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 lake-
There 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 thunder smoke-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.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of aëry dew,
Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence-and now she grew

Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night

And now she wept, and now she laughed outright

These were tame pleasuses.-She would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back

Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft time
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,

She ran upon he platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air,
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,

She would ascend, and win the spirits there,

To let her join their chorus. Mortals found That on those days the sky was calm and fair, And mystic snatches of harmonious sound Wandered upon the earth where'er she pass'd, And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads Egypt and Æthiopia, from the steep

Of utmost Axumé, until he spreads,
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,

His waters on the plain; and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

By Mæris and the Mareotid lakes,

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors Where naked boys, bridling tame water-snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators,

Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes

Of those huge forms:-within the brazen doors
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

And where, within the surface of the river,
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased-but tremble ever

Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever

The works of man pierced that serenest sky With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight To wander in the shadow of the night.

With motion, like the spirit of that wind

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Past through the peopled haunts of human kind, Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, 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.

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 linked 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.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrowed 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.'

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.

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.

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.
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 fair-
And then, she had a charm of strange device,
Which murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
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.

'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.

To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a chrystal bowl.

They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforth as if some controul,
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.

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;