it smelt more balmy than its peers 
 
 Of Basil-tufts in Florence ; for it drew 
 Nurture besides, and life, from human fears, 
 
 From the fast mouldering head there shut from view 
 So that the jewel, safely casketed, 
 Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread. 
 
 LV 
 
 O Melancholy, linger here awhile ! 
 
 O Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! 
 O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle, 
 
 Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us — O sigh ! 
 Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile ; 
 
 Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, 
 And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, 
 Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs. 
 
 LVI 
 Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe, 
 
 From the deep throat of sad Melpomene ! 
 Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, 
 
 And touch the strings into a mystery ; 
 Sound mournfully upon the winds and low ; 
 
 For simple Isabel is soon to be 
 Among the dead : She withers, like a palm 
 Cut by an Indian for its juicy balm. 
 
 N 
 
178 ISABELLA 
 
 LVII 
 
 O leave the palm to wither by itself ; 
 
 Let not quick Winter chill its dying hour ! — 
 It may not be — those Baalites of pelf, 
 
 Her brethren, noted the continual shower 
 From her dead eyes ; and many a curious elf, 
 
 Among her kindred, wonder'd that such dower 
 Of youth and beauty should be thrown aside 
 By one mark'd out to be a Noble's bride. 
 
 LVIII 
 And, furthermore, her brethren wonder'd much 
 
 Why she sat drooping by the Basil green, 
 And why it flourish'd, as by magic touch ; 
 
 Greatly they wonder'd what the thing might mean 
 They could not surely give belief, that such 
 
 A very nothing would have power to wean 
 Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay, 
 And even remembrance of her love's delay. 
 
 LIX 
 Therefore they watch'd a time when they might sift 
 
 This hidden whim ; and long they watch'd in vain 
 For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift, 
 
 And seldom felt she any hunger-pain ; 
 And when she left, she hurried back, as swift 
 
 As bird on wing to breast its eggs again ; 
 And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there 
 Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair. 
 
 LX 
 Yet they contrived to steal the Basil-pot, 
 
 And to examine it in secret place : 
 The thing was vile with green and livid spot, 
 
 And yet they knew it was Lorenzo's face : 
 The guerdon of their murder they had got, 
 
 And so left Florence in a moment's space, 
 
ISABELLA 179 
 
 Never to turn again. — Away they went, 
 With blood upon their heads, to banishment. 
 
 LXI 
 O Melancholy, turn thine eyes away ! 
 
 O Music, Music, breathe despondingly ! 
 O Echo, Echo, on some other day, 
 
 From isles Lethean, sigh to us — O sigh ! 
 Spirits of grief, sing not your " Well-a-way ! " 
 
 For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die ; 
 Will die a death too lone and incomplete, 
 Now they have ta'en away her Basil sweet. 
 
 LXII 
 Piteous she look'd on dead and senseless things, 
 
 Asking for her lost Basil amorously : 
 And with melodious chuckle in the strings 
 
 Of her lorn voice, she oftentimes would cry 
 After the Pilgrim in his wanderings, 
 
 To ask him where her Basil was ; and why 
 'Twas hid from her : " For cruel 'tis," said she, 
 To steal my Basil-pot away from me." 
 
 LXIII 
 And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, 
 
 Imploring for her Basil to the last. 
 No heart was there in Florence but did mourn 
 
 In pity of her love, so overcast. 
 And a sad ditty of this story born 
 
 From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd : 
 Still is the burthen sung — " O cruelty, 
 To steal my Basil-pot away from me ! " 
 
HYPERION 
 
 tg^Q^ 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 
 
 Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, 
 
 Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
 
 Forest on forest hung about his head 
 
 Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, 
 
 But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest 
 
 A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more 
 
 By reason of his fallen divinity 
 
 Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds 
 
 Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. 
 
 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, 
 No further than to where his feet had stray'd, 
 And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; 
 
HYPERION 181 
 
 While his bow'd head seem'd list'ning to the Earth, 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. 
 
 It seem'd no force could wake him from his place ; 
 But there came one, who with a kindred hand 
 Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low 
 With reverence, though to one who knew it not 
 She was a Goddess of the infant world ; 
 By her in stature the tall Amazon 
 Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have ta'en 
 Achilles by the hair and bent his neck ; 
 Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 
 Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, 
 Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, 
 When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. 
 But oh ! how unlike marble was that face : 
 How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self. 
 There was a listening fear in her regard, 
 As if calamity had but begun ; 
 As if the vanward clouds of evil days 
 Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 
 Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 
 One hand she press'd upon that aching spot 
 Where beats the human heart, as if just there, 
 Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain : 
 The other upon Saturn's bended neck 
 She laid, and to the level of his ear 
 Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake 
 In solemn tenour and deep organ tone : 
 Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 
 Would come in these like accents ; O how frail 
 To that large utterance of the early Gods ! 
 " Saturn, look up ! — though wherefore, poor old King ? 
 I have no comfort for thee, no not one : 
 I cannot say, ' O wherefore sleepest thou ? ' 
 For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth 
 
182 HYPERION 
 
 Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God ; 
 And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, 
 Has from thy sceptre pass'd ; and all the air 
 Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. 
 Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 
 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house ; 
 And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands 
 Scorches and burns our once serene domain. 
 O aching time ! O moments big as years ! 
 All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth, 
 And press it so upon our weary griefs 
 That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 
 Saturn, sleep on : — O thoughtless, why did I 
 Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude ? 
 Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes ? 
 Saturn, sleep on ! while at thy feet I weep.' 
 
 As when, upon a tranced summer-night, 
 Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, 
 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust 
 Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave ; 
 So came these words and went ; the while in tears 
 She touch'd her fair large forehead to the ground, 
 Just where her falling hair might be outspread 
 A soft and silken mat for Saturn's feet. 
 One moon, with alteration slow, had shed 
 Her silver seasons four upon the night, 
 And still these two were postured motionless, 
 Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern ; 
 The frozen God still couchant on the earth, 
 And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet : 
 Until at length old Saturn lifted up 
 His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone, 
 And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, 
 
HYPERION 183 
 
 And that fair kneeling Goddess ; and then spake, 
 
 As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard 
 
 Shook horrid with such aspen-malady : 
 
 " O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, 
 
 Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face ; 
 
 Look up, and let me see our doom in it ; 
 
 Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape 
 
 Is Saturn's ; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice 
 
 Of Saturn ; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, 
 
 Naked and bare of its great diadem, 
 
 Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power 
 
 To make me desolate ? whence came the strength ? 
 
 How was it nurtured to such bursting forth, 
 
 While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp ? 
 
 But it is so ; and I am smother'd up, 
 
 And buried from all godlike exercise 
 
 Of influence benign on planets pale, 
 
 Of admonitions to the winds and seas, 
 
 Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting 
 
 And all those acts which Deity supreme 
 
 Doth ease its heart of love in. — I am gone 
 
 Away from my own bosom : I have left 
 
 My strong identity, my real self, 
 
 Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit 
 
 Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search ! 
 
 Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round 
 
 Upon all space : space starr'd, and lorn of light ; 
 
 Space region'd with life-air ; and barren void ; 
 
 Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell. — 
 
 Search, Thea, search ! and tell me, if thou seest 
 
 A certain shape or shadow, making way 
 
 With wings or chariot fierce to repossess 
 
 A heaven he lost erewhile : it must — it must 
 
 Be of ripe progress — Saturn must be King. 
 
 Yes, there must be a golden victory ; 
 
 There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown 
 
 Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival 
 
1 84 HYPERION 
 
 Upon the gold clouds metropolitan, 
 Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir 
 Of strings in hollow shells ; and there shall be 
 Beautiful things made new, for the surprise 
 Of the sky-children ; I will give command : 
 Thea ! Thea ! Thea ! where is Saturn ? " 
 
 This passion lifted him upon his feet, 
 And made his hands to struggle in the air, 
 His Druid locks to shake and ooze with sweat, 
 His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. 
 He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep ; 
 A little time, and then again he snatch'd 
 Utterance thus. — " But cannot I create ? 
 Cannot I form ? Cannot I fashion forth 
 Another world, another universe, 
 To overbear and crumble this to nought ? 
 Where is another chaos ? Where ? " — That word 
 Found way unto Olympus, and made quake 
 The rebel three. — Thea was startled up, 
 And in her bearing was a sort of hope, 
 As thus she quick-voiced spake, yet full of awe. 
 
 " This cheers our fallen house : come to our friends, 
 
 Saturn ! come away, and give them heart ; 
 
 1 know the covert, for thence came I hither." 
 Thus brief ; then with beseeching eyes she went 
 With backward footing through the shade a space : 
 He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way 
 Through aged boughs, that yielded like the mist 
 Which eagles cleave upmounting from their nest. 
 
 Meanwhile in other realms big tears were shed, 
 More sorrow like to this, and such like woe, 
 Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe : 
 The Titans fierce, self-hid, or prison-bound, 
 Groan'd for the old allegiance once more, 
 
HYPERION 185 
 
 And listen'd in sharp pain for Saturn's voice. 
 
 But one of the whole mammoth-brood still kept 
 
 His sov'reignty, and rule, and majesty ; — 
 
 Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire 
 
 Still sat, still snurT'd the incense, teeming up 
 
 From man to the sun's God ; yet unsecure : 
 
 For as among us mortals omens drear 
 
 Fright and perplex, so also shudder'd he — 
 
 Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech, 
 
 Or the familiar visiting of one 
 
 Upon the first toll of his passing-bell, 
 
 Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp ; 
 
 But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve, 
 
 Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright 
 
 Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold, 
 
 And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks, 
 
 Glared a blood-red through all its thousand courts, 
 
 Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries ; 
 
 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 
 
 Flush'd angerly : while sometimes eagle's wings, 
 
 Unseen before by Gods or wondering men, 
 
 Darken'd the place ; and neighing steeds were heard, 
 
 Not heard before by Gods or wondering men. 
 
 Also, when he would taste the spicy wreaths 
 
 Of incense, breathed aloft from sacred hills, 
 
 Instead of sweets, his ample palate took 
 
 Savour of poisonous brass and metal sick : 
 
 And so, when harbour'd in the sleepy west, 
 
 After the full completion of fair day, — 
 
 For rest divine upon exalted couch 
 
 And slumber in the arms of melody, 
 
 He paced away the pleasant hours of ease 
 
 With stride colossal, on from hall to hall ; 
 
 While far within each aisle and deep recess, 
 
 His winged minions in close clusters stood, 
 
 Amazed and full of fear ; like anxious men 
 
 Who on wide plains gather in panting troops, 
 
1 86 HYPERION 
 
 When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers. 
 Even now, while Saturn, roused from icy trance, 
 Went step for step with Thea through the woods, 
 Hyperion leaving twilight in the rear, 
 Came slope upon the threshold of the west ; 
 Then, as was wont, his palace-door flew ope 
 In smoothest silence, save what solemn tubes, 
 Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet 
 And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies ; 
 And like a rose in vermeil tint and shape, 
 In fragrance soft, and coolness to the eye, 
 That inlet to severe magnificence 
 Stood full blown, for the God to enter in. 
 
 He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath ; 
 His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels, 
 And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire, 
 That scared away the meek ethereal Hours 
 And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared, 
 From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault, 
 Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light, 
 And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades, 
 Until he reach'd the great main cupola ; 
 There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot, 
 And from the basements deep to the high towers 
 Jarr'd his own golden region ; and before 
 The quavering thunder thereupon had ceased, 
 His voice leaped out, despite of godlike curb, 
 To this result : " O dreams of day and night ! 
 O monstrous forms ! O effigies of pain ! 
 O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom ! 
 O lank-ear'd Phantoms of black-weeded pools ! 
 Why do I know ye ? why have I seen ye ? why 
 Is my eternal essence thus distraught 
 To see and to behold these horrors new ? 
 Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall ? 
 Am I to leave this haven of my rest, 
 
HYPERION 187 
 
 This cradle of my glory, this soft clime, 
 
 This calm luxuriance of blissful light, 
 
 These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes, 
 
 Of all my lucent empire ? It is left 
 
 Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine. 
 
 The blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry, 
 
 I cannot see — but darkness, death and darkness. 
 
 Even here, into my centre of repose, 
 
 The shady visions come to domineer, 
 
 Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp. — 
 
 Fall ! — No, by Tellus and her briny robes ! 
 
 Over the fiery frontier of my realms 
 
 I will advance a terrible right arm 
 
 Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove, 
 
 And bid old Saturn take his throne again." — 
 
 He spake, and ceased, the while a heavier threat 
 
 Held struggle with his throat but came not forth ; 
 
 For as in theatres of crowded men 
 
 Hubbub increases more they call out " Hush ! " 
 
 So at Hyperion's words the Phantoms pale 
 
 Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold ; 
 
 And from the mirror'd level where he stood 
 
 A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh. 
 
 At this, through all his bulk an agony 
 
 Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown, 
 
 Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular 
 
 Making slow way, with head and neck convulsed 
 
 From over-strained might. Released, he fled 
 
 To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours 
 
 Before the dawn in season due should blush, 
 
 He breathed fierce breath against the sleepy portals, 
 
 Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide 
 
 Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams. 
 
 The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode 
 
 Each day from east to west the heavens through, 
 
 Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds ; 
 
 Not therefore veiled quite, blindfold, and hid, 
 
188 HYPERION 
 
 But ever and anon the glancing spheres, 
 
 Circles, and arcs, and broad-belting colure, 
 
 Glow'd through, and wrought upon the muffling dark 
 
 Sweet-shaped lightnings from the nadir deep 
 
 Up to the zenith, — hieroglyphics old, 
 
 Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers 
 
 Then living on the earth, with labouring thought 
 
 Won from the gaze of many centuries : 
 
 Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge 
 
 Of stone, or marble swart ; their import gone, 
 
 Their wisdom long since fled. — Two wings this orb 
 
 Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings, 
 
 Ever exalted at the God's approach : 
 
 And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense 
 
 Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were ; 
 
 While still the dazzling globe maintain'd eclipse, 
 
 Awaiting for Hyperion's command. 
 
 Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne 
 
 And bid the day begin, if but for change. 
 
 He might not : — No, though a primeval God : 
 
 The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd. 
 
 Therefore the operations of the dawn 
 
 Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told. 
 
 Those silver wings expanded sisterly, 
 
 Eager to sail their orb ; the porches wide 
 
 Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night ; 
 
 And the bright Titan phrenzied with new woes, 
 
 Unused to bend, by hard compulsion bent 
 
 His spirit to the sorrow of the time ; 
 
 And all along a dismal rack of clouds 
 
 Upon the boundaries of day and night, 
 
 He stretch'd himself in grief and radiance faint 
 
 There as he lay, the Heaven with its stars 
 
 Look'd down on him with pity, and the voice 
 
 Of Ccelus, from the universal space, 
 
 Thus whisper'd low and solemn in his ear. 
 
 " O brightest of my children dear, earth-born 
 
HYPERION 189 
 
 And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries 
 
 All unrevealed even to the powers 
 
 Which met at thy creating ; at whose joys 
 
 And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft, 
 
 I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence ; 
 
 And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be, 
 
 Distinct, and visible ; symbols divine, 
 
 Manifestations of that beauteous life 
 
 Diffused unseen throughout eternal space : 
 
 Of these new-form'd art thou, oh brightest child ! 
 
 Of these, thy brethren and the Goddesses ! 
 
 There is sad feud among ye, and rebellion 
 
 Of son against his sire. I saw him fall, 
 
 I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne ! 
 
 To me his arms were spread, to me his voice 
 
 Found way from forth the thunders round his head ! 
 
 Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face. 
 
 Art thou, too, near such doom ? vague fear there is : 
 
 For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods. 
 
 Divine ye were created, and divine 
 
 In sad demeanour, solemn, undisturb'd, 
 
 Unruffled, like high Gods, ye lived and ruled : 
 
 Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath ; 
 
 Actions of rage and passion ; even as 
 
 I see them, on the mortal world beneath, 
 
 In men who die. — This is the grief, O Son ! 
 
 Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall ! 
 
 Yet do thou strive ; as thou art capable, 
 
 As thou canst move about, an evident God ; 
 
 And canst oppose to each malignant hour 
 
 Ethereal presence : — I am but a voice ; 
 
 My life is but the life of winds and tides, 
 
 No more than winds and tides can I avail : — 
 
 But thou canst. — Be thou therefore in the van 
 
 Of circumstance ; yea, seize the arrow's barb 
 
 Before the tense string murmur. — To the earth ! 
 
 For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes. 
 
iqo HYPERION 
 
 Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun, 
 
 And of thy seasons be a careful nurse." — 
 
 Ere half this region -whisper had come down, 
 
 Hyperion arose, and on the stars 
 
 Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide 
 
 Until it ceased ; and still he kept them wide : 
 
 And still they were the same bright, patient stars. 
 
 Then with a slow incline of his broad breast, 
 
 Like to a diver in the pearly seas, 
 
 Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore, 
 
 And plunged all noiseless into the deep night. 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 JUST at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings 
 
 Hyperion slid into the rustled air, 
 
 And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place 
 
 Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd. 
 
 It was a den where no insulting light 
 
 Could glimmer on their tears ; where their own groans 
 
 They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar 
 
 Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse 
 
 Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where. 
 
 Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd 
 
 Ever as if just rising from a sleep, 
 
 Forehead to forehead held their monstrous horns ; 
 
 And thus in thousand hugest phantasies 
 
 Made a fit roofing to this nest of woe. 
 
 Instead of thrones, hard flint they sat upon, 
 
 Couches of rugged stone, and slaty ridge 
 
 Stubborn'd with iron. All were not assembled : 
 
 Some chain'd in torture, and some wandering. 
 
 Cceus, and Gyges, and Briareiis, 
 
 Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion, 
 
 With many more, the brawniest in assault, 
 
 Were pent in regions of laborious breath ; 
 
HYPERION 191 
 
 Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep 
 
 Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs 
 
 Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd ; 
 
 Without a motion, save of their big hearts 
 
 Heaving in pain, and horribly convulsed 
 
 With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse. 
 
 Mnemosyne was straying in the world ; 
 
 Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered ; 
 
 And many else were free to roam abroad, 
 
 But for the main, here found they covert drear. 
 
 Scarce images of life, one here, one there, 
 
 Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque 
 
 Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, 
 
 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, 
 
 In dull November, and their chancel vault, 
 
 The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. 
 
 Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave 
 
 Or word, or look, or action of despair. 
 
 Creiis was one ; his ponderous iron mace 
 
 Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock 
 
 Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined. 
 
 Iapetus another ; in his grasp, 
 
 A serpent's plashy neck ; its barbed tongue 
 
 Squeezed from the gorge, and all its uncurl'd length 
 
 Dead ; and because the creature could not spit 
 
 Its poison in the eyes of conquering Jove. 
 
 Next Cottus : prone he lay, chin uppermost, 
 
 As though in pain ; for still upon the flint 
 
 He ground severe his skull, with open mouth 
 
 And eyes at horrid working. Nearest him 
 
 Asia, born of most enormous Caf, 
 
 Who cost her mother Tellus keener pangs, 
 
 Though feminine, than any of her sons : 
 
 More thought than woe was in her dusky face, 
 
 For she was prophesying of her glory ; 
 
 And in her wide imagination stood 
 
 Palm-shaded temples, and high rival fanes, 
 
192 HYPERION 
 
 By Oxus or in Ganges' sacred isles. 
 
 Even as Hope upon her anchor leans, 
 
 So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk 
 
 Shed from the broadest of her elephants. 
 
 Above her, on a crag's uneasy shelve, 
 
 Upon his elbow raised, all prostrate else, 
 
 Shadow'd Enceladus ; once tame and mild 
 
 As grazing ox unworried in the meads ; 
 
 Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth, 
 
 He meditated, plotted, and even now 
 
 Was hurling mountains in that second war, 
 
 Not long delay'd, that scared the younger Gods 
 
 To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird. 
 
 Not far hence Atlas ; and beside him prone 
 
 Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close 
 
 Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap 
 
 Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair. 
 
 In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet 
 
 Of Ops the queen all clouded round from sight ; 
 
 No shape distinguishable, more than when 
 
 Thick night confounds the pine-tops with the clouds 
 
 And many else whose names may not be told. 
 
 For when the Muse's wings are air-ward spread, 
 
 Who shall delay her flight ? And she must chaunt 
 
 Of Saturn, and his guide, who now had climb'd 
 
 With damp and slippery footing from a depth 
 
 More horrid still. Above a sombre cliff 
 
 Their heads appear'd, and up their stature grew 
 
 Till on the level height their steps found ease : 
 
 Then Thea spread abroad her trembling arms 
 
 Upon the precincts of this nest of pain, 
 
 And sidelong fix'd her eye on Saturn's face : 
 
 There saw she direst strife ; the supreme God 
 
 At war with all the frailty of grief, 
 
 Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge, 
 
 Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair. 
 
 Against these plagues he strove in vain ; for Fate 
 
HYPERION 193 
 
 Had pour'd a mortal oil upon his head, 
 A disanointing poison : so that Thea, 
 Affrighted, kept her still, and let him pass 
 First onwards in, among the fallen tribe. 
 
 As with us mortal men, the laden heart 
 Is persecuted more, and fever'd more, 
 When it is nighing to the mournful house 
 Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise ; 
 So Saturn, as he walk'd into the midst, 
 Fell faint, and would have sunk among the rest, 
 But that he met Enceladus's eye, 
 Whose mightiness, and awe of him, at once 
 Came like an inspiration ; and he shouted, 
 " Titans, behold your God ! " at which some groan'd ; 
 Some started on their feet ; some also shouted ; 
 Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence ; 
 And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil, 
 Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan, 
 Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes. 
 There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines 
 When Winter lifts his voice ; there is a noise 
 Among immortals when a God gives sign, 
 With hushing finger, how he means to load 
 His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought, 
 With thunder, and with music, and with pomp : 
 Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines ; 
 Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world, 
 No other sound succeeds ; but ceasing here, 
 Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom 
 Grew up like organ, that begins anew 
 Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short, 
 Leave the dinn'd air vibrating silverly. 
 Thus grew it up — " Not in my own sad breast, 
 Which is its own great judge and searcher out, 
 Can I find reason why ye should be thus : 
 Not in the legends of the first of days, 
 
 O 
 
194 HYPERION 
 
 Studied from that old spirit-leaved book 
 
 Which starry Uranus with finger bright 
 
 Saved from the shores of darkness, when the waves 
 
 Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom ; — 
 
 And the which book ye know I ever kept 
 
 For my firm-based footstool : — Ah, infirm ! 
 
 Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent 
 
 Of element, earth, water, air, and fire, — 
 
 At war, at peace, or inter-quarrelling 
 
 One against one, or two, or three, or all 
 
 Each several one against the other three, 
 
 As fire with air loud warring when rain-floods 
 
 Drown both, and press them both against earth's face, 
 
 Where, finding sulphi:r, a quadruple wrath 
 
 Unhinges the poor world ; — not in that strife, 
 
 Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep, 
 
 Can I find reason why ye should be thus : 
 
 No, no-where can unriddle, though I search, 
 
 And pore on Nature's universal scroll 
 
 Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities, 
 
 The first-born of all shaped and palpable Gods, 
 
 Should cower beneath what, in comparison, 
 
 Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here, 
 
 O'erwhelm'd, and spurn'd, and batter'd, ye are here ! 
 
 O Titans, shall I say ' Arise ! ' — Ye groan : 
 
 Shall I say ' Crouch ! ' — Ye groan. What can I then ? 
 
 O Heaven wide ! O unseen parent dear ! 
 
 What can I ? Tell me, all ye brethren Gods, 
 
 How we can war, how engine our great wrath ! 
 
 speak your counsel now, for Saturn's ear 
 Is all a-hunger'd. Thou, Oceanus, 
 Ponderest high and deep ; and in thy face 
 
 1 see, astonied, that severe content 
 
 Which comes of thought and musing : give us help !" 
 
 So ended Saturn ; and the God of the Sea, 
 Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, 
 
HYPERION 195 
 
 But cogitation in his watery shades, 
 
 Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, 
 
 In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue 
 
 Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands. 
 
 " O ye, whom wrath consumes ! who, passion-stung, 
 
 Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies ! 
 
 Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, 
 
 My voice is not a bellows unto ire. 
 
 Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof 
 
 How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop : 
 
 And in the proof much comfort will I give, 
 
 If ye will take that comfort in its truth. 
 
 We fall by course of Nature's law, not force 
 
 Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou 
 
 Hast sifted well the atom-universe ; 
 
 But for this reason, that thou art the King, 
 
 And only blind from sheer supremacy, 
 
 One avenue was shaded from thine eyes, 
 
 Through which I wandered to eternal truth. 
 
 And first, as thou wast not the first of powers, 
 
 So art thou not the last ; it cannot be : 
 
 Thou art not the beginning nor the end. 
 
 From chaos and parental darkness came 
 
 Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil, 
 
 That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends 
 
 Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came, 
 
 And with it light, and light, engendering 
 
 Upon its own producer, forthwith touch'd 
 
 The whole enormous matter into life. 
 
 Upon that very hour, our parentage, 
 
 The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest : 
 
 Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race, 
 
 Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms. 
 
 Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain ; 
 
 O folly! for to bear all naked truths, 
 
 And to envisage circumstance, all calm, 
 
 That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well ! 
 
196 HYPERION 
 
 As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far 
 
 Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; 
 
 And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth 
 
 In form and shape compact and beautiful, 
 
 In will, in action free, companionship, 
 
 And thousand other signs of purer life ; 
 
 So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, 
 
 A power more strong in beauty, born of us 
 
 And fated to excel us, as we pass 
 
 In glory that old Darkness : nor are we 
 
 Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule 
 
 Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil 
 
 Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, 
 
 And feedeth still, more comely than itself? 
 
 Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves ? 
 
 Or shall the tree be envious of the dove 
 
 Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings 
 
 To wander wherewithal and find its joys ? 
 
 We are such forest-trees, and our fair boughs 
 
 Have bred forth, not pale solitary doves, 
 
 But eagles golden-feather'd, who do tower 
 
 Above us in their beauty, and must reign 
 
 In right thereof; for 'tis the eternal law 
 
 That first in beauty should be first in might : 
 
 Yea, by that law, another race may drive 
 
 Our conquerors to mourn as we do now. 
 
 Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas, 
 
 My dispossessor ? Have ye seen his face ? 
 
 Have ye beheld his chariot, foam'd along 
 
 By noble winged creatures he hath made ? 
 
 I saw him on the calmed waters scud, 
 
 With such a glow of beauty in his eyes, 
 
 That it enforced me to bid sad farewell 
 
 To all my empire : farewell sad I took, 
 
 And hither came, to see how dolorous fate 
 
 Had wrought upon ye ; and how I might best 
 
 Give consolation in this woe extreme. 
 
HYPERION 197 
 
 Receive the truth, and let it be your balm." 
 
 Whether through pozed conviction, or disdain, 
 They guarded silence, when Oceanus 
 Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell ? 
 But so it was, none answer'd for a space, 
 Save one whom none regarded, Clymene ; 
 And yet she answer'd not, only complain'd, 
 With hectic lips, and eyes up-looking mild, 
 Thus wording timidly among the fierce : 
 " O Father, I am here the simplest voice, 
 And all my knowledge is that joy is gone, 
 And this thing woe crept in among our hearts, 
 There to remain for ever, as I fear : 
 I would not bode of evil, if I thought 
 So weak a creature could turn off the help 
 Which by just right should come of mighty Gods ; 
 Yet let me tell my sorrow, let me tell 
 Of what I heard, and how it made me weep, 
 And know that we had parted from all hope. 
 I stood upon a shore, a pleasant shore, 
 Where a sweet clime was breathed from a land 
 Of fragrance, quietness, and trees, and flowers. 
 Full of calm joy it was, as I of grief ; 
 Too full of joy and soft delicious warmth ; 
 So that I felt a movement in my heart 
 To chide, and to reproach that solitude 
 With songs of misery, music of our woes ; 
 And sat me down, and took a mouthed shell 
 And murmur'd into it, and made melody — 
 
 melody no more ! for while I sang, 
 And with poor skill let pass into the breeze 
 The dull shell's echo, from a bowery strand 
 Just opposite, an island of the sea, 
 
 There came enchantment with the shifting wind, 
 That did both drown and keep alive my ears. 
 
 1 threw my shell away upon the sand, 
 
198 HYPERION 
 
 And a wave fill'd it, as my sense was fill'd 
 
 With that new blissful golden melody. 
 
 A living death was in each gush of sounds, 
 
 Each family of rapturous hurried notes, 
 
 That fell, one after one, yet all at once, 
 
 Like pearl beads dropping sudden from their string 
 
 And then another, then another strain, 
 
 Each like a dove leaving its olive perch, 
 
 With music wing'd instead of silent plumes, 
 
 To hover round my head, and make me sick 
 
 Of joy and grief at once. Grief overcame, 
 
 And I was stopping up my frantic ears, 
 
 When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands, 
 
 A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune, 
 
 And still it cried, 'Apollo ! young Apollo ! 
 
 The morning-bright Apollo ! young Apollo ! ' 
 
 I fled, it follow'd me, and cried ' Apollo ! ' 
 
 O Father, and O Brethren, had ye felt 
 
 Those pains of mine ; O Saturn, hadst thou felt, 
 
 Ye would not call this too indulged tongue 
 
 Presumptuous, in thus venturing to be heard." 
 
 So far her voice flow'd on, like timorous brook 
 That, lingering along a pebbled coast, 
 Doth fear to meet the sea : but sea it met, 
 And shudder'd ; for the overwhelming voice 
 Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath : 
 The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves 
 In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, 
 Came booming thus, while still upon his arm 
 He lean'd ; not rising, from supreme contempt. 
 " Or shall we listen to the over-wise, 
 Or to the over-foolish giant, Gods ? 
 Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all 
 That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent, 
 Not world on world upon these shoulders piled 
 Could agonize me more than baby-words 
 
HYPERION 199 
 
 In midst of this dethronement horrible. 
 
 Speak ! roar ! shout ! yell ! ye sleepy Titans all. 
 
 Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile ? 
 
 Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm ? 
 
 Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the Waves, 
 
 Thy scalding in the seas ? What, have I roused 
 
 Your spleens with so few simple words as these ? 
 
 O joy ! for now I see ye are not lost : 
 
 O joy ! for now I see a thousand eyes 
 
 Wide glaring for revenge ! " — As this he said, 
 
 He lifted up his stature vast, and stood, 
 
 Still without intermission speaking thus : 
 
 " Now ye are flames, I'll tell you how to burn, 
 
 And purge the ether of our enemies ; 
 
 How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire, 
 
 And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove, 
 
 Stifling that puny essence in its tent. 
 
 let him feel the evil he hath done ; 
 
 For though I scorn Oceanus's lore, 
 
 Much pain have I for more than loss of realms : 
 
 The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled ; 
 
 Those days, all innocent of scathing war, 
 
 When all the fair Existences of heaven 
 
 Came open-eyed to guess what we would speak : — 
 
 That was before our brows were taught to frown, 
 
 Before our lips knew else but solemn sounds ; 
 
 That was before we knew the winged thing, 
 
 Victory, might be lost, or might be won. 
 
 And be ye mindful that Hyperion, 
 
 Our brightest brother, still is undisgraced — 
 
 Hyperion, lo ! his radiance is here ! " 
 
 All eyes were on Enceladus's face, 
 And they beheld, while still Hyperion's name 
 Flew from his lips up to the vaulted rocks, 
 A pallid gleam across his features stern : 
 Not savage, for he saw full many a God 
 
200 HYPERION 
 
 Wroth as himself. He look'd upon them all, 
 
 And in each face he saw a gleam of light, 
 
 But splendider in Saturn's, whose hoar locks 
 
 Shone like the bubbling foam about a keel 
 
 When the prow sweeps into a midnight cove. 
 
 In pale and silver silence they remain'd, 
 
 Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn, 
 
 Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps, 
 
 All the sad spaces of oblivion, 
 
 And every gulf, and every chasm old, 
 
 And every height, and every sullen depth, 
 
 Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams : 
 
 And all the everlasting cataracts, 
 
 And all the headlong torrents far and near, 
 
 Mantled before in darkness and huge shade, 
 
 Now saw the light and made it terrible. 
 
 It was Hyperion : — a granite peak 
 
 His bright feet touch'd, and there he stay'd to view 
 
 The misery his brilliance had betray'd 
 
 To the most hateful seeing of itself. 
 
 Golden his hair of short Numidian curl, 
 
 Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade 
 
 In midst of his own brightness, like the bulk 
 
 Of Memnon's image at the set of sun 
 
 To one who travels from the dusking East : 
 
 Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp 
 
 He utter'd, while his hands contemplative 
 
 He press'd together, and in silence stood. 
 
 Despondence seized again the fallen Gods 
 
 At sight of the dejected King of Day, 
 
 And many hid their faces from the light : 
 
 But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes 
 
 Among the brotherhood ; and, at their glare, 
 
 Uprose Iapetus, and Creiis too, 
 
 And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode 
 
 To where he towered on his eminence. 
 
 There those four shouted forth old Saturn's name ; 
 
HYPERION 201 
 
 Hyperion from the peak loud answered, " Saturn ! " 
 
 Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods, 
 
 In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods 
 
 Gave from their hollow throats the name of " Saturn ! " 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THUS in alternate uproar and sad peace, 
 
 Amazed were those Titans utterly. 
 
 O leave them, Muse ! O leave them to their woes ; 
 
 For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire : 
 
 A solitary sorrow best befits 
 
 Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. 
 
 Leave them, O Muse ! for thou anon wilt find 
 
 Many a fallen old Divinity 
 
 Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. 
 
 Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp, 
 
 And not a wind of heaven but will breathe 
 
 In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute ; 
 
 For lo ! 'tis for the Father of all verse. 
 
 Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue, 
 
 Let the rose glow intense and warm the air, 
 
 And let the clouds of even and of morn 
 
 Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills ; 
 
 Let the red wine within the goblet boil, 
 
 Cold as a bubbling well ; let faint-lipp'd shells, 
 
 On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn 
 
 Through all their labyrinths ; and let the maid 
 
 Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surprised. 
 
 Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades, 
 
 Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green, 
 
 And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech, 
 
 In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song, 
 
 And hazels thick, dark-stemm'd beneath the shade 
 
 Apollo is once more the golden theme ! 
 
 Where was he, when the Giant of the Sun 
 
202 HYPERION 
 
 Stood bright, amid the sorrow of his peers ? 
 
 Together had he left his mother fair 
 
 And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower, 
 
 And in the morning twilight wandered forth 
 
 Beside the osiers of a rivulet, 
 
 Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale. 
 
 The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars 
 
 Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush 
 
 Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle 
 
 There was no covert, no retired cave 
 
 Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves, 
 
 Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. 
 
 He listen'd, and he wept, and his bright tears 
 
 Went trickling down the golden bow he held. 
 
 Thus with half-shut suffused eyes he stood, 
 
 While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by 
 
 With solemn step an awful Goddess came, 
 
 And there was purport in her looks for him, 
 
 Which he with eager guess began to read 
 
 Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said : 
 
 " How earnest thou over the unfooted sea ? 
 
 Or hath that antique mien and robed form 
 
 Moved in these vales invisible till now ? 
 
 Sure I have heard those vestments sweeping o'er 
 
 The fallen leaves, when I have sat alone 
 
 In cool mid-forest. Surely I have traced 
 
 The rustle of those ample skirts about 
 
 These grassy solitudes, and seen the flowers 
 
 Lift up their heads, as still the whisper pass'd. 
 
 Goddess ! I have beheld those eyes before, 
 
 And their eternal calm, and all that face, 
 
 Or I have dream'd." — " Yes," said the supreme shape, 
 
 " Thou hast dream'd of me ; and awaking up 
 
 Didst find a lyre all golden by thy side, 
 
 Whose strings touch'd by thy fingers, all the vast 
 
 Unwearied ear of the whole universe 
 
 Listen'd in pain and pleasure at the birth 
 
HYPERION 203 
 
 Of such new tuneful wonder. Is 't not strange 
 
 That thou shouldst weep, so gifted ? Tell me, youth, 
 
 What sorrow thou canst feel ; for I am sad 
 
 When thou dost shed a tear : explain thy griefs 
 
 To one who in this lonely isle hath been 
 
 The watcher of thy sleep and hours of life, 
 
 From the young day when first thy infant hand 
 
 Pluck'd witless the weak flowers, till thine arm 
 
 Could bend that bow heroic to all times. 
 
 Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power 
 
 Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones 
 
 For prophecies of thee, and for the sake 
 
 Of loveliness new born." — Apollo then, 
 
 With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes, 
 
 Thus answer'd, while his white melodious throat 
 
 Throbb'd with the syllables. — " Mnemosyne ! 
 
 Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how ; 
 
 Why should I tell thee what thou so well seest ? 
 
 Why should I strive to show what from thy lips 
 
 Would come no mystery ? For me, dark, dark, 
 
 And painful vile oblivion seals my eyes : 
 
 I strive to search wherefore I am so sad, 
 
 Until a melancholy numbs my limbs ; 
 
 And then upon the grass I sit, and moan, 
 
 Like one who once had wings. — O why should I 
 
 Feel cursed and thwarted, when the liegeless air 
 
 Yields to my step aspirant ? why should I 
 
 Spurn the green turf as hateful to my feet ? 
 
 Goddess benign, point forth some unknown thing : 
 
 Are there not other regions than this isle ? 
 
 What are the stars ? There is the sun, the sun ! 
 
 And the most patient brilliance of the moon ! 
 
 And stars by thousands ! Point me out the way 
 
 To any one particular beauteous star, 
 
 And I will flit into it with my lyre, 
 
 And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss. 
 
 I have heard the cloudy thunder : Where is power ? 
 
204 HYPERION 
 
 Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity 
 
 Makes this alarum in the elements, 
 
 While I here idle listen on the shores 
 
 In fearless yet in aching ignorance ? 
 
 O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp, 
 
 That waileth every morn and eventide, 
 
 Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves ! 
 
 Mute thou remainest — Mute ! yet I can read 
 
 A wondrous lesson in thy silent face : 
 
 Knowledge enormous makes a God of me. 
 
 Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, 
 
 Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, 
 
 Creations and destroyings, all at once 
 
 Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, 
 
 And deify me, as if some blithe wine 
 
 Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, 
 
 And so become immortal." — Thus the God, 
 
 While his enkindled eyes, with level glance 
 
 Beneath his white soft temples, steadfast kept 
 
 Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne. 
 
 Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush 
 
 All the immortal fairness of his limbs ; 
 
 Most like the struggle at the gate of death ; 
 
 Or liker still to one who should take leave 
 
 Of pale immortal death, and with a pang 
 
 As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse 
 
 Die into life : so young Apollo anguish'd ; 
 
 His very hair, his golden tresses famed 
 
 Kept undulation round his eager neck. 
 
 During the pain Mnemosyne upheld 
 
 Her arms as one who prophesied. — At length 
 
 Apollo shriek'd ; — and lo ! from all his limbs 
 
 Celestial ******* 
 
 * ******** 
 
VE OF ST AGTMES 
 
 St. AGNES' Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was ! 
 The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ; 
 The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, 
 And silent was the flock in woolly fold : 
 Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 
 His rosary, and while his frosted breath, 
 Like pious incense from a censer old, 
 Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, 
 Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. 
 
206 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 ii 
 His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man ; 
 Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, 
 And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, 
 Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees : 
 The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze, 
 Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails : 
 Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, 
 He passeth by ; and his weak spirit fails 
 To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Northward he turneth through a little door, 
 And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue 
 Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor ; 
 But no — already had his deathbell rung ; 
 The joys of all his life were said and sung : 
 His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve : 
 Another way he went, and soon among 
 Rough ashes sat he for his soul's reprieve, 
 And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve. 
 
 IV 
 That ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft ; 
 And so it chanced, for many a door was wide, 
 From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 
 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide : 
 The level chambers, ready with their pride, 
 Were glowing to receive a thousand guests : 
 The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, 
 Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests, 
 With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on 
 their breasts. 
 
 V 
 
 At length burst in the argent revelry, 
 With plume, tiara, and all rich array, 
 
AT LENGTH BURST IN THE ARGENT REVELRY 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 209 
 
 Numerous as shadows haunting fairily 
 The brain, new sturFd, in youth, with triumphs gay 
 Of old romance. These let us wish away, 
 And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there, 
 Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day, 
 On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care, 
 As she had heard old dames full many times declare. 
 
 VI 
 They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, 
 Young virgins might have visions of delight, 
 And soft adorings from their loves receive 
 Upon the honey'd middle of the night, 
 If ceremonies due they did aright ; 
 As, supperless to bed they must retire, 
 And couch supine their beauties, lily white ; 
 Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require 
 Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire. 
 
 VII 
 Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline : 
 The music, yearning like a God in pain, 
 She scarcely heard : her maiden eyes divine, 
 Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
 Pass by — she heeded not at all : in vain 
 Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier, 
 And back retired ; not cool'd by high disdain, 
 But she saw not : her heart was otherwhere : 
 She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year. 
 
 VIII 
 She danced along with vague, regardless eyes, 
 Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short : 
 The hallow'd hour was near at hand : she sighs 
 Amid the timbrels, and the throng'd resort 
 Of whisperers in anger, or in sport ; 
 'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn, 
 P 
 
210 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Hoodwink'd with faery fancy ; all amort, 
 
 Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, 
 
 And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. 
 
 IX 
 
 So, purposing each moment to retire, 
 She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors, 
 Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire 
 For Madeline. Beside the portal doors, 
 Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores 
 All saints to give him sight of Madeline, 
 But for one moment in the tedious hours, 
 That he might gaze and worship all unseen ; 
 Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss — in sooth such 
 things have been. 
 
 X 
 
 He ventures in : let no buzz'd whisper tell : 
 All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords 
 Will storm his heart, Love's fev'rous citadel : 
 For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes, 
 Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords, 
 Whose very dogs would execrations howl 
 Against his lineage : not one breast affords 
 Him any mercy, in that mansion foul, 
 Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. 
 
 XI 
 Ah, happy chance ! the aged creature came, 
 Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, 
 To where he stood, hid from the torch's flame, 
 Behind a broad hall-pillar, far beyond 
 The sound of merriment and chorus bland : 
 He startled her ; but soon she knew his face, 
 And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand, 
 Saying, " Mercy, Porphyro ! hie thee from this place 
 " They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race! 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 2IL 
 
 XII 
 
 "Get hence! gethence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand 
 He had a fever late, and in the fit 
 He cursed thee and thine, both house and land : 
 Then there 's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit 
 More tame for his gray hairs — Alas me ! flit ! 
 Flit like a ghost away." — " Ah, Gossip dear, 
 We're safe enough ; here in this arm-chair sit, 
 And tell me how" — "Good Saints! not here,not here ; 
 Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier." 
 
 XIII 
 
 He follow'd through a lowly arched way, 
 Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume ; 
 And as she mutter'd " Well-a — well-a-day ! " 
 He found him in a little moonlight room, 
 Pale, latticed, chill, and silent as a tomb. 
 " Now tell me where is Madeline," said he, 
 " O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom 
 Which none but secret sisterhood may see, 
 When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." 
 
212 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 XIV 
 
 " St. Agnes ! Ah ! it is St. Agnes' Eve— 
 Yet men will murder upon holy days : 
 Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve, 
 And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, 
 To venture so : it fills me with amaze 
 To see thee, Porphyro ! — St. Agnes' Eve ! 
 God's help ! my lady fair the conjuror plays 
 This very night : good angels her deceive ! 
 But let me laugh awhile, I've mickle time to grieve." 
 
 xv 
 Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon, 
 While Porphyro upon her face doth look, 
 Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone 
 Who keepeth closed a wond'rous riddle-book, 
 As spectacled she sits in chimney nook. 
 But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told 
 His lady's purpose ; and he scarce could brook 
 Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, 
 And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, 
 Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 
 Made purple riot : then doth he propose 
 A stratagem, that makes the beldame start : 
 " A cruel man and impious thou art : 
 Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream 
 Alone with her good angels, far apart 
 From wicked men like thee. Go, go ! — I deem 
 Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem.' 
 
 XVII 
 
 " I will not harm her, by all saints I swear," 
 Quoth Porphyro : " O may I ne'er find grace 
 When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 213 
 
 If one of her soft ringlets I displace, 
 Or look with ruffian passion in her face : 
 Good Angela, believe me by these tears ; 
 Or I will, even in a moment's space, 
 Awake, with horrid shout, my foemen's ears, 
 And beard them, though they be more fang'd than 
 wolves and bears." 
 
 XVIII 
 
 " Ah ! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul ? 
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, 
 Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll ; 
 Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, 
 Were never miss'd." — Thus plaining, doth she bring 
 A gentler speech from burning Porphyro ; 
 So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, 
 That Angela gives promise she will do 
 Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Which was, to lead him, in close secrecy, 
 Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide 
 Him in a closet, of such privacy 
 That he might see her beauty unespied, 
 And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, 
 While legion'd fairies paced the coverlet, 
 And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed. 
 Never on such a night have lovers met, 
 Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt 
 
 XX 
 
 " It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame : 
 " All cates and dainties shall be stored there 
 Quickly on this feast-night : by the tambour frame 
 Her own lute thou wilt see : no time to spare, 
 For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare 
 On such a catering trust my dizzy head. 
 
214 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Wait here, my child, with patience ; kneel in prayer 
 The while : Ah ! thou must needs the lady wed, 
 Or may I never leave my grave among the dead." 
 
 XXI 
 
 So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear. 
 The lover's endless minutes slowly pass'd ; 
 The dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear 
 To follow her ; with aged eyes aghast 
 From fright of dim espial. Safe at last, 
 Through many a dusky gallery, they gain 
 The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd, and chaste ; 
 Where Porphyro took covert, pleased amain. 
 His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain. 
 
 XXII 
 
 Her falt'ring hand upon the balustrade, 
 Old Angela was feeling for the stair, 
 When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, 
 Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware : 
 With silver taper's light, and pious care, 
 She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led 
 To a safe level matting. Now prepare, 
 Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed ; 
 She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray 'd and fled. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Out went the taper as she hurried in ; 
 Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died : 
 She closed the door, she panted, all akin 
 To spirits of the air, and visions wide : 
 No uttered syllable, or, woe betide ! 
 But to her heart, her heart was voluble, 
 Paining with eloquence her balmy side ; 
 As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
 Her throat in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell. 
 
MADELINE, ST. AGNES' CHARMED MAID 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 217 
 
 XXIV 
 
 A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, 
 All garlanded with carven imag'ries 
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
 And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
 As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings ; 
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
 And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
 A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. 
 
 xxv 
 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
 She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
 She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Anon his heart revives : her vespers done, 
 Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
 Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ; 
 Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees 
 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
 Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, 
 Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
 In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 
 
 XXVII 
 Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
 
218 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away ; 
 Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day ; 
 Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain ; 
 Clasp'd like a missal where swart Paynims pray ; 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced, 
 Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress, 
 And listen'd to her breathing, if it chanced 
 To wake into a slumberous tenderness ; 
 Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 
 And breath'd himself: then from the closet crept, 
 Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness, 
 And over the hush'd carpet, silent, stept, 
 And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where, lo! — how fast 
 she slept. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Then by the bed-side, where the laded moon 
 Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set 
 A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon 
 A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet : — 
 O for some drowsy Morphean amulet ! 
 The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, 
 The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet, 
 Affray his ears, though but in dying tone : — 
 The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. 
 
 XXX 
 
 And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, 
 In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd, 
 While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
 Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd ; 
 With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
 And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon ; 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 219 
 
 Manna and dates, in argosy transferred 
 From Fez ; and spiced dainties, every one, 
 From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand 
 On golden dishes and in baskets bright 
 Of wreathed silver : sumptuous they stand 
 In the retired quiet of the night, 
 Filling the chilly room with perfume light. — 
 " And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake ! 
 Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite : 
 Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, 
 Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache." 
 
 XXXII 
 
 Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm 
 Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream 
 By the dusk curtains : — 'twas a midnight charm 
 Impossible to melt as iced stream : 
 The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam ; 
 Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies : 
 It seem'd he never, never could redeem 
 From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes ; 
 So mused awhile, entoil'd in woofed phantasies. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, — 
 Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be, 
 He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, 
 In Provence call'd, " La belle dame sans mercy : " 
 Close to her ear touching the melody ; — 
 Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan : 
 He ceased — she panted quick — and suddenly 
 Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone : 
 Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone. 
 
220 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 xxxiv 
 Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, 
 Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep : 
 There was a painful change, that nigh expell'd 
 The blisses of her dream so pure and deep 
 At which fair Madeline began to weep, 
 And moan forth witless words with many a sigh ; 
 While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep ; 
 Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, 
 Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 " Ah, Porphyro ! " said she, " but even now 
 Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear, 
 Made tuneable with every sweetest vow ; 
 And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear : 
 How changed thou art ! how pallid, chill, and drear ! 
 Give me that voice again, my Porphyro, 
 Those looks immortal, those complainings dear ! 
 Oh leave me not in this eternal woe, 
 For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go." 
 
 XXXVI 
 Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far 
 At these voluptuous accents, he arose, 
 Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star 
 Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose ; 
 Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
 Blendeth its odour with the violet, — 
 Solution sweet : meantime the frost-wind blows 
 Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet 
 Against the window-panes ; St. Agnes' moon hath set. 
 
 XXXVII 
 'Tis dark : quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet : 
 " This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline ! " 
 'Tis dark : the iced gusts still rave and beat : 
 
[HE PLAY'D AN ANCIENT DITTY, LONG SINCE MUTE 
 CLOSE TO HER EAR TOUCHING THE MELODY 
 
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 223 
 
 " No dream, alas ! alas ! and woe is mine ! 
 Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. 
 Cruel ! what traitor could thee hither bring ? 
 I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine, 
 Though thou forsakest a deceived thing ; — 
 A dove forlorn and lost with sick unpruned wing." 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 " My Madeline ! sweet dreamer ! lovely bride ! 
 Say may I be for aye thy vassal blest ? 
 Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil dyed ? 
 Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest 
 After so many hours of toil and quest, 
 A famish'd pilgrim, — saved by miracle. 
 Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest 
 Saving of thy sweet self ; if thou think'st well 
 To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. 
 
 XXXIX 
 " Hark ! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land, 
 Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed : 
 Arise — arise ! the morning is at hand ; — 
 The bloated wassaillers will never heed : — 
 Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
 There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, — 
 Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead : 
 Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be, 
 For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." 
 
 XL 
 She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 
 For there were sleeping dragons all around, 
 At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears — 
 Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. — 
 In all the house was heard no human sound. 
 A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door ; 
 The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, 
 
224 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 
 
 Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar ; 
 And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 
 
 XLI 
 They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall ; 
 Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide ; 
 Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, 
 With a huge empty flagon by his side : 
 The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, 
 But his sagacious eye an inmate owns : 
 By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide : — 
 The chains lie silent on the footworn stones ; — 
 The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. 
 
 XLII 
 And they are gone : ay, ages long ago 
 These lovers fled away into the storm. 
 That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, 
 And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
 Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, 
 Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old 
 Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform ; 
 The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, 
 For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold. 
 
(UNFINISHED) 
 
 Upon a Sabbath-day it fell ; 
 Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell, 
 That call'd the folk to evening prayer ; 
 The city streets were clean and fair 
 From wholesome drench of April rains ; 
 And, on the western window panes, 
 The chilly sunset faintly told 
 Of unmatured green, valleys cold, 
 Of the green, thorny, bloomless hedge, 
 Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge, 
 Of primroses by shelter'd rills, 
 And daisies on the aguish hills. 
 Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell : 
 The silent streets were crowded well 
 With staid and pious companies, 
 Q 
 
226 THE EVE OF SAINT MARK 
 
 Warm from their fire-side orat'ries ; 
 And moving, with demurest air, 
 To even-song, and vesper prayer. 
 Each arched porch, and entry low, 
 Was fill'd with patient folk and slow, 
 With whispers hush, and shuffling feet, 
 While play'd the organ loud and sweet. 
 
 The bells had ceased, the prayers begun, 
 And Bertha had not yet half done 
 A curious volume, patch'd and torn, 
 That all day long, from earliest morn, 
 Had taken captive her two eyes, 
 Among its golden broideries ; 
 Perplex'd her with a thousand things, — 
 The stars of Heaven, and angels' wings, 
 Martyrs in a fiery blaze, 
 Azure saints and silver rays, 
 Moses* breastplate, and the seven 
 Candlesticks John saw in Heaven, 
 The winged Lion of Saint Mark, 
 And the Covenantal Ark, 
 With its many mysteries, 
 Cherubim and golden mice. 
 
 Bertha was a maiden fair, 
 Dwelling in th' old Minster-square, 
 From her fire-side she could see, 
 Sidelong, its rich antiquity, 
 Far as the Bishop's garden-wall ; 
 Where sycamores and elm-trees tall, 
 Full-leaved, the forest had outstript, 
 By no sharp north-wind ever nipt, 
 So shelter'd by the mighty pile. 
 Bertha arose, and read awhile, 
 With forehead 'gainst the window-pane. 
 Again she tried, and then again, 
 
THE EVE OF SAINT MARK 227 
 
 Until the dusk eve left her dark 
 Upon the legend of St. Mark. 
 From plaited lawn-frill, fine and thin, 
 She lifted up her soft warm chin, 
 With aching neck and swimming eyes, 
 And dazed with saintly imag'ries. 
 
 All was gloom, and silent all, 
 Save now and then the still foot-fall 
 Of one returning homewards late, 
 Past the echoing minster-gate. 
 The clamorous daws, that all the day 
 Above tree-tops and towers play, 
 Pair by pair had gone to rest, 
 Each in its ancient belfry-nest, 
 Where asleep they fall betimes, 
 To music and the drowsy chimes. 
 
 All was silent, all was gloom, 
 
 Abroad and in the homely room : 
 
 Down she sat, poor cheated soul ! 
 
 And struck a lamp from the dismal coal ; 
 
 Lean'd forward, with bright drooping hair 
 
 And slant book, full against the glare. 
 
 Her shadow, in uneasy guise, 
 
 Hover'd about, a giant size, 
 
 On ceiling-beam and old oak chair, 
 
 The parrot's cage, and panel square ; 
 
 And the warm angled winter-screen, 
 
 On which were many monsters seen, 
 
 Call'd doves of Siam, Lima mice, 
 
 And legless birds of Paradise, 
 
 Macaw, and tender Av'davat, 
 
 And silken-furr'd Angora cat. 
 
 Untired she read, her shadow still 
 
 Glower'd about, as it would fill 
 
 The room with wildest forms and shades, 
 
228 THE EVE OF SAINT MARK 
 
 As though some ghostly queen of spades 
 Had come to mock behind her back, 
 And dance, and ruffle her garments black. 
 Untired she read the legend page, 
 Of holy Mark, from youth to age, 
 On land, on sea, in pagan chains, 
 Rejoicing for his many pains. 
 Sometimes the learned eremite, 
 With golden star, or dagger bright, 
 Referr'd to pious poesies 
 Written in smallest crow-quill size 
 Beneath the text ; and thus the rhyme 
 Was parcell'd out from time to time : 
 
 " Als writith he of swevenis, 
 
 Men han beforne they wake in bliss, 
 
 Whanne that hir friendes thinke him bound 
 
 In crimped shroude farre under grounde ; 
 
 And how a litling child mote be 
 
 A saint er its nativitie, 
 
 Gif that the modre (God her blesse !) 
 
 Kepen in solitarinesse, 
 
 And kissen devoute the holy croce. 
 
 Of Goddes love, and Sathan's force, — 
 
 He writith ; and thinges many mo 
 
 Of swiche thinges I may not shew. 
 
 Bot I must tellen verilie 
 
 Somdel of Sainte Cicilie, 
 
 And chieflie what he auctorethe 
 
 Of Sainte Markis life and dethe : v 
 
 At length her constant eyelids come 
 Upon the fervent martyrdom ; 
 Then lastly to his holy shrine, 
 Exalt amid the tapers' shine 
 At Venice, — 
 

□ 
 
ODES 
 
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
 
 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
 Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
 
 One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : 
 Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 
 But being too happy in thine happiness, — 
 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
 In some melodious plot 
 Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 
 
 O, for a draught of vintage ! that hath been 
 
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
 Tasting of Flora and the country green, 
 
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth ! 
 O for a beaker full of the warm South, 
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
 And purple-stained mouth ; 
 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 
 
234 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 
 
 3 
 Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
 
 What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
 The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
 
 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
 Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 
 
 Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
 And leaden-eyed despairs, 
 Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes y 
 Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 
 
 4 
 Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee, 
 
 Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 
 But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 
 
 Though the dull brain perplexes and retards : 
 Already with thee ! tender is the night, 
 
 And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 
 Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ; 
 But here there is no light, 
 Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 
 
 5 
 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
 
 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
 
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
 Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves ; 
 And mid-May's eldest child, 
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
 
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 
 
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 235 
 
 6 
 Darkling I listen ; and, for many a time 
 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, 
 
 To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
 In such an ecstasy ! 
 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
 To thy high requiem become a sod. 
 
 7 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 8 
 Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 
 
 To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! 
 Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
 As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 
 Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 
 Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
 Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
 In the next valley-glades : 
 Was it a vision, or a waking dream ? 
 
 Fled is that music : — Do I wake or sleep ? 
 
ODE ONA 
 GRECIAN VRN 
 
 Sl^jS 
 
 THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness, 
 
 Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
 Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
 
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape 
 
 Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 
 
 What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth? 
 What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? 
 
 What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 
 
 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
 
 Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
 Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 
 
 Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 
 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
 
 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
 Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; 
 
 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 
 For ever will thou love, and she be fair ! 
 
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 237 
 
 3 
 Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 
 
 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; 
 And, happy melodist, unwearied, 
 
 For ever piping songs for ever new ; 
 More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 
 For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 
 For ever panting, and for ever young ; 
 All breathing human passion far above, 
 
 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 
 
 4 
 Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
 
 To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 
 
 And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
 What little town by river or sea shore, 
 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
 Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn ? 
 And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
 Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 
 
 5 
 O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede 
 
 Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
 With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 
 
 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
 As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 
 
 When old age shall this generation waste, 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
 " Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 
 
ODE TO PvSTCHE 
 
 GODDESS ! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
 By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 
 
 And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 
 Even into thine own soft-conched ear : 
 
 Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see 
 
 The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes ? 
 
 1 wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, 
 
 And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, 
 Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 
 
 In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof 
 
 Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran 
 A brooklet, scarce espied : 
 'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, 
 
 Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, 
 They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass ; 
 
 Their arms embraced, and their pinions too ; 
 
 Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu, 
 As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, 
 And ready still past kisses to outnumber 
 
 At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love : 
 The winged boy I knew ; 
 
 But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove ? 
 His Psyche true ! 
 
 O latest born and loveliest vision far 
 Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy ! 
 Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star, 
 
 Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky ; 
 Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, 
 
 Nor altar heap'd with flowers ; 
 Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 
 Upon the midnight hours ; 
 
A BRIGHT TORCH, AND A CASEMENT OPE AT NIGHT 
 TO LET THE WARM LOVE IN! 
 
ODE TO PSYCHE 241 
 
 No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet 
 
 From chain-swung censer teeming ; 
 No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat 
 
 Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. 
 
 brightest ! though too late for antique vows, 
 Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, 
 
 When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 
 Holy the air, the water, and the fire ; 
 
 Yet even in these days so far retired 
 From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, 
 Fluttering among the faint Olympians, 
 
 1 see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. 
 So let me be thy choir, and make a moan 
 
 Upon the midnight hours ; 
 Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet 
 
 From swinged censer teeming ; 
 Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat 
 
 Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. 
 
 Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 
 
 In some untrodden region of my mind, 
 Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, 
 
 Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind : 
 Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees 
 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; 
 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 
 
 The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulPd to sleep ; 
 And in the midst of this wide quietness 
 A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
 With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, 
 
 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 
 With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, 
 
 Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same : 
 And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
 
 That shadowy thought can win, 
 A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, 
 
 To let the warm Love in ! 
 
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 
 
 Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ; 
 Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
 
 With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run ; 
 To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
 
 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 
 To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
 
 With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 
 And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
 Until they think warm days will never cease, 
 
 For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 
 
 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
 
 Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
 Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
 
 Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
 Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 
 
 Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
 Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers ; 
 
TO AUTUMN 
 
 243 
 
 And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
 Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 
 Or by a cider-press, with patient look, 
 
 Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 
 
 Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 
 
 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 
 While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
 
 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; 
 Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn 
 
 Among the river sallows borne aloft 
 
 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 
 
 Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 
 
 The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
 And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 
 
244 ODE ON MELANCHOLY 
 
 ODE ON MELANCHOLY 
 
 i 
 
 No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist 
 
 Wolf s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine ; 
 Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd 
 
 By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine ; 
 Make not your rosary of yew-berries, 
 
 Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be 
 Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl 
 A partner in your sorrow's mysteries ; 
 
 For shade to shade will come too drowsily, 
 And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 
 
 2 
 
 But when the melancholy fit shall fall 
 
 Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, 
 That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, 
 
 And hides the green hill in an April shroud ; 
 Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 
 
 Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, 
 ^ Or on the wealth of globed peonies ; 
 Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, 
 
 Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, 
 And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 
 
 3 
 She dwells with Beauty— Beauty that must die ; 
 
 And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
 Bidding adieu ; and aching Pleasure nigh, 
 
 Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips : 
 Ay, in the very temple of Delight 
 
 Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
 
 Though seen of none savehim whose strenuous tongue 
 Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine j 
 His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
 And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 
 
AY, IN THE VERY TEMPLE OF DELIGHT 
 VEIL'D MELANCHOLY HAS HER SOVRAN SHRINE 
 
ON INDOLENCE 247 
 
 ON INDOLENCE 
 
 "They toil not, neither do they spin " 
 
 I 
 
 One morn before me were three figures seen, 
 
 With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced ; 
 And one behind the other stepp'd serene, 
 
 In placid sandals, and in white robes graced ; 
 They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn, 
 
 When shifted round to see the other side ; 
 They came again ; as when the urn once more 
 Is shifted round, the first green shades return ; 
 
 And they were strange to me, as may betide 
 With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore. 
 
 2 
 
 How is it, Shadows ! that I knew ye not ? 
 
 How came ye muffled in so hush a mask ? 
 Was it a silent deep-disguised plot 
 
 To steal away, and leave without a task 
 My idle days ? Ripe was the drowsy hour ; 
 
 The blissful cloud of summer-indolence 
 
 Benumb'd my eyes ; my pulse grew less and less ; 
 Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower : 
 
 O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense 
 Unhaunted quite of all but — nothingness ? 
 
 3 
 A third time pass'd they by, and, passing, turn'd 
 
 Each one the face a moment whiles to me ; 
 Then faded, and to follow them I burn'd 
 
 And ached for wings, because I knew the three ; 
 The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name ; 
 The second was Ambition, pale of cheek, 
 And ever watchful with fatigued eye ; 
 The last, whom I love more, the more of blame 
 Is heap'd upon her, maiden most unmeek, — 
 I knew to be my demon Poesy. 
 
248 ON INDOLENCE 
 
 4 
 They faded, and forsooth ! I wanted wings : 
 O folly ! What is love ? and where is it ? 
 And for that poor Ambition ! it springs 
 
 From a man's little heart's short fever-fit ; 
 For Poesy ! — no, — she has not a joy, — 
 
 At least for me, — so sweet as drowsy noons, 
 And evenings steep'd in honied indolence ; 
 O, for an age so shelter'd from annoy, 
 
 That I may never know how change the moons, 
 Or hear the voice of busy common-sense ! 
 
 5 
 And once more came they by ; — alas ! wherefore ? 
 
 My sleep had been embroider' d with dim dreams ; 
 My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er 
 
 With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams 
 The morn was clouded, but no shower fell, 
 Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May ; 
 
 The open casement press'd a new-leaved vine, 
 Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay ; 
 O Shadows ! 'twas a time to bid farewell ! 
 
 Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine. 
 
 6 
 So, ye three Ghosts, adieu ! Ye cannot raise 
 My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass ; 
 For I would not be dieted with praise, 
 
 A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce ! 
 Fade softly from my eyes, and be once more 
 In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn ; 
 Farewell ! I yet have visions for the night, 
 And for the day faint visions there is store ; 
 
 Vanish, ye Phantoms ! from my idle spright, 
 Into the clouds, and never more return ! 
 
ODE TO MAIA 
 
 249 
 
 FRAGMENT OF AN ODE TO MAIA 
 
 To Reynolds, May 18 18 
 
 MOTHER of Hermes ! and still youthful Maia ! 
 
 May I sing to thee 
 As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae ? 
 
 Or may I woo thee 
 In earlier Sicilian ? or thy smiles 
 Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, 
 By bards who died content on pleasant sward, 
 
 Leaving great verse unto a little clan ? 
 O, give me their old vigour, and unheard 
 Save of the quiet primrose, and the span 
 Of heaven and few ears, 
 Rounded by thee, my song should die away 
 
 Content as theirs, 
 Rich in the simple worship of a day. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS 
 POEMS 
 
 AND 
 LYRJCS 
 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS & LYRICS 
 
 " Places of nestling green for Poets made " 
 
 Story of Rimini 
 
 I STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill, 
 
 The air was cooling, and so very still, 
 
 That the sweet buds which with a modest pride 
 
 Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, 
 
 Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, 
 
 Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
 
 Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. 
 
 The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, 
 
 And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept 
 
 On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept 
 
 A little noiseless noise among the leaves, 
 
 Born of the very sigh that silence heaves : 
 
 For not the faintest motion could be seen 
 
 Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green. 
 
 There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye, 
 
 To peer about upon variety ; 
 
 Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim, 
 
 And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim : 
 
 To picture out the quaint, and curious bending 
 
256 «I STOOD TIP-TOE 
 
 Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending ; 
 
 Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves, 
 
 Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves. 
 
 I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free 
 
 As though the fanning wings of Mercury 
 
 Had played upon my heels : I was light-hearted, 
 
 And many pleasures to my vision started ; 
 
 So I straightway began to pluck a posy 
 
 Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy. 
 
 A bush of May flowers with the bees about them ; 
 Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them ; 
 And let a lush laburnum oversweep them, 
 And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them 
 Moist, cool and green ; and shade the violets, 
 That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. 
 
 A filbert hedge with wildbriar overtwined, 
 And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind 
 Upon their summer thrones ; there too should be 
 The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, 
 That with a score of light green brethren shoots 
 From the quaint mossiness of aged roots : 
 Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters 
 Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters 
 The spreading blue bells : it may haply mourn 
 That such fair clusters should be rudely torn 
 From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly 
 By infant hands, left on the path to die. 
 
 Open afresh your round of starry folds, 
 
 Ye ardent marigolds ! 
 
 Dry up the moisture from your golden lids, 
 
 For great Apollo bids 
 
 That in these days your praises should be sung 
 
 On many harps, which he has lately strung ; 
 
 And when again your dewiness he kisses, 
 
UPON A LITTLE HILL" 257 
 
 Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses : 
 So haply when I rove in some far vale, 
 His mighty voice may come upon the gale. 
 
 Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight : 
 With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
 And taper fingers catching at all things, 
 To bind them all about with tiny rings. 
 
 Linger awhile upon some bending planks 
 That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, 
 And watch intently Nature's gentle doings : 
 They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings. 
 How silent comes the water round that bend ; 
 Not the minutest whisper does it send 
 To the o'erhanging sallows : blades of grass 
 Slowly across the chequer'd shadows pass. 
 Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach 
 To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach 
 A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds ; 
 Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, 
 Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, 
 To taste the luxury of sunny beams 
 Temper'd with coolness. How they ever wrestle 
 With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 
 Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. 
 If you but scantily hold out the hand, 
 That very instant not one will remain ; 
 But turn your eye, and they are there again. 
 The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, 
 And cool themselves among the emerald tresses ; 
 The while they cool themselves, they freshness give, 
 And moisture, that the bowery green may live : 
 So keeping up an interchange of favours, 
 Like good men in the truth of their behaviours. 
 Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop 
 From low hung branches ; little space they stop ; 
 
 S 
 
258 "I STOOD TIP-TOE 
 
 But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek ; 
 
 Then off at once, as in a wanton freak : 
 
 Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings, 
 
 Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. 
 
 Were I in such a place, I sure should pray 
 
 That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away, 
 
 Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown 
 
 Fanning away the dandelion's down ; 
 
 Than the light music of her nimble toes 
 
 Patting against the sorrel as she goes. 
 
 How she would start, and blush, thus to be caught 
 
 Playing in all her innocence of thought. 
 
 O let me lead her gently o'er the brook, 
 
 Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look ; 
 
 O let me for one moment touch her wrist ; 
 
 Let me one moment to her breathing list ; 
 
 And as she leaves me may she often turn 
 
 Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburn. 
 
 What next ? A tuft of evening primroses, 
 
 O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes ; 
 
 O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, 
 
 But that 'tis ever startled by the leap 
 
 Of buds into ripe flowers ; or by the flitting 
 
 Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting ; 
 
 Or by the moon lifting her silver rim 
 
 Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim 
 
 Coming into the blue with all her light. 
 
 O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight 
 
 Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers ; 
 
 Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers, 
 
 Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams, 
 
 Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, 
 
 Lover of loneliness, and wandering, 
 
 Of upcast eye, and tender pondering ! 
 
 Thee must I praise above all other glories 
 
 That smile us on to tell delightful stories. 
 
 For what has made the sage or poet write 
 
UPON A LITTLE HILL" 259 
 
 But the fair paradise of Nature's light ? 
 
 In the calm grandeur of a sober line, 
 
 We see the waving of the mountain pine ; 
 
 And when a tale is beautifully staid, 
 
 We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade : 
 
 When it is moving on luxurious wings, 
 
 The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings : 
 
 Fair dewy roses brush against our faces, 
 
 And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases ; 
 
 O'erhead we see the jasmine and sweet briar, 
 
 And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire ; 
 
 While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles 
 
 Charms us at once away from all our troubles : 
 
 So that we feel uplifted from the world, 
 
 Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd. 
 
 So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went 
 
 On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment ; 
 
 What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips 
 
 First touch'd ; what amorous and fondling nips 
 
 They gave each other's cheeks ; with all their sighs, 
 
 And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes : 
 
 The silver lamp, — the ravishment, — the wonder, — 
 
 The darkness, — loneliness, — the fearful thunder ; 
 
 Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown, 
 
 To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne. 
 
 So did he feel, who pull'd the boughs aside, 
 
 That we might look into a forest wide, 
 
 To catch a glimpse of Fauns, and Dryades 
 
 Coming with softest rustle through the trees ; 
 
 And garlands woven of flowers wild, and sweet, 
 
 Upheld on ivory wrists, or sporting feet : 
 
 Telling us how fair, trembling Syrinx fled 
 
 Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 
 
 Poor Nymph, — poor Pan, — how did he weep to find 
 
 Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind 
 
 Along the reedy stream ; a half heard strain, 
 
 Full of sweet desolation — balmy pain. 
 
2<5o " I STOOD TIP-TOE 
 
 What first inspired a bard of old to sing 
 
 Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring ? 
 
 In some delicious ramble, he had found 
 
 A little space, with boughs all woven round ; 
 
 And in the midst of all, a clearer pool 
 
 Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool, 
 
 The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping 
 
 Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping. 
 
 And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, 
 
 A meek and forlorn flower, with nought of pride, 
 
 Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, 
 
 To woo its own sad image into nearness : 
 
 Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move ; 
 
 But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. 
 
 So while the Poet stood in this sweet spot, 
 
 Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot ; 
 
 Nor was it long ere he had told the tale 
 
 Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo's bale. 
 
 Where had he been, from whose warm head out-flew 
 
 That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, 
 
 That aye refreshing, pure deliciousness, 
 
 Coming ever to bless 
 
 The wanderer by moonlight ? to him bringing 
 
 Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing 
 
 From out the middle air, from flowery nests, 
 
 And from the pillowy silkiness that rests 
 
 Full in the speculation of the stars. 
 
 Ah ! surely he had burst our mortal bars ; 
 
 Into some wond'rous region he had gone, 
 
 To search for thee, divine Endymion ! 
 
 He was a Poet, sure a lover too, 
 
 Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew 
 
 Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below ; 
 
 And brought in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow 
 
 A hymn from Dian's temple ; while upswelling, 
 
UPON A LITTLE HILL 
 
 261 
 
 The incense went to her own starry dwelling. 
 But though her face was clear as infant's eyes, 
 Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, 
 The Poet wept at her so piteous fate, 
 Wept that such beauty should be desolate: 
 So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, 
 And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. 
 
 Queen of the wide air ; thou most lovely queen 
 Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen ! 
 
262 "I STOOD TIPTOE, ETC." 
 
 As thou exceedest all things in thy shine, 
 So every tale, does this sweet tale of thine. 
 O for three words of honey, that I might 
 Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night ! 
 
 Where distant ships do seem to show their keels, 
 
 Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels, 
 
 And turn'd to smile upon thy bashful eyes, 
 
 Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. 
 
 The evening weather was so bright, and clear, 
 
 That men of health were of unusual cheer ; 
 
 Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call, 
 
 Or young Apollo on the pedestal : 
 
 And lovely women were as fair and warm, 
 
 As Venus looking sideways in alarm. 
 
 The breezes were ethereal, and pure, 
 
 And crept through half closed lattices to cure 
 
 The languid sick ; it cool'd their fever'd sleep, 
 
 And soothed them into slumbers full and deep. 
 
 Soon they awoke clear eyed : nor burnt with thirsting, 
 
 Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting : 
 
 And springing up, they met the wond'ring sight 
 
 Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight ; 
 
 Who feel their arms, and breasts, and kiss and stare, 
 
 And on their placid foreheads part the hair. 
 
 Young men, and maidens at each other gazed 
 
 With hands held back, and motionless, amazed 
 
 To see the brightness in each others' eyes ; 
 
 And so they stood, fill'd with a sweet surprise, 
 
 Until their tongues were loos'd in poesy. 
 
 Therefore no lover did of anguish die : 
 
 But the soft numbers, in that moment spoken, 
 
 Made silken ties, that never may be broken. 
 
 Cynthia ! I cannot tell the greater blisses, 
 
 That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses : 
 
 Was there a Poet born ? — but now no more, 
 
 My wand'ring spirit must no further soar. — 
 
CALIDORE 263 
 
 CALIDORE. A FRAGMENT 
 
 YOUNG Calidore is paddling o'er the lake ; 
 
 His healthful spirit eager and awake 
 
 To feel the beauty of a silent eve, 
 
 Which seem'd full loth this happy world to leave ; 
 
 The light dwelt o'er the scene so lingeringly. 
 
 He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky, 
 
 And smiles at the far clearness all around, 
 
 Until his heart is well nigh over wound, 
 
 And turns for calmness to the pleasant green 
 
 Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean 
 
 So elegantly o'er the waters' brim 
 
 And show their blossoms trim. 
 
 Scarce can his clear and nimble eye-sight follow 
 
 The freaks, and dartings of the black-wing'd swallow, 
 
 Delighting much, to see it half at rest, 
 
 Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast 
 
 'Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon, 
 
 The widening circles into nothing gone. 
 
 And now the sharp keel of his little boat 
 Comes up with ripple, and with easy float, 
 And glides into a bed of water lilies : 
 Broad leaved are they and their white canopies 
 Are upward turn'd to catch the heavens' dew. 
 Near to a little island's point they grew ; 
 Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view 
 Of this sweet spot of earth. The bowery shore 
 Went off in gentle windings to the hoar 
 And light blue mountains : but no breathing man 
 With a warm heart, and eye prepared to scan 
 Nature's clear beauty, could pass lightly by 
 Objects that look'd out so invitingly 
 On either side. These, gentle Calidore 
 Greeted, as he had known them long before. 
 
264 CALIDORE 
 
 The sidelong view of swelling leafiness, 
 Which the glad setting sun, in gold doth dress ; 
 Whence ever, and anon the jay out springs, 
 And scales upon the beauty of its wings. 
 
 The lonely turret, shatter'd, and outworn, 
 Stands venerably proud ; too proud to mourn 
 Its long lost grandeur : fir trees grow around, 
 Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground. 
 The little chapel with the cross above 
 Upholding wreaths of ivy ; the white dove, 
 That on the windows spreads his feathers light, 
 And seems from purple clouds to wing its flight. 
 
 Green tufted islands casting their soft shades 
 
 Across the lake ; sequester'd leafy glades, 
 
 That through the dimness of their twilight show 
 
 Large dock leaves, spiral foxgloves, or the glow 
 
 Of the wild cat's eyes, or the silvery stems 
 
 Of delicate birch trees, or long grass which hems 
 
 A little brook. The youth had long been viewing 
 
 These pleasant things, and heaven was bedewing 
 
 The mountain flowers, when his glad senses caught 
 
 A trumpet's silver voice. Ah ! it was fraught 
 
 With many joys for him : the warder's ken 
 
 Had found white coursers prancing in the glen : 
 
 Friends very dear to him he soon will see ; 
 
 So pushes off his boat most eagerly, 
 
 And soon upon the lake he skims along, 
 
 Deaf to the nightingale's first under-song ; 
 
 Nor minds he the white swans that dream so sweetly 
 
 His spirit flies before him so completely. 
 
 And now he turns a jutting point of land, 
 Whence may be seen the castle gloomy, and grand : 
 Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches, 
 Before the point of his light shallop reaches 
 
CALIDORE 265 
 
 Those marble steps that through the water dip ; 
 Now over them he goes with hasty trip, 
 And scarcely stays to ope the folding doors : 
 Anon he leaps along the oaken floors 
 Of halls and corridors. 
 
 Delicious sounds ! those little bright-eyed things 
 
 That float about the air on azure wings, 
 
 Had been less heartfelt by him than the clang 
 
 Of clattering hoofs ; into the court he sprang, 
 
 Just as two noble steeds, and palfreys twain, 
 
 Were slanting out their necks with loosened rein ; 
 
 While from beneath the threat'ning portcullis 
 
 They brought their happy burthens. What a kiss, 
 
 What gentle squeeze he gave each lady's hand ! 
 
 How tremblingly their delicate ankles spann'd ! 
 
 Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone, 
 
 While whisperings of affection 
 
 Made him delay to let their tender feet 
 
 Come to the earth ; with an incline so sweet 
 
 From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent : 
 
 And whether there were tears of languishment, 
 
 Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses, 
 
 He feels a moisture on his cheek, and blesses 
 
 With lips that tremble, and with glistening eye 
 
 All the soft luxury 
 
 That nestled in his arms. A dimpled hand, 
 
 Fair as some wonder out of fairy land, 
 
 Hung from his shoulder like the drooping flowers 
 
 Of whitest Cassia, fresh from summer showers : 
 
 And this he fondled with his happy cheek 
 
 As if for joy he would no further seek ; 
 
 When the kind voice of good Sir Clerimond 
 
 Came to his ear, like something from beyond 
 
 His present being : so he gently drew 
 
 His warm arms, thrilling now with pulses new, 
 
 From their sweet thrall, and forward gently bending, 
 
266 CALIDORE 
 
 Thank'd heaven that his joy was never ending ; 
 While 'gainst his forehead he devoutly press'd 
 A hand heaven made to succour the distress'd ; 
 A hand that from the world's bleak promontory 
 Had lifted Calidore for deeds of glory. 
 
 Amid the pages, and the torches' glare, 
 
 There stood a knight, patting the flowing hair 
 
 Of his proud horse's mane : he was withal 
 
 A man of elegance, and stature tall : 
 
 So that the waving of his plumes would be 
 
 High as the berries of a wild ash tree, 
 
 Or as the winged cap of Mercury. 
 
 His armour was so dexterously wrought 
 
 In shape, that sure no living man had thought 
 
 It hard and heavy steel : but that indeed 
 
 It was some glorious form, some splendid weed, 
 
 In which a spirit new come from the skies 
 
 Might live, and show itself to human eyes. 
 
 Tis the far-famed, the brave Sir Gondibert, 
 
 Said the good man to Calidore alert ; 
 
 While the young warrior with a step of grace 
 
 Came up, — a courtly smile upon his face, 
 
 And mailed hand held out, ready to greet 
 
 The large-eyed wonder, and ambitious heat 
 
 Of the aspiring boy ; who as he led 
 
 Those smiling ladies, often turn'd his head 
 
 To admire the visor arch'd so gracefully 
 
 Over a knightly brow ; while they went by 
 
 The lamps that from the high-roof d hall were pendent, 
 
 And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent 
 
 Soon in a pleasant chamber they are seated ; 
 The sweet-lipp'd ladies have already greeted 
 All the green leaves that round the window clamber, 
 To show their purple stars, and bells of amber. 
 Sir Gondibert has doff d his shining steel, 
 
CALIDORE 
 
 Gladdening in the free, and airy feel 
 Of a light mantle ; and while Clerimond 
 Is looking round about him with a fond, 
 And placid eye, young Calidore is burning 
 To hear of knightly deeds, and gallant spurning 
 Of all unworthiness ; and how the strong of arm 
 Kept off dismay, and terror, and alarm 
 From lovely woman : while brimful of this, 
 He gave each damsel's hand so warm a kiss, 
 And had such manly ardour in his eye, 
 That each at other look'd half staringly ; 
 And then their features started into smiles 
 Sweet as blue heavens o'er enchanted isles. 
 
 267 
 
 Softly the breezes from the forest came, 
 Softly they blew aside the taper's flame ; 
 Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower ; 
 Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower ; 
 Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone ; 
 Lovely the moon in ether, all alone : 
 Sweet too the converse of these happy mortals, 
 As that of busy spirits when the portals 
 Are closing in the west ; or that soft humming 
 We hear around when Hesperus is coming. 
 Sweet be their sleep. * 
 
 ******** 
 
»pQ # * * * 
 
 HADST thou lived in days of old, 
 
 O what wonders had been told 
 
 Of thy lively countenance, 
 
 And thy humid eyes that dance 
 
 In the midst of their own brightness ; 
 
 In the very fane of lightness. 
 
 Over which thine eyebrows, leaning 
 
 Picture out each lovely meaning : 
 
 In a dainty bend they lie, 
 
 Like to streaks across the sky, 
 
 Or the feathers from a crow, 
 
 Fallen on a bed of snow. 
 
 Of thy dark hair that extends 
 
 Into many graceful bends : 
 
 As the leaves of Hellebore 
 
 Turn to whence they sprung before. 
 
 And behind each ample curl 
 
 Peeps the richness of a pearl. 
 
 Downward too flows many a tress 
 
 With a glossy waviness ; 
 
TO * * * * 269 
 
 Full, and round like globes that rise 
 
 From the censer to the skies 
 
 Through sunny air. Add too, the sweetness 
 
 Of thy honied voice ; the neatness 
 
 Of thine ankle lightly turn'd : 
 
 With those beauties, scarce discern'd, 
 
 Kept with such sweet privacy, 
 
 That they seldom meet the eye 
 
 Of the little loves that fly 
 
 Round about with eager pry. 
 
 Saving when, with freshening lave, 
 
 Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave ; 
 
 Like twin water lilies, born 
 
 In the coolness of the morn. 
 
 O, if thou hadst breathed then, 
 
 Now the Muses had been ten. 
 
 Couldst thou wish for lineage higher 
 
 Than twin sister of Thalia ? 
 
 At least for ever, evermore, 
 
 Will I call the Graces four. 
 
 Hadst thou lived when chivalry 
 
 Lifted up her lance on high, 
 
 Tell me what thou wouldst have been ? 
 
 Ah ! I see the silver sheen 
 
 Of thy broidered, floating vest 
 
 Cov'ring half thine ivory breast ; 
 
 Which, O heavens ! I should see, 
 
 But that cruel destiny 
 
 Has placed a golden cuirass there ; 
 
 Keeping secret what is fair. 
 
 Like sunbeams in a cloudlet nested 
 
 Thy locks in knightly casque are rested : 
 
 O'er which bend four milky plumes 
 
 Like the gentle lily's blooms 
 
 Springing from a costly vase. 
 
 See with what a stately pace 
 
2/0 
 
 TO 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Comes thine alabaster steed ; 
 
 Servant of heroic deed ! 
 
 O'er his loins, his trappings glow 
 
 Like the northern lights on snow. 
 
 Mount his back ! thy sword unsheath ! 
 
 Sign of the enchanter's death ; 
 
 Bane of every wicked spell ; 
 
 Silencer of dragon's yell. 
 
 Alas ! thou this wilt never do : 
 
 Thou art an enchantress too, 
 
 And wilt surely never spill 
 
 Blood of those whose eyes can kill. 
 
IMITATION OF SPENSER 271 
 
 IMITATION OF SPENSER 
 
 Now Morning from her orient chamber came, 
 And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill ; 
 Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, 
 Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill ; 
 Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill, 
 And after parting beds of simple flowers, 
 By many streams a little lake did fill, 
 Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, 
 And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers. 
 
 There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright 
 Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below ; 
 Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light 
 Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow : 
 There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, 
 And oar'd himself along with majesty ; 
 Sparkled his jetty eyes ; his feet did show 
 Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony, 
 And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously. 
 
 Ah ! could I tell the wonders of an isle 
 That in that fairest lake had placed been, 
 I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile ; 
 Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen : 
 For sure so fair a place was never seen, 
 Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye : 
 It seem'd an emerald in the silver sheen 
 Of the bright waters ; or as when on high, 
 Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the ccerulean sky. 
 
272 "WOMAN! WHEN I BEHOLD 
 
 And all around it dipp'd luxuriously 
 Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide, 
 Which, as it were in gentle amity, 
 Rippled delighted up the flowery side ; 
 As if to glean the ruddy tears, it tried, 
 Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem ! 
 Haply it was the workings of its pride, 
 In strife to throw upon the shore a gem 
 Outvieing all the buds in Flora's diadem. 
 
 WOMAN ! when I behold thee flippant, vain, 
 
 Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies ; 
 
 Without that modest softening that enhances 
 The downcast eye, repentant of the pain 
 That its mild light creates to heal again : 
 
 E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances, 
 
 E'en then my soul with exultation dances 
 For that to love, so long, I've dormant lain : 
 But when I see thee meek, and kind, and tender, 
 
 Heavens ! how desperately do I adore 
 Thy winning graces ; — to be thy defender 
 
 I hotly burn — to be a Calidore — 
 A very Red Cross Knight — a stout Leander — 
 
 Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. 
 
 Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair ; 
 
 Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast, 
 Are things on which the dazzled senses rest 
 
 Till the fond, fixed eyes, forget they stare. 
 
 From such fine pictures, heavens ! I cannot dare 
 To turn my admiration, though unpossess'd 
 They be of what is worthy, — though not drest 
 
 In lovely modesty, and virtues rare. 
 
THEE FLIPPANT, VAIN" 273 
 
 Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark ; 
 
 These lures I straight forget, — e'en ere I dine, 
 Or thrice my palate moisten : but when I mark 
 
 Such charms with mild intelligences shine, 
 My ear is open like a greedy shark, 
 
 To catch the tunings of a voice divine. 
 
 Ah ! who can e'er forget so fair a being ? 
 
 Who can forget her half-retiring sweets ? 
 
 God ! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats 
 For man's protection. Surely the All-seeing, 
 Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing, 
 
 Will never give him pinions, who intreats 
 
 Such innocence to ruin, — who vilely cheats 
 A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing 
 One's thoughts from such a beauty ; when I hear 
 
 A lay that once I saw her hand awake, 
 Her form seems floating palpable, and near : 
 
 Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take 
 A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear, 
 
 And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake. 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 "As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete 
 Was unto me, but why that I ne might 
 Rest I ne wist, for there n' as erthly wight 
 (As I suppose) had more of hertis ese 
 Than I, for I n' ad sicknesse nor disese." 
 
 Chaucer 
 
 What is more gentle than a wind in summer ? 
 What is more soothing than the pretty hummer 
 That stays one moment in an open flower, 
 And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower ? 
 What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing 
 In a green island, far from all men's knowing ? 
 More healthful than the leafiness of dales ? 
 More secret than a nest of nightingales ? 
 More serene than Cordelia's countenance ? 
 More full of visions than a high romance ? 
 What, but thee, Sleep ? Soft closer of our eyes ! 
 Low murmurer of tender lullabies ! 
 Light hoverer around our happy pillows ! 
 Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows ! 
 Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses ! 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 275 
 
 Most happy listener ! when the morning blesses 
 Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes 
 That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise. 
 
 But what is higher beyond thought than thee ? 
 Fresher than berries of a mountain-tree ? 
 More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal, 
 Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle ? 
 What is it ? And to what shall I compare it ? 
 It has a glory, and nought else can share it : 
 The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy, 
 Chasing away all worldliness and folly : 
 Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder ; 
 Or the low rumblings earth's regions under ; 
 And sometimes like a gentle whispering 
 Of all the secrets of some wondrous thing 
 That breathes about us in the vacant air ; 
 So that we look around with prying stare, 
 Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial limning ; 
 And catch soft floating from a faint-heard hymning ; 
 To see the laurel-wreath, on high suspended, 
 That is to crown our name when life is ended. 
 Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice, 
 And from the heart up-springs, rejoice ! rejoice ! 
 Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things, 
 And die away in ardent mutterings. 
 
 No one who once the glorious sun has seen, 
 And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean 
 For his great Maker's presence, but must know 
 What 'tis I mean, and feel his being glow : 
 Therefore no insult will I give his spirit, 
 By telling what he sees from native merit 
 
 O Poesy ! for thee I hold my pen, 
 That am not yet a glorious denizen 
 Of thy wide heaven — should I rather kneel 
 
276 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 Upon some mountain-top until I feel 
 
 A glowing splendour round about me hung, 
 
 And echo back the voice of thine own tongue ? 
 
 O Poesy ! for thee I grasp my pen, 
 
 That am not yet a glorious denizen 
 
 Of thy wide heaven ; yet, to my ardent prayer, 
 
 Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air, 
 
 Smooth'd for intoxication by the breath 
 
 Of flowering bays, that I may die a death 
 
 Of luxury, and my young spirit follow 
 
 The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo, 
 
 Like a fresh sacrifice ; or, if I can bear 
 
 The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring me to the fair 
 
 Visions of all places : a bowery nook 
 
 Will be elysium — an eternal book 
 
 Whence I may copy many a lovely saying 
 
 About the leaves, and flowers — about the playing 
 
 Of nymphs in woods and fountains ; and the shade 
 
 Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid ; 
 
 And many a verse from so strange influence 
 
 That we must ever wonder how, and whence 
 
 It came. Also imaginings will hover 
 
 Round my fire-side, and haply there discover 
 
 Vistas of solemn beauty, where I'd wander 
 
 In happy silence, like the clear Meander 
 
 Through its lone vales ; and where I found a spot 
 
 Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot, 
 
 Or a green hill o'erspread with chequer'd dress 
 
 Of flowers, and fearful from its loveliness, 
 
 Write on my tablets all that was permitted, 
 
 All that was for our human senses fitted. 
 
 Then the events of this wide world I'd seize 
 
 Like a strong giant, and my spirit tease, 
 
 Till at its shoulders it should proudly see 
 
 Wings to find out an immortality. 
 
 Stop and consider ! life is but a day; 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 277 
 
 A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way 
 From a tree's summit ; a poor Indian's sleep 
 While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep 
 Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan ? 
 Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown ; 
 The reading of an ever-changing tale ; 
 The light uplifting of a maiden's veil ; 
 A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air ; 
 A laughing school-boy, without grief or care, 
 Riding the springy branches of an elm. 
 
 O for ten years, that I may overwhelm 
 Myself in poesy ! so I may do the deed 
 That my own soul has to itself decreed. 
 Then I will pass the countries that I see 
 In long perspective, and continually 
 Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass 
 Of Flora, and old Pan ; sleep in the grass, 
 Feed upon apples red, and strawberries, 
 And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees ; 
 Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places, 
 To woo sweet kisses from averted faces, — 
 Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white 
 Into a pretty shrinking with a bite 
 As hard as lips can make it ; till agreed, 
 A lovely tale of human life we'll read. 
 And one will teach a tame dove how it best 
 May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest ; 
 Another, bending o'er her nimble tread, 
 Will set a green robe floating round her head, 
 And still will dance with ever-varied ease, 
 Smiling upon the flowers and the trees ; 
 Another will entice me on, and on, 
 Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon ; 
 Till in the bosom of a leafy world 
 We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd 
 In the recesses of a pearly shell. 
 
278 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 And can I ever bid these joys farewell ? 
 Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, 
 Where I may find the agonies, the strife 
 Of human hearts : for lo ! I see afar, 
 O'er-sailing the blue cragginess, a car 
 And steeds with streamy manes — the charioteer 
 Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear ; 
 And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly 
 Along a huge cloud's ridge ; and now with sprightly 
 Wheel downward come they into fresher skies, 
 Tipt round with silver from the sun's bright eyes. 
 Still downward with capacious whirl they glide ; 
 And now I see them on a green-hill's side 
 In breezy rest among the nodding stalks. 
 The charioteer with wondrous gesture talks 
 To the trees and mountains ; and there soon appear 
 Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear, 
 Passing along before a dusky space 
 Made by some mighty oaks — as they would chase 
 Some ever-fleeting music, on they sweep. 
 Lo ! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep : 
 Some with upholden hand and mouth severe ; 
 Some with their faces muffled to the ear 
 Between their arms ; some clear in youthful bloom, 
 Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom ; 
 Some looking back, and some with upward gaze ; 
 Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways 
 Flit onward — now a lovely wreath of girls 
 Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls ; 
 And now broad wings. Most awfully intent 
 The driver of those steeds is forward bent, 
 And seems to listen : O that I might know 
 All that he writes with such a hurrying glow ! 
 
 The visions all are fled — the car is fled 
 Into the light of heaven, and in their stead 
 A sense of real things comes doubly strong, 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 279 
 
 And, like a muddy stream, would bear along 
 My soul to nothingness : but I will strive 
 Against all doubtings, and will keep alive 
 The thought of that same chariot, and the strange 
 Journey it went. 
 
 Is there so small a range 
 In the present strength of manhood, that the high 
 Imagination cannot freely fly 
 As she was wont of old ? prepare her steeds, 
 Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds 
 Upon the clouds ? Has she not shown us all ? 
 From the clear space of ether, to the small 
 Breath of new buds unfolding ? From the meaning 
 Of Jove's large eyebrow, to the tender greening 
 Of April meadows ? Here her altar shone, 
 E'en in this isle ; and who could paragon 
 The fervid choir that lifted up a noise 
 Of harmony, to where it aye will poise 
 Its mighty self of convoluting sound, 
 Huge as a planet, and like that roll round, 
 Eternally around a dizzy void ? 
 Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh cloy'd 
 With honours ; nor had any other care 
 Than to sing out and soothe their wavy hair. 
 
 Could all this be forgotten ? Yes, a schism 
 Nurtured by foppery and barbarism 
 Made great Apollo blush for this his land. 
 Men were thought wise who could not understand 
 His glories ; with a puling infant's force 
 They sway'd about upon a rocking-horse, 
 And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-soul'd ! 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd 
 Its gathering waves — ye felt it not. The blue 
 Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew 
 Of summer nights collected still to make 
 
280 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 The morning precious : beauty was awake ! 
 Why were ye not awake ? But ye were dead 
 To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed 
 To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
 And compass vile ; so that ye taught a school 
 Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit, 
 Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, 
 Their verses tallied. Easy was the task : 
 A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
 Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race ! 
 That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face, 
 And did not know it, — no, they went about, 
 Holding a poor, decrepit standard out, 
 Mark'd with most flimsy mottoes, and in large 
 The name of one Boileau ! 
 
 O ye whose charge 
 It is to hover round our pleasant hills ! 
 Whose congregated majesty so fills 
 My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace 
 Your hallow'd names, in this unholy place, 
 So near those common folk ; did not their shames 
 Affright you ? Did our old lamenting Thames 
 Delight you ? did ye never cluster round 
 Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound, 
 And weep ? Or did ye wholly bid adieu 
 To regions where no more the laurel grew ? 
 Or did ye stay to give a welcoming 
 To some lone spirits who could proudly sing 
 Their youth away, and die ? 'Twas even so. 
 But let me think away those times of woe : 
 Now 'tis a fairer season ; ye have breathed 
 Rich benedictions o'er us ; ye have wreathed 
 Fresh garlands : for sweet music has been heard 
 In many places ; some has been upstirr'd 
 From out its crystal dwelling in a lake, 
 By a swan's ebon bill ; from a thick brake, 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 281 
 
 Nested and quiet in a valley mild, 
 
 Bubbles a pipe ; fine sounds are floating wild 
 
 About the earth : happy are ye and glad. 
 
 These things are doubtless ; yet in truth we've had 
 
 Strange thunders from the potency of song ; 
 
 Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong, 
 
 From majesty : but in clear truth the themes 
 
 Are ugly cubs, the Poets Polyphemes 
 
 Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower 
 
 Of light is poesy ; 'tis the supreme of power ; 
 
 'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm : 
 
 The very archings of her eyelids charm 
 
 A thousand willing agents to obey, 
 
 And still she governs with the mildest sway : 
 
 But strength alone, though of the Muses born, 
 
 Is like a fallen angel : trees uptorn, 
 
 Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres 
 
 Delight it ; for it feeds upon the burrs 
 
 And thorns of life ; forgetting the great end 
 
 Of poesy, that it should be a friend 
 
 To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man. 
 
 Yet I rejoice : a myrtle fairer than 
 E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds 
 Lifts its sweet heap into the air, and feeds 
 A silent space with ever-sprouting green. 
 All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen, 
 Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering, 
 Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing. 
 Then let us clear away the choking thorns 
 From round its gentle stem ; let the young fawns, 
 Yeaned in after-times, when we are flown, 
 Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown 
 With simple flowers : let there nothing be 
 More boisterous than a lover's bended knee ; 
 Nought more ungentle than the placid look 
 Of one who leans upon a closed book ; 
 
282 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes 
 Between two hills. All hail, delightful hopes ! 
 As she was wont, th' imagination 
 Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone, 
 And they shall be accounted poet kings 
 Who simply tell the most heart-easing things. 
 O may these joys be ripe before I die ! 
 
 Will not some say that I presumptuously 
 Have spoken ? that from hastening disgrace 
 'T were better far to hide my foolish face ? 
 That whining boyhood should with reverence bow 
 Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach me ? How ! 
 If I do hide myself, it sure shall be 
 In the very fane, the light of Poesy : 
 If I do fall, at least I will be laid 
 Beneath the silence of a poplar shade ; 
 And over me the grass shall be smooth shaven ; 
 And there shall be a kind memorial graven. 
 But off, Despondence ! miserable bane ! 
 They should not know thee, who athirst to gain 
 A noble end, are thirsty every hour. 
 What though I am not wealthy in the dower 
 Of spanning wisdom ; though I do not know 
 The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow 
 Hither and thither all the changing thoughts 
 Of man : though no great minist'ring reason sorts 
 Out the dark mysteries of human souls 
 To clear conceiving : yet there ever rolls 
 A vast idea before me, and I glean 
 Therefrom my liberty ; thence too I've seen 
 The end and aim of Poesy. 'Tis clear 
 As anything most true ; as that the year 
 Is made of the four seasons — manifest 
 As a large cross, some old cathedral's crest, 
 Lifted to the whke clouds. Therefore should I 
 Be but the essence of deformity, 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 283 
 
 A coward, did my very eyelids wink 
 
 At speaking out what I have dared to think. 
 
 Ah ! rather let me like a madman run 
 
 Over some precipice ; let the hot sun 
 
 Melt my Dedalian wings, and drive me down 
 
 Convulsed and headlong ! Stay ! an inward frown 
 
 Of conscience bids me be more calm awhile. 
 
 An ocean dim, sprinkled with many an isle, 
 
 Spreads awfully before me. How much toil ! 
 
 How many days ! what desperate turmoil ! 
 
 Ere I can have explored its widenesses. 
 
 Ah, what a task ! upon my bended knees, 
 
 I could unsay those — no, impossible ; 
 
 Impossible ! 
 
 For sweet relief I'll dwell 
 On humbler thoughts, and let this strange assay 
 Begun in gentleness die so away. 
 E'en now all tumult from my bosom fades : 
 I turn full-hearted to the friendly aids 
 That smooth the path of honour ; brotherhood, 
 And friendliness, the nurse of mutual good. 
 The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet 
 Into the brain ere one can think upon it ; 
 The silence when some rhymes are coming out ; 
 And when they're come, the very pleasant rout : 
 The message certain to be done to-morrow. 
 'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow 
 Some precious book from out its snug retreat, 
 To cluster round it when we next shall meet. 
 Scarce can I scribble on : for lovely airs 
 Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs ; 
 Many delights of that glad day recalling, 
 When first my senses caught their tender falling. 
 And with these airs come forms of elegance 
 Stooping their shoulders o'er a horse's, prance, 
 Careless, and grand — fingers soft and round 
 
284 SLEEP AND POETRY 
 
 Parting luxuriant curls ; and the swift bound 
 Of Bacchus from his chariot, when his eye 
 Made Ariadne's cheek look blushingly. 
 Thus I remember all the pleasant flow 
 Of words at opening a portfolio. 
 
 Things such as these are ever harbingers 
 To trains of peaceful images : the stirs 
 Of a swan's neck unseen among the rushes : 
 A linnet starting all about the bushes : 
 A butterfly, with golden wings broad-parted, 
 Nestling a rose, convulsed as though it smarted 
 With over-pleasure — many, many more, 
 Might I indulge at large in all my store 
 Of luxuries : yet I must not forget 
 Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet : 
 For what there may be worthy in these rhymes 
 I partly owe to him : and thus, the chimes 
 Of friendly voices had just given place 
 To as sweet a silence, when I 'gan retrace 
 The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease. 
 It was a poet's house who keeps the keys 
 Of pleasure's temple. Round about were hung 
 The glorious features of the bards who sung 
 In other ages — cold and sacred busts 
 Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts 
 To clear Futurity his darling fame ! 
 Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim 
 At swelling apples with a frisky leap 
 And reaching fingers, 'mid a luscious heap 
 Of vine-leaves. Then there rose to view a fane 
 Of liny marble, and thereto a train 
 Of nymphs approaching fairly o'er the sward : 
 One, loveliest, holding her white hand toward 
 The dazzling sun-rise ; two sisters sweet 
 Bending their graceful figures till they meet 
 Over the trippings of a little child : 
 
BENDING THEIR GRACEFUL FIGURES TILL THEY MEET 
 OVER THE TRIPPINGS OF A LITTLE CHILD 
 
SLEEP AND POETRY 287 
 
 And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild 
 
 Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping. 
 
 See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping 
 
 Cherishingly Diana's timorous limbs ! 
 
 A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims 
 
 At the bath's edge, and keeps a gentle motion 
 
 With the subsiding crystal : as when ocean 
 
 Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothness o'er 
 
 Its rocky marge, and balances once more 
 
 The patient weeds, that now unshent by foam 
 
 Feel all about their undulating home. 
 
 Sappho's meek head was there half smiling down 
 
 At nothing ; just as though the earnest frown 
 
 Of over-thinking had that moment gone 
 
 From off her brow, and left her all alone. 
 
 Great Alfred's too, with anxious, pitying eyes, 
 As if he always listen'd to the sighs 
 Of the goaded world ; and Kosciusko's, worn 
 By horrid suffrance — mightily forlorn. 
 
 Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green, 
 Starts at the sight of Laura ; nor can wean 
 His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they ! 
 For over them was seen a free display 
 Of outspread wings, and from between them shone 
 The face of Poesy : from off her throne 
 She overlook'd things that I scarce could tell. 
 The very sense of where I was might well 
 Keep Sleep aloof : but more than that there came 
 Thought after thought to nourish up the flame 
 Within my breast ; so that the morning light 
 Surprised me even from a sleepless night ; 
 And up I rose refresh'd, and glad, and gay, 
 Resolving to begin that very day 
 These lines ; and howsoever they be done, 
 I leave them as a father does his son. 
 
EVER let the Fancy roam, 
 
 Pleasure never is at home : 
 
 At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, 
 
 Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ; 
 
 Then let winged Fancy wander 
 
 Through the thought still spread beyond her 
 
 Open wide the mind's cage door, 
 
 She'll dart forth, and cloud ward soar. 
 
 O sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 
 
 Summer's joys are spoilt by use, 
 
 And the enjoying of the Spring 
 
 Fades as does its blossoming : 
 
 Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, 
 
 Blushing through the mist and dew, 
 
 Cloys with tasting : What do then ? 
 
 Sit thee by the ingle, when 
 
 The sear faggot blazes bright, 
 
 Spirit of a winter's night ; 
 
 When the soundless earth is muffled, 
 
 And the caked snow is shuffled 
 
 From the ploughboy's heavy shoon ; 
 
 When the Night doth meet the Noon 
 
 In a dark conspiracy 
 
 To banish Even from her sky. 
 
 Sit thee there and send abroad, 
 
 With a mind self-overawed, 
 
 Fancy, high-commission'd : — send her ! 
 
 She has vassals to attend her : 
 
FANCY 291 
 
 She will bring, in spite of frost, 
 
 Beauties that the earth hath lost ; 
 
 She will bring thee, all together, 
 
 All delights of summer weather ; 
 
 All the buds and bells of May, 
 
 From dewy sward or thorny spray ; 
 
 All the heaped Autumn's wealth, 
 
 With a still, mysterious stealth : 
 
 She will mix these pleasures up 
 
 Like three fit wines in a cup, 
 
 And thou shalt quaff it : — thou shalt hear 
 
 Distant harvest-carols clear ; 
 
 Rustle of the reaped corn ; 
 
 Sweet birds antheming the morn : 
 
 And, in the same moment — hark ! 
 
 Tis the early April lark, 
 
 Or the rooks, with busy caw, 
 
 Foraging for sticks and straw 
 
 Thou shalt, at one glance, behold 
 
 The daisy and the marigold ; 
 
 White-plumed lilies, and the first ; 
 
 Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 
 
 Shaded hyacinth, alway 
 
 Sapphire queen of the mid-May ; 
 
 And every leaf, and every flower 
 
 Pearled with the self-same shower. 
 
 Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep 
 
 Meagre from its celled sleep ; 
 
 And the snake all winter-thin 
 
 Cast on sunny bank its skin ! 
 
 Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see 
 
 Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 
 
 When the hen-bird's wing doth rest 
 
 Quiet on her mossy nest ; 
 
 Then the hurry and alarm 
 
 When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; 
 
 Acorns ripe down-pattering 
 
292 FANCY 
 
 While the autumn breezes sing. 
 
 Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 
 Every thing is spoilt by use : 
 Where 's the cheek that doth not fade, 
 Too much gazed at ? Where 's the maid 
 Whose lip mature is ever new ? 
 Where 's the eye, however blue, 
 Doth not weary ? Where 's the face 
 One would meet in every place ? 
 Where 's the voice, however soft, 
 One would hear so very oft ? 
 At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth 
 Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. 
 Let, then, winged Fancy find 
 Thee a mistress to thy mind : 
 Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, 
 Ere the God of Torment taught her 
 How to frown and how to chide ; 
 With a waist and with a side 
 White as Hebe's, when her zone 
 Slipt its golden clasp, and down 
 Fell her kirtle to her feet, 
 While she held the goblet sweet, 
 And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh 
 Of the Fancy's silken leash ; 
 Quickly break her prison-string, 
 And such joys as these she'll bring. — 
 Let the winged Fancy roam, 
 Pleasure never is at home. 
 
 ODE 
 
 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Have ye souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions new ? 
 
ODE 293 
 
 Yes, and those of heaven commune 
 With the spheres of sun and moon ; 
 With the noise of fountains wondrous, 
 And the parle of voices thund'rous ; 
 With the whisper of heaven's trees 
 And one another, in soft ease 
 Seated on Elysian lawns 
 Browsed by none but Dian's fawns ; 
 Underneath large blue-bells tented, 
 Where the daisies are rose-scented, 
 And the rose herself has got 
 Perfume which on earth is not ; 
 Where the nightingale doth sing 
 Not a senseless, tranced thing, 
 But divine melodious truth ; 
 Philosophic numbers smooth ; 
 Tales and golden histories 
 Of heaven and its mysteries. 
 
 Thus ye live on high, and then 
 On the earth ye live again ; 
 And the souls ye left behind you 
 Teach us, here, the way to find you, 
 Where your other souls are joying, 
 Never slumber'd, never cloying. 
 Here, your earth-born souls still speak 
 To mortals, of their little week ; 
 Of their sorrows and delights ; 
 Of their passions and their spites ; 
 Of their glory and their shame ; 
 What doth strengthen and what maim. 
 Thus ye teach us, every day, 
 Wisdom, though fled far away. 
 
 Bards of Passion and of Mirth, 
 Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
 Ye have souls in heaven too, 
 Double-lived in regions new ! 
 
LINES ON THE 
 
 L 
 
 TVfER^lAII^ 
 
 'b0^ WERN 
 
 SOULS of Poets dead and gone, 
 What Elysium have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? 
 Have ye tippled drink more fine 
 Than mine host's Canary wine ? 
 Or are fruits of Paradise 
 Sweeter than those dainty pies 
 Of venison ? O generous food ! 
 Drest as though bold Robin Hood 
 Would, with his maid Marian, 
 Sup and bowse from horn and can. 
 
 I have heard that on a day 
 Mine host's sign-board flew away, 
 Nobody knew whither, till 
 An astrologer's old quill 
 To a sheepskin gave the story, 
 Said he saw you in your glory, 
 
ROBIN HOOD 295 
 
 Underneath a new old-sign 
 Sipping beverage divine, 
 And pledging with contented smack 
 The Mermaid in the Zodiac. 
 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone, 
 What Elysium have ye known, 
 Happy field or mossy cavern, 
 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? 
 
 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 TO A FRIEND 
 
 No ! those days are gone away, 
 And their hours are old and gray, 
 And their minutes buried all 
 Under the down-trodden pall 
 Of the leaves of many years : 
 Many times have winter's shears, 
 Frozen North, and chilling East, 
 Sounded tempests to the feast 
 Of the forest's whispering fleeces, 
 Since men knew nor rent nor leases. 
 
 No, the bugle sounds no more, 
 And the twanging bow no more ; 
 Silent is the ivory shrill 
 Past the heath and up the hill ; 
 There is no mid-forest laugh, 
 Where lone Echo gives the half 
 To some wight, amazed to hear 
 Jesting, deep in forest drear. 
 
296 ROBIN HOOD 
 
 On the fairest time of June 
 You may go, with sun or moon, 
 Or the seven stars to light you, 
 Or the polar ray to right you ; 
 But you never may behold 
 Little John, or Robin bold ; 
 Never one, of all the clan, 
 Thrumming on an empty can, 
 Some old hunting ditty, while 
 He doth his green way beguile 
 To fair hostess Merriment, 
 Down beside the pasture Trent ; 
 For he left the merry tale 
 Messenger for spicy ale. 
 
 Gone, the merry morris din ; 
 Gone, the song of Gamelyn ; 
 Gone, the tough-belted outlaw 
 Idling in the " grene shawe ; " 
 All are gone away and past ! 
 And if Robin should be cast 
 Sudden from his turfed grave, 
 And if Marian should have 
 Once again her forest days, 
 She would weep, and he would craze : 
 He would swear, for all his oaks, 
 Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, 
 Have rotted on the briny seas; 
 She would weep that her wild bees 
 Sang not to her — strange ! that honey 
 Can't be got without hard money ! 
 
 So it is : yet let us sing, 
 Honour to the old bow-string ! 
 Honour to the bugle-horn ! 
 Honour to the woods unshorn ! 
 Honour to the Lincoln green ! 
 
FAERY SONGS 297 
 
 Honour to the archer keen ! 
 Honour to tight Little John, 
 And the horse he rode upon ! 
 Honour to bold Robin Hood, 
 Sleeping in the underwood ! 
 Honour to Maid Marian, 
 And to all the Sherwood-clan ! 
 Though their days have hurried by, 
 Let us two a burden try. 
 
 FAERY SONGS 
 
 1 
 SHED no tear ! oh shed no tear ! 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 Weep no more ! oh weep no more ! 
 Young buds sleep in the root's white core. 
 Dry your eyes ! oh dry your eyes ! 
 For I was taught in Paradise 
 To ease my breast of melodies — 
 
 Shed no tear. 
 
 Overhead ! look overhead ! 
 'Mong the blossoms white and red — 
 Look up, look up. I flutter now 
 On this flush pomegranate bough. 
 See me ! 'tis this silvery bill 
 
298 FAERY SONGS 
 
 Ever cures the good man's ill. 
 Shed no tear ! Oh shed no tear ! 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 Adieu, adieu ! — I fly, adieu ! 
 I vanish in the heaven's blue — ■ 
 Adieu ! Adieu ! 
 
 II 
 
 Ah ! woe is me ! poor Silver-wing ! 
 
 That I must chant thy lady's dirge, 
 And death to this fair haunt of spring, 
 
 Of melody, and streams of flowery verge, — 
 Poor Silver- wing ! ah ! woe is me ! 
 That I must see 
 These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall ! 
 Go, pretty page, and in her ear 
 Whisper that the hour is near. 
 Softly tell her not to fear 
 Such calm favonian burial ! 
 
 Go, pretty page ! and soothly tell, — 
 The blossoms hang by a melting spell, 
 And fall they must ere a star wink thrice 
 
 Upon her closed eyes, 
 That now in vain are weeping their last tears 
 
 At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,- 
 Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres, — 
 Alas ! poor Queen ! 
 
BALLAD 
 
 Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, 
 Alone and palely loitering ; 
 
 The sedge is wither'd from the lake, 
 And no birds sing. 
 
 II 
 Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, 
 
 So haggard and so woe-begone ? 
 The squirrel's granary is full, 
 
 And the harvest 's done. 
 
 ill 
 I see a lily on thy brow, 
 With anguish moist and fever dew; 
 
300 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 And on thy cheek a fading rose 
 Fast withereth too. 
 
 IV 
 
 I met a lady in the meads, 
 Full beautiful, a faery's child ; 
 
 Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
 And her eyes were wild. 
 
 v 
 I set her on my pacing steed, 
 
 And nothing else saw all day long ; 
 For sideways would she lean, and sing 
 
 A faery's song. 
 
 VI 
 I made a garland for her head, 
 
 And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; 
 She look'd at me as she did love, 
 
 And made sweet moan. 
 
 VII 
 
 She found me roots of relish sweet, 
 And honey wild, and manna dew ; 
 
 And sure in language strange she said, 
 I love thee true. 
 
 VIII 
 She took me to her elfin grot, 
 
 And there she gazed and sighed deep, 
 And there I shut her wild sad eyes — 
 
 So kiss'd to sleep. 
 
 IX 
 And there we slumber'd on the moss, 
 
 And there I dream'd, ah woe betide, 
 The latest dream I ever dream'd 
 
 On the cold hill side. 
 
AND THERE WE SLUMBER'D ON THE MOSS 
 AND THERE I DREAM'D 
 
I SAW PALE KINGS, AND PRINCES TOO 
 PALE WARRIERS, DEATH-PALE WERE THEY ALL 
 
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 305 
 
 x 
 
 I saw pale kings, and princes too, 
 
 Pale warriors, death-pale were they all ; 
 
 Who cried — " La belle Dame sans merci 
 Hath thee in thrall ! " 
 
 XI 
 I saw their starved lips in the gloom, 
 
 With horrid warning gaped wide, 
 And I awoke and found me here, 
 
 On the cold hill side. 
 
 XII 
 And this is why I sojourn here 
 
 Alone and palely loitering, 
 Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake 
 
 And no birds sing. 
 
306 STANZAS 
 
 STANZAS 
 
 In a drear-nighted December, 
 
 Too happy, happy tree, 
 
 Thy branches ne'er remember 
 
 Their green felicity : 
 
 The north cannot undo them, 
 
 With a sleety whistle through them ; 
 
 Nor frozen thawings glue them 
 
 From budding at the prime. 
 
 In a drear-nighted December, 
 Too happy, happy brook, 
 Thy bubbling's ne'er remember 
 Apollo's summer look ; 
 But with a sweet forgetting, 
 They stay their crystal fretting, 
 Never, never petting 
 About the frozen time. 
 
 Ah ! would 't were so with many 
 A gentle girl and boy ! 
 But were there ever any 
 Writhed not at passed joy ? 
 To know the change and feel it, 
 When there is none to heal it, 
 Nor numbed sense to steal it, 
 Was never said in rhyme. 
 
 Asleep ! O sleep a little while, white pearl ! 
 And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee, 
 And let me call Heaven's blessing on thine eyes, 
 And let me breathe into the happy air, 
 That doth enfold and touch thee all about, 
 Vows of my slavery, my giving up, 
 My sudden adoration, my great love ! 
 
EPISTLE TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW 
 
 " Among the rest a shepheard (though but young 
 Yet hartned to his pipe) with all the skill 
 His few yeeres could, began to fit his quill." 
 
 Britannia's Pastorals.— Browne 
 
 Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, 
 
 And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song ; 
 
 Nor can remembrance, Mathew ! bring to view 
 
 A fate more pleasing, a delight more true 
 
 Than that in which the brother Poets joy'd, 
 
 Who with combined powers, their wit employ'd 
 
 To raise a trophy to the drama's muses. 
 
 The thought of this great partnership diffuses 
 
 Over the genius loving heart, a feeling 
 
 Of all that 's high, and great, and good, and healing. 
 
 Too partial friend ! fain would I follow thee 
 Past each horizon of fine poesy ; 
 Fain would I echo back each pleasant note 
 As o'er Sicilian seas, clear anthems float 
 'Mong the light skimming gondolas far parted, 
 Just when the sun his farewell beam has darted : 
 But 'tis impossible ; far different cares 
 Beckon me sternly from soft " Lydian airs," 
 And hold my faculties so long in thrall, 
 That I am oft in doubt whether at all 
 I shall again see Phoebus in the morning : 
 Or flush'd Aurora in the roseate dawning ! 
 
308 EPISTLE 
 
 Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream ; 
 Or a rapt seraph in a moonlight beam ; 
 Or again witness what with thee I've seen, 
 The dew by fairy feet swept from the green, 
 After a night of some quaint jubilee 
 Which every elf and fay had come to see : 
 When bright processions took their airy march 
 Beneath the curved moon's triumphal arch. 
 
 But might I now each passing moment give 
 
 To the coy muse, with me she would not live 
 
 In this dark city, nor would condescend 
 
 'Mid contradictions her delights to lend. 
 
 Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, 
 
 Ah ! surely it must be whene'er I find 
 
 Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, 
 
 That often must have seen a poet frantic ; 
 
 Where oaks, that erst the Druid knew, are growing, 
 
 And flowers, the glory of one day, are blowing ; 
 
 Where the dark-leaved laburnum's drooping clusters 
 
 Reflect athwart the stream their yellow lustres, 
 
 And intertwined the cassia's arms unite, 
 
 With its own drooping buds, but very white. 
 
 Where on one side are covert branches hung, 
 
 'Mong which the nightingales have always sung 
 
 In leafy quiet ; where to pry, aloof, 
 
 Atween the pillars of the sylvan roof, 
 
 Would be to find where violet beds were nestling, 
 
 And where the bee with cowslip bells was wrestling. 
 
 There must be too a ruin dark, and gloomy, 
 
 To say "joy not too much in all that's bloomy." 
 
 Yet this is vain — O Mathew lend thy aid 
 
 To find a place where I may greet the maid — 
 
 Where we may soft humanity put on, 
 
 And sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton ; 
 
 And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him 
 
TO GEORGE FELTON MATHEW 309 
 
 Four laurell'd spirits, heaven-ward to intreat him. 
 With reverence would we speak of all the sages 
 Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages : 
 And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness, 
 And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness 
 To those who strove with the bright golden wing 
 Of genius, to flap away each sting 
 Thrown by the pitiless world. We next could tell 
 Of those who in the cause of freedom fell ; 
 Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell ; 
 Of him whose name to ev'ry heart 's a solace, 
 High-minded and unbending William Wallace. 
 While to the rugged north our musing turns 
 We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns. 
 
 Feiton ! without incitements such as these, 
 How vain for me the niggard Muse to tease : 
 For thee, she will thy every dwelling grace, 
 And make " a sunshine in a shady place : " 
 For thou wast once a flowret blooming wild, 
 Close to the source, bright, pure, and undefiled, 
 Whence gush the streams of song : in happy hour 
 Came chaste Diana from her shady bower, 
 Just as the sun was from the east uprising ; 
 And, as for him some gift she was devising, 
 Beheld thee, pluck'd thee, cast thee in the stream 
 To meet her glorious brother's greeting beam. 
 I marvel much that thou hast never told 
 How, from a flower, into a fish of gold 
 Apollo changed thee ; how thou next didst seem 
 A black-eyed swan upon the widening stream ; 
 And when thou first didst in that mirror trace 
 The placid features of a human face : 
 That thou hast never told thy travels strange, 
 And all the wonders of the mazy range 
 O'er pebbly crystal, and o'er golden sands ; 
 Kissing thy daily food from Naiad's pearly hands. 
 November^ 181 5. 
 
310 EPISTLE 
 
 EPISTLE TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 
 
 FULL many a dreary hour have I past, 
 
 My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast 
 
 With heaviness ; in seasons when I've thought 
 
 No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught 
 
 From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze 
 
 On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays ; 
 
 Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely, 
 
 Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely : 
 
 That I should never hear Apollo's song, 
 
 Though feathery clouds were floating all along 
 
 The purple west, and, two bright streaks between, 
 
 The golden lyre itself were dimly seen : 
 
 That the still murmur of the honey bee 
 
 Would never teach a rural song to me : 
 
 That the bright glance from beauty's eyelids slanting 
 
 Would never make a lay of mine enchanting, 
 
 Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold 
 
 Some tale of love and arms in time of old. 
 
 But there are times, when those that love the bay, 
 
 Fly from all sorrowing far, far away ; 
 
 A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see 
 
 In water, earth, or air, but poesy. 
 
 It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it, 
 
 (For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,) 
 
 That when a Poet is in such a trance, 
 
 In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance, 
 
 Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel, 
 
 Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel, 
 
 And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call, 
 
 Is the swift opening of their wide portal, 
 
 When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear, 
 
 Whose tones reach nought on earth but Poet's ear. 
 
 When these enchanted portals open wide, 
 
 And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide, 
 
TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 311 
 
 The Poet's eye can reach those golden halls, 
 And view the glory of their festivals : 
 Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem 
 Fit for the silv'ring of a seraph's dream ; 
 Their rich brimmed goblets, that incessant run 
 Like the bright spots that move about the sun ; 
 And, when upheld, the wine from each bright jar 
 Pours with the lustre of a falling star. 
 Yet further off, are dimly seen their bowers, 
 Of which, no mortal eye can reach the flowers ; 
 And 'tis right just, for well Apollo knows 
 'Twould make the Poet quarrel with the rose. 
 All that 's reveal'd from that far seat of blisses, 
 Is, the clear fountains' interchanging kisses, 
 As gracefully descending, light and thin, 
 Like silver streaks across a dolphin's fin, 
 When he upswimmeth from the coral caves, 
 And sports with half his tail above the waves. 
 
 These wonders strange he sees, and many more, 
 
 Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore. 
 
 Should he upon an evening ramble fare 
 
 With forehead to the soothing breezes bare, 
 
 Would he nought see but the dark, silent blue 
 
 With all its diamonds trembling through and through ? 
 
 Or the coy moon, when in the waviness 
 
 Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress, 
 
 And staidly paces higher up, and higher, 
 
 Like a sweet nun in holy-day attire ? 
 
 Ah, yes ! much more would start into his sight — 
 
 The revelries, and mysteries of night : 
 
 And should I ever see them, I will tell you 
 
 Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you. 
 
 These are the living pleasures of the bard : 
 
 But richer far posterity's award. 
 
 What does he murmur with his latest breath, 
 
312 EPISTLE 
 
 While his proud eye looks through the film of death ? 
 
 11 What though I leave this dull, and earthly mould, 
 
 Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold 
 
 With after times. — The patriot shall feel 
 
 My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel ; 
 
 Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers 
 
 To startle princes from their easy slumbers. 
 
 The sage will mingle with each moral theme 
 
 My happy thoughts sententious ; he will teem 
 
 With lofty periods when my verses fire him, 
 
 And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him. 
 
 Lays have I left of such a dear delight 
 
 That maids will sing them on their bridal night. 
 
 Gay villagers, upon a morn of May, 
 
 When they have tired their gentle limbs with play, 
 
 And form'd a snowy circle on the grass, 
 
 And placed in midst of all that lovely lass 
 
 Who chosen is their queen, — with her fine head 
 
 Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red : 
 
 For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing, 
 
 Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying : 
 
 Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, 
 
 A bunch of violets full blown, and double, 
 
 Serenely sleep : — she from a casket takes 
 
 A little book, — and then a joy awakes 
 
 About each youthful heart, — with stifled cries, 
 
 And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes : 
 
 For she 's to read a tale of hopes, and fears ; 
 
 One that I foster'd in my youthful years : 
 
 The pearls, that on each glist'ning circlet sleep, 
 
 Gush ever and anon with silent creep, 
 
 Lured by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest 
 
 Shall the dear babe, upon its mother's breast, 
 
 Be lulPd with songs of mine. Fair world, adieu ! 
 
 Thy dales, and hills, are fading from my view : 
 
 Swiftly I mount, upon wide spreading pinions, 
 
 Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions. 
 
TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 313 
 
 Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air, 
 
 That my soft verse will charm thy daughters fair, 
 
 And warm thy sons ! " Ah, my dear friend and brother, 
 
 Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother, 
 
 For tasting joys like these, sure I should be 
 
 Happier, and dearer to society. 
 
 At times, 'tis true, I've felt relief from pain 
 
 When some bright thought has darted through my brain 
 
 Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure 
 
 Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure. 
 
 As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them, 
 
 I feel delighted, still, that you should read them. 
 
 Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment, 
 
 Stretch'd on the grass at my best loved employment 
 
 Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought 
 
 While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught. 
 
 E'en now I'm pillow'd on a bed of flowers 
 
 That crowns a lofty clift, which proudly towers 
 
 Above the ocean- waves. The stalks, and blades, 
 
 Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades. 
 
 On one side is a field of drooping oats, 
 
 Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats ; 
 
 So pert and useless, that they bring to mind 
 
 The scarlet coats that pester human-kind. 
 
 And on the other side, outspread, is seen 
 
 Ocean's blue mantle streak'd with purple, and green. 
 
 Now 'tis I see a canvass'd ship, and now 
 
 Mark the bright silver curling round her prow. 
 
 I see the lark down-dropping to his nest, 
 
 And the broad winged sea-gull never at rest ; 
 
 For when no more he spreads his feathers free, 
 
 His breast is dancing on the* restless sea. 
 
 Now I direct my eyes into the west, 
 
 Which at this moment is in sunbeams drest : 
 
 Why westward turn ? 'Twas but to say adieu ! 
 
 'Twas but to kiss my hand, dear George, to you ! 
 
 August ', 1 8 16. 
 
314 EPISTLE 
 
 EPISTLE TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE 
 
 OFT have you seen a swan superbly frowning, 
 
 And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning; 
 
 He slants his neck beneath the waters bright 
 
 So silently, it seems a beam of light 
 
 Come from the galaxy : anon he sports, — 
 
 With outspread wings the Naiad Zephyr courts, 
 
 Or ruffles all the surface of the lake 
 
 In striving from its crystal face to take 
 
 Some diamond water drops, and them to treasure 
 
 In milky nest, and sit them off at leisure. 
 
 But not a moment can he there insure them, 
 
 Nor to such downy rest can he allure them ; 
 
 For down they rush as though they would be free, 
 
 And drop like hours into eternity. 
 
 Just like that bird am I in loss of time, 
 
 Whene'er I venture on the stream of rhyme ; 
 
 With shatter'd boat, oar snapt, and canvas rent, 
 
 I slowly sail, scarce knowing my intent ; 
 
 Still scooping up the water with my fingers, 
 
 In which a trembling diamond never lingers. 
 
 By this, friend Charles, you may full plainly see 
 Why I have never penn'd a line to thee : 
 Because my thoughts were never free, and clear, 
 And little fit to please a classic ear ; 
 Because my wine was of too poor a savour 
 For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour 
 Of sparkling Helicon : — small good it were 
 To take him to a desert rude, and bare, 
 Who had on Baise's shore reclined at ease, 
 While Tasso's page was floating in a breeze 
 That gave soft music from Armida's bowers, 
 Mingled with fragrance from her rarest flowers : 
 
TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE 315 
 
 Small good to one who had by Mulla's stream 
 
 Fondled the maidens with the breasts of cream ; 
 
 Who had beheld Belphcebe in a brook, 
 
 And lovely Una in a leafy nook, 
 
 And Archimago leaning o'er his book : 
 
 Who had of all that 's sweet tasted, and seen, 
 
 From silv'ry ripple, up to beauty's queen ; 
 
 From the sequester'd haunts of gay Titania, 
 
 To the blue dwelling of divine Urania ; 
 
 One, who, of late, had ta'en sweet forest walks 
 
 With him who elegantly chats, and talks — 
 
 The wrong'd Libertas, — who has told you stories 
 
 Of laurel chaplets, and Apollo's glories ; 
 
 Of troops chivalrous prancing through a city, 
 
 And tearful ladies made for love, and pity : 
 
 With many else which I have never known. 
 
 Thus have I thought ; and days on days have flown 
 
 Slowly, or rapidly — unwilling still 
 
 For you to try my dull, unlearned quill. 
 
 Nor should I now, but that I've known you long ; 
 
 That you first taught me all the sweets of song : 
 
 The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine ; 
 
 What swell'd with pathos, and what right divine : 
 
 Spenserian vowels that elope with ease, 
 
 And float along like birds o'er summer seas ; 
 
 Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness ; 
 
 Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve's fair slenderness. 
 
 Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly 
 
 Up to its climax and then dying proudly ? 
 
 Who found for me the grandeur of the ode, 
 
 Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load ? 
 
 Who let me taste that more than cordial dram, 
 
 The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram ? 
 
 Showed me that epic was of all the king, 
 
 Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring ? 
 
 You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty, 
 
 And pointed out the patriot's stern duty ; 
 
3 i6 EPISTLE 
 
 The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell ; 
 
 The hand of Brutus, that so grandly fell 
 
 Upon a tyrant's head. Ah ! had I never seen, 
 
 Or known your kindness, what might I have been ? 
 
 What my enjoyments in my youthful years, 
 
 Bereft of all that now my life endears ? 
 
 And can I e'er these benefits forget ? 
 
 And can I e'er repay the friendly debt ? 
 
 No, doubly no ; — yet should these rhymings please 
 
 I shall roll on the grass with two-fold ease : 
 
 For I have long time been my fancy feeding 
 
 With hopes that you would one day think the reading 
 
 Of my rough verses not an hour misspent ; 
 
 Should it e'er be so, what a rich content ! 
 
 Some weeks have pass'd since last I saw the spires 
 
 In lucent Thames reflected : — warm desires 
 
 To see the sun o'erpeep the eastern dimness, 
 
 And morning shadows streaking into slimness 
 
 Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water ; 
 
 To mark the time as they grow broad, and shorter ; 
 
 To feel the air that plays about the hills, 
 
 And sips its freshness from the little rills ; 
 
 To see high, golden corn wave in the light 
 
 When Cynthia smiles upon a summer's night, 
 
 And peers among the cloudlets jet and white, 
 
 As though she were reclining in a bed 
 
 Of bean blossoms, in heaven freshly shed. 
 
 No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures 
 
 Than I began to think of rhymes and measures : 
 
 The air that floated by me seem'd to say 
 
 " Write ! thou wilt never have a better day." 
 
 And so I did. When many lines I'd written, 
 
 Though with their grace I was not oversmitten, 
 
 Yet, as my hand was warm, I thought I'd better 
 
 Trust to my feelings, and write you a letter. 
 
 Such an attempt required an inspiration 
 
 Of a peculiar sort, — a consummation ; — 
 
TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE 317 
 
 Which, had I felt, these scribblings might have been 
 
 Verses from which the soul would never wean : 
 
 But many days have past since last my heart 
 
 Was warm'd luxuriously by divine Mozart ; 
 
 By Arne delighted, or by Handel madden'd ; 
 
 Or by the song of Erin pierced and saddened : 
 
 What time you were before the music sitting, 
 
 And the rich notes to each sensation fitting. 
 
 Since I have walk'd with you through shady lanes 
 
 That freshly terminate in open plains, 
 
 And revel'd in a chat that ceased not 
 
 When at night-fall among your books we got : 
 
 No, nor when supper came, nor after that, — 
 
 Nor when reluctantly I took my hat ; 
 
 No, nor till cordially you shook my hand 
 
 Mid-way between our homes : — your accents bland 
 
 Still sounded in my ears, when I no more 
 
 Could hear your footsteps touch the grav'ly floor. 
 
 Sometimes I lost them, and then found again ; 
 
 You changed the footpath for the grassy plain. 
 
 In those still moments I have wish'd you joys 
 
 That well you know to honour : — " Life's very toys 
 
 With him," said I, " will take a pleasant charm ; 
 
 It cannot be that ought will work him harm." 
 
 These thoughts now come o'er me with all their might :- 
 
 Again I shake your hand, — friend Charles, good night. 
 
 September •, 1816. 
 
*^f2£=0==Z^r 
 
SONNETS 
 
 TO MY BROTHER GEORGE 
 
 MANY the wonders I this day have seen : 
 The sun, when first he kist away the tears 
 That fill'd the eyes of morn ; — the laurel'd peers 
 
 Who from the feathery gold of evening lean ; — 
 
 The ocean with its vastness, its blue green, 
 
 Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,— 
 Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears 
 
 Must think on what will be, and what has been. 
 
 E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write, 
 Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping 
 
 So scantly, that it seems her bridal night, 
 And she her half-discover'd revels keeping. 
 
 But what, without the social thought of thee, 
 
 Would be the wonders of the sky and sea ? 
 
 How many bards gild the lapses of time ! 
 
 A few of them have ever been the food 
 
 Of my delighted fancy, — I could brood 
 Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime : 
 And often, when I sit me down to rhyme, 
 
 These will in throngs before my mind intrude : 
 
 But no confusion, no disturbance rude 
 Do they occasion ; 'tis a pleasing chime. 
 So the unnumber'd sounds that evening store ; 
 
 The songs of birds — the whisp'ring of the leaves — 
 The voice of waters — the great bell that heaves 
 
 With solemn sound, — and thousand others more, 
 That distance of recognizance bereaves, 
 
 Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar. 
 
324 SONNETS 
 
 TO G. A. W. 
 
 NYMPH of the downward smile, and sidelong glance, 
 
 In what diviner moments of the day 
 
 Art thou most lovely ? When gone far astray 
 Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance ? 
 Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance 
 
 Of sober thought ? Or when starting away, 
 
 With careless robe to meet the morning ray, 
 Thou sparest the flowers in thy mazy dance ? 
 Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly, 
 
 And so remain, because thou listenest : 
 But thou to please wert nurtured so completely 
 
 That I can never tell what mood is best. 
 I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly 
 
 Trips it before Apollo than the rest. 
 
 O SOLITUDE ! if I must with thee dwell, 
 Let it not be among the jumbled heap 
 Of murky buildings ; climb with me the steep, — 
 
 Nature's observatory — whence the dell, 
 
 Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell, 
 May seem a span ; let me thy vigils keep 
 'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap 
 
 Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. 
 
 But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee, 
 Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, 
 Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd, 
 
 Is my soul's pleasure ; and it sure must be 
 Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, 
 
 When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. 
 
SONNETS 325 
 
 TO MY BROTHERS 
 
 Small, busy flames play through the fresh laid coals, 
 
 And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep 
 
 Like whispers of the household gods that keep 
 A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls. 
 And while, for rhymes, I search around the poles, 
 
 Your eyes are fix'd, as in poetic sleep, 
 
 Upon the lore so voluble and deep, 
 That aye at fall of night our care condoles. 
 This is your birth-day Tom, and I rejoice 
 
 That thus it passes smoothly, quietly. 
 Many such eves of gently whisp'ring noise 
 
 May we together pass, and calmly try 
 What are this world's true joys, — ere the great voice, 
 
 From its fair face, shall bid our spirits fly. 
 
 November 18, 18 16. 
 
 Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there 
 
 Among the bushes, half leafless, and dry ; 
 
 The stars look very cold about the sky, 
 And I have many miles on foot to fare. 
 Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air, 
 
 Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily, 
 
 Or of those silver lamps that burn on high, 
 Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair : 
 For I am brimfull of the friendliness 
 
 That in a little cottage I have found ; 
 Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, 
 
 And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd ; 
 Of lovely Laura in her light green dress, 
 
 And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd. 
 
326 SONNETS 
 
 To one who has been long in city pent, 
 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair 
 And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer 
 
 Full in the smile of the blue firmament. 
 
 Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, 
 Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair 
 Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair 
 
 And gentle tale of love and languishment ? 
 
 Returning home at evening, with an ear 
 Catching the notes of Philomel, — an eye 
 
 Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, 
 He mourns that day so soon has glided by : 
 
 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear 
 That falls through the clear ether silently. 
 
 ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S 
 HOMER 
 
 MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
 
 Round many western islands have I been 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
 
 That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne ; 
 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 
 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — 
 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 
SONNETS 327 
 
 ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS AT AN 
 EARLY HOUR 
 
 Give me a golden pen, and let me lean 
 
 On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear, and far ; 
 Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, 
 
 Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen 
 
 The silver strings of heavenly harp atween : 
 And let there glide by many a pearly car, 
 Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar, 
 
 And half discovered wings, and glances keen. 
 
 The while let music wander round my ears, 
 And as it reaches each delicious ending, 
 Let me write down a line of glorious tone, 
 
 And full of many wonders of the spheres : 
 For what a height my spirit is contending ! 
 'Tis not content so soon to be alone. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO HAYDON 
 
 GREAT spirits now on earth are sojourning ; 
 
 He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake, 
 
 Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake, 
 Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing : 
 He of the rose, the violet, the spring, 
 
 The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake : 
 
 And lo ! — whose steadfastness would never take 
 A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering. 
 And other spirits there are standing apart 
 
 Upon the forehead of the age to come ; 
 These, these will give the world another heart, 
 
 And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum 
 Of mighty workings ? 
 
 Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb. 
 
328 SONNETS 
 
 ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET 
 
 The poetry of earth is never dead : 
 
 When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, 
 And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 
 
 From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead ; 
 
 That is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead 
 In summer luxury, — he has never done 
 With his delights ; for when tired out with fun 
 
 He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 
 
 The poetry of earth is ceasing never : 
 On a lone winter evening, when the frost 
 
 Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 
 
 The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, 
 And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, 
 The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 
 
 December 30, 18 16. 
 
 Happy is England ! I could be content 
 
 To see no other verdure than its own ; 
 
 To feel no other breezes than are blown 
 Through its tall woods with high romances blent : 
 Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment 
 
 For skies Italian, and an inward groan 
 
 To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, 
 And half forget what world or worldling meant. 
 Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters ; 
 
 Enough their simple loveliness for me, 
 
 Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging : 
 
 Yet do I often warmly burn to see 
 
 Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, 
 And float with them about the summer waters. 
 
SONNETS 329 
 
 WRITTEN ON A SUMMER EVENING 
 
 The church bells toll a melancholy round, 
 Calling the people to some other prayers, 
 Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, 
 
 More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound. 
 
 Surely the mind of man is closely bound 
 
 In some black spell ; seeing that each one tears 
 Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs, 
 
 And converse high of those with glory crown'd. 
 
 Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, — 
 
 A chill as from a tomb, did I not know- 
 That they are dying like an outburnt lamp ; 
 That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go 
 Into oblivion ; — that fresh flowers will grow, 
 
 And many glories of immortal stamp. 
 
 1816. 
 
 After dark vapours have oppress'd our plains 
 For a long dreary season, comes a day 
 Born of the gentle South, and clears away 
 
 From the sick heavens all unseemly stains. 
 
 The anxious month, relieved of its pains, 
 Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May ; 
 The eye-lids with the passing coolness play, 
 
 Like rose-leaves with the drip of Summer rains. 
 
 And calmest thoughts come round us ; as of leaves 
 Budding — fruit ripening in stillness — Autumn suns 
 
 Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves, — 
 
 Sweet Sappho's cheek, — a sleeping infant's breath, — 
 The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs, — 
 
 A woodland rivulet, — a Poet's death. 
 
 January ', 1817. 
 
330 SONNETS 
 
 ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES FOR 
 THE FIRST TIME 
 
 My spirit is too weak — mortality- 
 Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, 
 And each imagined pinnacle and steep 
 
 Of godlike hardship tells me I must die 
 
 Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. 
 Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep, 
 That I have not the cloudy winds to keep 
 
 Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. 
 
 Such dim-conceived glories of the brain 
 
 Bring round the heart an undescribable feud ; 
 
 So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, 
 
 That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude 
 
 Wasting of old Time — with a billowy main — 
 A sun — a shadow of a magnitude. 
 
 1817. 
 
 ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER 
 
 Come hither, all sweet maidens soberly, 
 
 Down -looking aye, and with a chasten 'd light 
 Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, 
 
 And meekly let your fair hands joined be, 
 
 As if so gentle that ye could not see, 
 
 Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, 
 Sinking away to his young spirit's night, 
 
 Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea : 
 
 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death ; 
 
 Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips 
 
 For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile. 
 O horrid dream ! see how his body dips, 
 
 Dead-heavy ; arms and shoulders gleam awhile : 
 
 He 's gone ; up bubbles all his amorous breath ! 
 
SONNETS 331 
 
 ON THE SEA 
 
 It keeps eternal whisperings around 
 
 Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 
 Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 
 
 Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 
 
 Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, 
 That scarcely will the very smallest shell 
 Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, 
 
 When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 
 
 Oh ye ! who have your eye-balls vex'd and tired, 
 Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea ; 
 
 Oh ye ! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude, 
 Or fed too much with cloying melody, — 
 
 Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood 
 
 Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired ! 
 
 August, 18 17. 
 
 When I have fears that I may cease to be 
 
 Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, 
 Before high-piled books, in charact'ry, 
 
 Hold like full garners the full-ripen'd grain ; 
 When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, 
 
 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
 And feel that I may never live to trace 
 
 Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ; 
 And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, 
 
 That I shall never look upon thee more, 
 Never have relish in the faery power 
 
 Of unreflecting love ! — then on the shore 
 Of the wide world I stand alone, and think, 
 Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. 
 
 1817. 
 
332 SONNETS 
 
 TO HOMER 
 
 Standing aloof in giant ignorance, 
 
 Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades, 
 As one who sits ashore and longs perchance 
 
 To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas. 
 So thou wast blind ! — but then the veil was rent ; 
 
 For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live, 
 And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent, 
 
 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive ; 
 Aye on the shores of darkness there is light, 
 
 And precipices show untrodden green ; 
 There is a budding morrow in midnight, 
 
 There is a triple sight in blindness keen ; 
 Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel, 
 To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell. 
 
 1818. 
 
 THE HUMAN SEASONS 
 
 FOUR Seasons fill the measure of the year ; 
 
 There are four seasons in the mind of man : 
 He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear 
 
 Takes in all beauty with an easy span : 
 He has his Summer, when luxuriously 
 
 Springs honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves 
 To ruminate, and by such dreaming high 
 
 Is nearest unto Heaven : quiet coves 
 His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings 
 
 He furleth close ; contented so to look 
 On mists in idleness — to let fair things 
 
 Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. 
 He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, 
 Or else he would forego his mortal nature. 
 
SONNETS 333 
 
 WRITTEN BEFORE RE-READING KING 
 LEAR 
 
 O GOLDEN-TONGUED Romance with serene lute ! 
 
 Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far away ! 
 
 Leave melodizing on this wintry day, 
 Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute. 
 Adieu ! for once again the fierce dispute, 
 
 Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay 
 
 Must I burn through ; once more humbly assay 
 The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. 
 Chief Poet ! and ye clouds of Albion, 
 
 Begetters of our deep eternal theme ! 
 When through the old oak Forest I am gone, 
 
 Let me not wander in a barren dream, 
 But when I am consumed in the Fire, 
 Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire. 
 
 January ', 1818. 
 
 TO THE NILE 
 
 SON of the old moon-mountains African ! 
 
 Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile ! 
 
 We call thee fruitful, and, that very while, 
 A desert fills our seeing's inward span ; 
 Nurse of swart nations since the world began, 
 
 Art thou so fruitful ? or dost thou beguile 
 
 Such men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, 
 Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan ? 
 O may dark fancies err ! they surely do ; 
 
 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste 
 Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew 
 
 Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste 
 The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, 
 
 And to the sea as happily dost haste. 
 
 1818. 
 
334 SONNETS 
 
 TO A LADY SEEN FOR A FEW MOMENTS 
 AT VAUXHALL 
 
 Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb ; 
 
 Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand, 
 Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web, 
 
 And snared by the ungloving of thine hand. 
 And yet I never look on midnight sky, 
 
 But I behold thine eyes' well memoried light ; 
 I cannot look upon the rose's dye, 
 
 But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight ; 
 I cannot look on any budding flower, 
 
 But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips, 
 And harkening for a love-sound, doth devour 
 
 Its sweets in the wrong sense : — Thou dost eclipse 
 Every delight with sweet remembering, 
 And grief unto my darling joys dost bring. 
 
 A DREAM, AFTER READING DANTE'S 
 EPISODE OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA 
 
 As Hermes once took to his feathers light, 
 
 When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept, 
 So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright, 
 
 So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft 
 The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes ; 
 
 And seeing it asleep, so fled away, 
 Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, 
 
 Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day ; 
 But to that second circle of sad Hell, 
 
 Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 
 Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell 
 
 Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw, 
 Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form 
 I floated with, about that melancholy storm. 
 
 1819. 
 
SONNETS 335 
 
 If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, 
 
 And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet 
 
 Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness ; 
 
 Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd, 
 
 Sandals more interwoven and complete 
 
 To fit the naked foot of poesy ; 
 
 Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress 
 
 Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd 
 
 By ear industrious, and attention meet ; 
 
 Misers of sound and syllable, no less 
 
 Than Midas of his coinage, let us be 
 
 Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown ; 
 
 So, if we may not let the Muse be free, 
 
 She will be bound with garlands of her own. 
 
 1819. 
 
 ON FAME 
 
 Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy 
 
 To those who woo her with too slavish knees, 
 But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, 
 
 And dotes the more upon a heart at ease ; 
 She is a Gipsy, — will not speak to those 
 
 Who have not learnt to be content without her ; 
 A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close, 
 
 Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her ; 
 A very Gipsy is she, Nilus-born, 
 
 Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar ; 
 Ye love-sick Bards ! repay her scorn for scorn ; 
 
 Ye Artists love-lorn ! madmen that ye are ! 
 Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, 
 Then, if she likes it, she will follow you. 
 
 1819. 
 
336 SONNETS 
 
 ON FAME 
 
 " You cannot eat your cake and have it too " — Proverb 
 
 How fever'd is the man, who cannot look 
 
 Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, 
 Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, 
 
 And robs his fair name of its maidenhood ; 
 It is as if the rose should pluck herself, 
 
 Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom, 
 As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, 
 
 Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom ; 
 But the rose leaves herself upon the briar, 
 
 For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, 
 And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire ; 
 
 The undisturbed lake has crystal space ; 
 
 Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, 
 Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed ? 
 
 1819. 
 
 TO SLEEP 
 
 O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight, 
 
 Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, 
 Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, 
 
 Enshaded in forgetfulness divine ; 
 O soothest Sleep ! if so it please thee, close, 
 
 In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, 
 Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws 
 
 Around my bed its lulling charities ; 
 
 Then save me, or the passed day will shine 
 Upon my pillow, breeding many woes ; 
 
 Save me from curious conscience, that still lords 
 Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole; 
 
 Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, 
 And seal the hushed casket of my soul. 
 
 1819. 
 
SONNETS 337 
 
 The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone ! 
 
 Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, 
 Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, 
 
 Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! 
 Faded the flower and all its budded charms, 
 
 Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, 
 Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, 
 
 Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise — 
 Vanish'd unseasonably at shut of eve, 
 
 When the dusk holiday — or holinight 
 Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave 
 
 The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight ; 
 But, as IVe read love's missal through to-day, 
 He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray. 
 
 1819. 
 
 TO FANNY 
 
 I CRY your mercy — pity — love ! — aye, love ! 
 
 Merciful love that tantalises not, 
 One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, 
 
 Unmask'd, and being seen — without a blot ! 
 O ! let me have thee whole, — all — all — be mine ! 
 
 That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest 
 Of love, your kiss, — those hands, those eyes divine, 
 
 That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,- 
 Yourself — your soul — in pity give me all, 
 
 Withhold no atom's atom or I die, 
 Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall, 
 
 Forget, in the mist of idle misery, 
 Life's purposes, — the palate of my mind 
 Losing its gust, and my ambition blind ! 
 
 1819. 
 
- 
 
 338 SONNETS 
 
 HIS LAST SONNET 
 
 BRIGHT star ! would I were steadfast as thou art- 
 
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, 
 And watching, with eternal lids apart, 
 
 Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, 
 The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, 
 Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask 
 
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors — 
 No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable. 
 
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, 
 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, 
 
 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, 
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, 
 And so live ever — or else swoon to death. 
 
 182a 
 
* 
 
CHISWICK PRESS 
 
 C.WHITTINGHAM 
 
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 TOOKS COURT 
 
 CHANCERY LANE 
 
 LONDON 
 
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