Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

LXI.

A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;

There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linkèd innocently

In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

LXII.

-

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song -
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,

And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;
And all the code of custom's lawless law

Written upon the brows of old and young : "This," said the wizard maiden, "is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life."

LXVIII.

”Tis said in after times her spirit free

Knew what love was, and felt itself alone But holy Dian could not chaster be

Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, Than now this lady — like a sexless bee

Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden Past with an eye serene and heart unladen.

LXIX.

To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:

They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforward as if some controul,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower

Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

LXX.

For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook

The light out of the funeral lamps, to be

A mimic day within that deathy nook ;

And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

LXXI.

And there the body lay, age after age,

Mute, breathing, beating, warm and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage,

With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,

And living in its dreams beyond the rage

Of death or life; while they were still arraying

In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind

And fleeting generations of mankind.

LXXII.

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desart is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers, all his evil gain

The miser in such dreams would rise and shake

Into a beggar's lap ;- the lying scribe

Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. — Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed - alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism ;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand

Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,

Beating their swords to ploughshares ;-in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.

And timid lovers who had been so coy,

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy- till the tenth moon shone ;

LXXVII.

And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,— and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.

Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,

Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!

She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.