Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,
Ye faint-eyed children of the Hours,
Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers
Which she had from the breathing-

-A table near of polished porphyry.
They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye
That looked on them-a fragrance from the

touch

Whose warmth

light such

checked their life; a

As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love,

which did reprove

The childish pity that she felt for them,

And a

remorse that from their stem

She had divided such fair shapes

A feeling in the

made

which was a shade

Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay

All

gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.

rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms, And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes The livery of unremembered snowViolets whose eyes have drunk

Fiordispina and her nurse are now
Upon the steps of the high portico;
Under the withered arm of Media

She flings her glowing arm

step by step and stair by stair,

That withered woman, gray and white and

brown

More like a trunk by lichens overgrown

Than anything which once could have been

human.

And ever as she goes the palsied woman

"How slow and painfully you seem to walk, Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk." "And well it may,

Fiordispina, dearest — -well-a-day!

You are hastening to a marriage-bed;

I to the grave!"-"And if my love were

dead,

Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
Beside him in my shroud as willingly

As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought."

Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought Not be remembered till it snows in June; Such fancies are a music out of tune

With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.

What! would you take all beauty and delight Back to the Paradise from which you sprung, And leave to grosser mortals?

And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the

sweet

And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?
Who knows whether the loving game is played,
When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
The naked soul goes wandering here and there
Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?
The violet dies not till it"—

Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream, Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there. Follow the herbless banks of that strange

brook

Until you pause beside a darksome pond,
The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush
Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night
That lives beneath the overhanging rock

That shades the pool—an endless spring of

gloom,

Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,
Trembling to mingle with its paramour, —
But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,
Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,
Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.

On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill
There is a cave, from which there eddies up
A pale mist, like aërial gossamer,

Whose breath destroys all life — awhile it veils .The rock then, scattered by the wind, it flies

Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts,

Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide there. Upon the beetling edge of that dark rock There stands a group of cypresses; not such As, with a graceful spire and stirring life, Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale, Whose branches the air plays among, but not Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace; But blasted and all wearily they stand,

One to another clinging; their weak boughs