The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
A green and glowing light, like that which drops From folded lilies in which glowworms dwell,
When earth over her face night's mantle wraps ; Between the severed mountains lay on high Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters all besprent
With sand and polished pebbles :—mortal boat
In such a shallow rapid could not float.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear A subterranean portal for the river,
It fled the circling sunbows did upbear Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
And when the wizard lady would ascend
The labyrinths of some many winding vale,
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend-
She called "Hermaphroditus!" and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale .
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
And from above into the Sun's dominions
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
With which frost paints the pines in winter time.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its ethereal vans-and speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight;
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
The water flashed like sunlight, by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains,-loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
His storm-outspeeding wings, th' Hermaphrodite ;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocona.
Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake, With the Antarctic constellations haven,
Canopus and his crew, lay th' Austral lakeThere she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make The bastions of the storm, when through the sky The spirits of the tempest thundered by.
A haven, beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
And around which, the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags; and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the winds' scourge, foamed like a wounded thing; And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thundersmoke-this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven.
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star,
Even as a tyger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the Antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water; till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion, The armies of her ministering spirits—
In mighty legions million after million
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion,
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere,
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk-cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread,
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
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