LXIII.

And little did the sight disturb her soul—
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake,
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,

Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wide surface to an unknown goal,-

But she in the calm depths her way could take, Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide, Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

LXIV.

And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row,

She saw the priests asleep,-all of one sort,
For all were educated to be so.

The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lulled within their dreamless

graves.

LXV.

And all the forms in which those spirits lay,
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array

Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us

Only their scorn of all concealment: they

Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

LXVI.

She all those human figures breathing there
Beheld as living spirits—to her eyes

The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

And often through a rude and worn disguise

She saw the inner form most bright and fairAnd then, she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

LXVII.

Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm, when Tithon became grey?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven

Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

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 Passed 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 thenceforth as if some control,

Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave

Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,

Was a green and over-arching bower

Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

LXX.

For on the night that 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 sleep 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 desert 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.

LXXVIII.

These were the pranks she played among the cities
Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties,
To do her will, and show their subtle slights,
I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter nights—
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,And ever-changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?