Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined LXI. A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see 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, And pale imaginings of visioned wrong; 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 They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. LXX. For on the night when they were buried, she 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 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, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick LXXIV. The king would dress an ape up in his crown Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet LXXV. The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares ;-in a band 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: 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. |