Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there   
   
   
Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there      
  Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;      
  The stars look very cold about the sky,      
And I have many miles on foot to fare.      
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,              
  Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,      
  Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,      
Or of the distance from home’s pleasant lair:      
For I am brimfull of the friendliness      
  That in a little cottage I have found;          
Of fair-hair’d Milton’s eloquent distress,      
  And all his love for gentle Lycid drown’d;      
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,      
  And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown’d.

To one who has been long in city pent   
   
   
To one who has been long in city pent,      
  ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair      
  And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer      
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.      
Who is more happy, when, with hearts content,              
  Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair      
  Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair      
And gentle tale of love and languishment?      
Returning home at evening, with an ear      
  Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye              
Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,      
  He mourns that day so soon has glided by:      
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear      
  That falls through the clear ether silently.      

On leaving some Friends at an early Hour   
   
   
Give me a golden pen, and let me lean      
  On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;      
  Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,      
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen      
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:              
  And let there glide by many a pearly car,      
  Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,      
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.      
The while let music wander round my ears,      
  And as it reaches each delicious ending,              
    Let me write down a line of glorious tone,      
And full of many wonders of the spheres:      
  For what a height my spirit is contending!      
    ’Tis not content so soon to be alone.      

Addressed to Haydon   
   
   
Highmindedness, a jealousy for good,      
  A loving-kindness for the great man’s fame,      
  Dwells here and there with people of no name,      
In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:      
And where we think the truth least understood,              
  Oft may be found a “singleness of aim,”      
  That ought to frighten into hooded shame      
A money mong’ling, pitiable brood.      
How glorious this affection for the cause      
  Of stedfast genius, toiling gallantly!          
What when a stout unbending champion awes      
  Envy, and Malice to their native sty?      
Unnumber’d souls breathe out a still applause,      
  Proud to behold him in his country’s eye.

Addressed to the Same   
   
   
Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;      
  He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,      
  Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,      
Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing:      
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,              
  The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:      
  And lo!—whose stedfastness would never take      
A meaner sound than Raphael’s whispering.      
And other spirits there are standing apart      
  Upon the forehead of the age to come;              
These, these will give the world another heart,      
  And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum      
Of mighty workings?—————      
  Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.

To Kosciusko   
   
   
Good Kosciusko, thy great name alone      
  Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;      
  It comes upon us like the glorious pealing      
Of the wide spheres—an everlasting tone.      
And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown,              
  The names of heroes, burst from clouds concealing,      
  And changed to harmonies, for ever stealing      
Through cloudless blue, and round each silver throne.      
It tells me too, that on a happy day,      
  When some good spirit walks upon the earth,          
  Thy name with Alfred’s, and the great of yore      
Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth      
To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away      
  To where the great God lives for evermore.      

Happy is England! I could be content   
   
   
Happy is England! I could be content      
  To see no other verdure than its own;      
  To feel no other breezes than are blown      
Through its tall woods with high romances blent:      
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment              
  For skies Italian, and an inward groan      
  To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,      
And half forget what world or worldling meant.      
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters;      
  Enough their simple loveliness for me,          
    Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:      
  Yet do I often warmly burn to see      
    Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,      
And float with them about the summer waters.

Sleep and Poetry   
    
    
           “As I lay in my bed slepe full unmete   
“Was unto me, but why that I ne might   
“Rest I ne wist, for there n’as erthly wight   
“[As I suppose] had more of hertis ese   
“Than I, for I n’ad sicknesse nor disese.”   
CHAUCER.
    
    
What is more gentle than a wind in summer?      
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer      
That stays one moment in an open flower,      
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?      
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing           5   
In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?      
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?      
More secret than a nest of nightingales?      
More serene than Cordelia’s countenance?      
More full of visions than a high romance?           10   
What, but thee Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes!      
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!      
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!      
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!      
Silent entangler of a beauty’s tresses!           15   
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses      
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes      
That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.      
    
But what is higher beyond thought than thee?      
Fresher than berries of a mountain tree?           20   
More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more regal,      
Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen eagle?      
What is it? And to what shall I compare it?      
It has a glory, and nought else can share it:      
The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,           25   
Chacing away all worldliness and folly;      
Coming sometimes like fearful claps of thunder,      
Or the low rumblings earth’s regions under;      
And sometimes like a gentle whispering      
Of all the secrets of some wond’rous thing           30   
That breathes about us in the vacant air;      
So that we look around with prying stare,      
Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial lymning,      
And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning;      
To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended,           35   
That is to crown our name when life is ended.      
Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice,      
And from the heart up-springs, rejoice! rejoice!      
Sounds which will reach the Framer of all things,      
And die away in ardent mutterings.           40   
    
No one who once the glorious sun has seen,      
And all the clouds, and felt his bosom clean      
For his great Maker’s presence, but must know      
What ’tis I mean, and feel his being glow:      
Therefore no insult will I give his spirit           45   
By telling what he sees from native merit.      
    
O Poesy! for thee I hold my pen      
That am not yet a glorious denizen      
Of thy wide heaven—Should I rather kneel      
Upon some mountain-top until I feel           50   
A glowing splendour round about me hung,      
And echo back the voice of thine own tongue?      
O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen      
That am not yet a glorious denizen      
Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,           55   
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,      
Smoothed for intoxication by the breath      
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death      
Of luxury, and my young spirit follow      
The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo           60   
Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear      
The o’erwhelming sweets, ’twill bring me to the fair      
Visions of all places: a bowery nook      
Will be elysium—an eternal book      
Whence I may copy many a lovely saying           65   
About the leaves, and flowers—about the playing      
Of nymphs in woods, and fountains; and the shade      
Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid;      
And many a verse from so strange influence      
That we must ever wonder how, and whence           70   
It came. Also imaginings will hover      
Round my fire-side, and haply there discover      
Vistas of solemn beauty, where I’d wander      
In happy silence, like the clear meander      
Through its lone vales; and where I found a spot           75   
Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot,      
Or a green hill o’erspread with chequered dress      
Of flowers, and fearful from its loveliness,      
Write on my tablets all that was permitted,      
All that was for our human senses fitted.           80   
Then the events of this wide world I’d seize      
Like a strong giant, and my spirit teaze      
Till at its shoulders it should proudly see      
Wings to find out an immortality.      
    
Stop and consider! life is but a day;           85   
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way      
From a tree’s summit; a poor Indian’s sleep      
While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep      
Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan?      
Life is the rose’s hope while yet unblown;           90   
The reading of an ever-changing tale;      
The light uplifting of a maiden’s veil;      
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;      
A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,      
Riding the springy branches of an elm.           95   
    
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm      
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed      
That my own soul has to itself decreed.      
Then I will pass the countries that I see      
In long perspective, and continually           100   
Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I’ll pass      
Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,      
Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,      
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;      
Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,           105   
To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,—      
Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white      
Into a pretty shrinking with a bite      
As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,      
A lovely tale of human life we’ll read.           110   
And one will teach a tame dove how it best      
May fan the cool air gently o’er my rest;      
Another, bending o’er her nimble tread,      
Will set a green robe floating round her head,      
And still will dance with ever varied ease,           115   
Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:      
Another will entice me on, and on      
Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon,      
Till in the bosom of a leafy world      
We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl’d           120   
In the recesses of a pearly shell.      
    
And can I ever bid these joys farewell?      
Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,      
Where I may find the agonies, the strife      
Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar,           125   
O’er sailing the blue cragginess, a car      
And steeds with streamy manes—the charioteer      
Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear:      
And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly      
Along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly           130   
Wheel downward come they into fresher skies,      
Tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.      
Still downward with capacious whirl they glide;      
And now I see them on a green-hill’s side      
In breezy rest among the nodding stalks.           135   
The charioteer with wond’rous gesture talks      
To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear      
Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear,      
Passing along before a dusky space      
Made by some mighty oaks: as they would chase           140   
Some ever-fleeting music on they sweep.      
Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep:      
Some with upholden hand and mouth severe;      
Some with their faces muffled to the ear      
Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom,           145   
Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom;      
Some looking back, and some with upward gaze;      
Yes, thousands in a thousand different ways      
Flit onward—now a lovely wreath of girls      
Dancing their sleek hair into tangled curls;           150   
And now broad wings. Most awfully intent      
The driver of those steeds is forward bent,      
And seems to listen: O that I might know      
All that he writes with such a hurrying glow.      
    
The visions all are fled—the car is fled           155   
Into the light of heaven, and in their stead      
A sense of real things comes doubly strong,      
And, like a muddy stream, would bear along      
My soul to nothingness: but I will strive      
Against all doubtings, and will keep alive           160   
The thought of that same chariot, and the strange      
Journey it went.

                Is there so small a range      
In the present strength of manhood, that the high      
Imagination cannot freely fly      
As she was wont of old? prepare her steeds,           165   
Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds      
Upon the clouds? Has she not shewn us all?      
From the clear space of ether, to the small      
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning      
Of Jove’s large eye-brow, to the tender greening           170   
Of April meadows? Here her altar shone,      
E’en in this isle; and who could paragon      
The fervid choir that lifted up a noise      
Of harmony, to where it aye will poise      
Its mighty self of convoluting sound,           175   
Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,      
Eternally around a dizzy void?      
Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh cloy’d      
With honors; nor had any other care      
Than to sing out and sooth their wavy hair.           180   
    
Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a sc[h]ism      
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,      
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.      
Men were thought wise who could not understand      
His glories: with a puling infant’s force           185   
They sway’d about upon a rocking horse,      
And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul’d!      
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d      
Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue      
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew           190   
Of summer nights collected still to make      
The morning precious: beauty was awake!      
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead      
To things ye knew not of,—were closely wed      
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule           195   
And compass vile: so that ye taught a school      
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,      
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit,      
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:      
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask           200   
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!      
That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,      
And did not know it,—no, they went about,      
Holding a poor, decrepid standard out      
Mark’d with most flimsy mottos, and in large           205   
The name of one Boileau!

                          O ye whose charge      
It is to hover round our pleasant hills!      
Whose congregated majesty so fills      
My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace      
Your hallowed names, in this unholy place,           210   
So near those common folk; did not their shames      
Affright you? Did our old lamenting Thames      
Delight you? Did ye never cluster round      
Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound,      
And weep? Or did ye wholly bid adieu           215   
To regions where no more the laurel grew?      
Or did ye stay to give a welcoming      
To some lone spirits who could proudly sing      
Their youth away, and die? ’Twas even so:      
But let me think away those times of woe:           220   
Now ’tis a fairer season; ye have breathed      
Rich benedictions o’er us; ye have wreathed      
Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard      
In many places;—some has been upstirr’d      
From out its crystal dwelling in a lake,           225   
By a swan’s ebon bill; from a thick brake,      
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,      
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild      
About the earth: happy are ye and glad.      
These things are doubtless: yet in truth we’ve had           230   
Strange thunders from the potency of song;      
Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong,      
From majesty: but in clear truth the themes      
Are ugly clubs, the Poets Polyphemes      
Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower           235   
Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;      
’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.      
The very archings of her eye-lids charm      
A thousand willing agents to obey,      
And still she governs with the mildest sway:           240   
But strength alone though of the Muses born      
Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,      
Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres      
Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs,      
And thorns of life; forgetting the great end           245   
Of poesy, that it should be a friend      
To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.      
    
  Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than      
E’er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds      
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds           250   
A silent space with ever sprouting green.      
All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,      
Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,      
Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.      
Then let us clear away the choaking thorns           255   
From round its gentle stem; let the young fawns,      
Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,      
Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown      
With simple flowers: let there nothing be      
More boisterous than a lover’s bended knee;           260   
Nought more ungentle than the placid look      
Of one who leans upon a closed book;      
Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes      
Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!      
As she was wont, th’ imagination           265   
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,      
And they shall be accounted poet kings      
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.      
O may these joys be ripe before I die.      
    
Will not some say that I presumptuously           270   
Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace      
’Twere better far to hide my foolish face?      
That whining boyhood should with reverence bow      
Ere the dread thunderbolt could reach? How!      
If I do hide myself, it sure shall be           275   
In the very fane, the light of Poesy:      
If I do fall, at least I will be laid      
Beneath the silence of a poplar shade;      
And over me the grass shall be smooth shaven;      
And there shall be a kind memorial graven.           280   
But off Despondence! miserable bane!      
They should not know thee, who athirst to gain      
A noble end, are thirsty every hour.      
What though I am not wealthy in the dower      
Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know           285   
The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow      
Hither and thither all the changing thoughts      
Of man: though no great minist’ring reason sorts      
Out the dark mysteries of human souls      
To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls           290   
A vast idea before me, and I glean      
Therefrom my liberty; thence too I’ve seen      
The end and aim of Poesy. ’Tis clear      
As anything most true; as that the year      
Is made of the four seasons—manifest           295   
As a large cross, some old cathedral’s crest,      
Lifted to the white clouds. Therefore should I      
Be but the essence of deformity,      
A coward, did my very eye-lids wink      
At speaking out what I have dared to think.           300   
Ah! rather let me like a madman run      
Over some precipice; let the hot sun      
Melt my Dedalian wings, and drive me down      
Convuls’d and headlong! Stay! an inward frown      
Of conscience bids me be more calm awhile.           305   
An ocean dim, sprinkled with many an isle,      
Spreads awfully before me. How much toil!      
How many days! what desperate turmoil!      
Ere I can have explored its widenesses.      
Ah, what a task! upon my bended knees,           310   
I could unsay those—no, impossible!      
Impossible!

            For sweet relief I’ll dwell      
On humbler thoughts, and let this strange assay      
Begun in gentleness die so away.      
E’en now all tumult from my bosom fades:           315   
I turn full hearted to the friendly aids      
That smooth the path of honour; brotherhood,      
And friendliness the nurse of mutual good.      
The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet      
Into the brain ere one can think upon it;           320   
The silence when some rhymes are coming out;      
And when they’re come, the very pleasant rout:      
The message certain to be done to-morrow.      
’Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow      
Some precious book from out its snug retreat,           325   
To cluster round it when we next shall meet.      
Scarce can I scribble on; for lovely airs      
Are fluttering round the room like doves in pairs;      
Many delights of that glad day recalling,      
When first my senses caught their tender falling.           330   
And with these airs come forms of elegance      
Stooping their shoulders o’er a horse’s prance,      
Careless, and grand—fingers soft and round      
Parting luxuriant curls;—and the swift bound      
Of Bacchus from his chariot, when his eye           335   
Made Ariadne’s cheek look blushingly.      
Thus I remember all the pleasant flow      
Of words at opening a portfolio.      
    
Things such as these are ever harbingers      
To trains of peaceful images: the stirs           340   
Of a swan’s neck unseen among the rushes:      
A linnet starting all about the bushes:      
A butterfly, with golden wings broad parted      
Nestling a rose, convuls’d as though it smarted      
With over pleasure—many, many more,           345   
Might I indulge at large in all my store      
Of luxuries: yet I must not forget      
Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet:      
For what there may be worthy in these rhymes      
I partly owe to him: and thus, the chimes           350   
Of friendly voices had just given place      
To as sweet a silence, when I ’gan retrace      
The pleasant day, upon a couch at ease.      
It was a poet’s house who keeps the keys      
Of pleasure’s temple. Round about were hung           355   
The glorious features of the bards who sung      
In other ages—cold and sacred busts      
Smiled at each other. Happy he who trusts      
To clear Futurity his darling fame!      
Then there were fauns and satyrs taking aim           360   
At swelling apples with a frisky leap      
And reaching fingers, ’mid a luscious heap      
Of vine leaves. Then there rose to view a fane      
Of liny marble, and thereto a train      
Of nymphs approaching fairly o’er the sward:           365   
One, loveliest, holding her white hand toward      
The dazzling sun-rise: two sisters sweet      
Bending their graceful figures till they meet      
Over the trippings of a little child:      
And some are hearing, eagerly, the wild           370   
Thrilling liquidity of dewy piping.      
See, in another picture, nymphs are wiping      
Cherishingly Diana’s timorous limbs;—      
A fold of lawny mantle dabbling swims      
At the bath’s edge, and keeps a gentle motion           375   
With the subsiding crystal: as when ocean      
Heaves calmly its broad swelling smoothiness o’er      
Its rocky marge, and balances once more      
The patient weeds; that now unshent by foam      
Feel all about their undulating home.           380   
    
Sappho’s meek head was there half smiling down      
At nothing; just as though the earnest frown      
Of over thinking had that moment gone      
From off her brow, and left her all alone.      
    
Great Alfred’s too, with anxious, pitying eyes,           385   
As if he always listened to the sighs      
Of the goaded world; and Kosciusko’s worn      
By horrid suffrance—mightily forlorn.      
    
Petrarch, outstepping from the shady green,      
Starts at the sight of Laura; nor can wean           390   
His eyes from her sweet face. Most happy they!      
For over them was seen a free display      
Of out-spread wings, and from between them shone      
The face of Poesy: from off her throne      
She overlook’d things that I scarce could tell.           395   
The very sense of where I was might well      
Keep Sleep aloof: but more than that there came      
Thought after thought to nourish up the flame      
Within my breast; so that the morning light      
Surprised me even from a sleepless night;           400   
And up I rose refresh’d, and glad, and gay,      
Resolving to begin that very day      
These lines; and howsoever they be done,      
I leave them as a father does his son.

Endymion   
   
Book I   
   
   
A Thing of beauty is a joy for ever:      
Its loveliness increases; it will never      
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep      
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep      
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.           5   
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing      
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,      
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth      
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,      
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways           10   
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,      
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall      
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,      
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon      
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils           15   
With the green world they live in; and clear rills      
That for themselves a cooling covert make      
’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,      
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:      
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms           20   
We have imagined for the mighty dead;      
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:      
An endless fountain of immortal drink,      
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.      
   
  Nor do we merely feel these essences           25   
For one short hour; no, even as the trees      
That whisper round a temple become soon      
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,      
The passion poesy, glories infinite,      
Haunt us till they become a cheering light           30   
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,      
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,      
They alway must be with us, or we die.      
   
  Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I      
Will trace the story of Endymion.           35   
The very music of the name has gone      
Into my being, and each pleasant scene      
Is growing fresh before me as the green      
Of our own vallies: so I will begin      
Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;           40   
Now while the early budders are just new,      
And run in mazes of the youngest hue      
About old forests; while the willow trails      
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails      
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year           45   
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer      
My little boat, for many quiet hours,      
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.      
Many and many a verse I hope to write,      
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,           50   
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees      
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,      
I must be near the middle of my story.      
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,      
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,           55   
With universal tinge of sober gold,      
Be all about me when I make an end.      
And now at once, adventuresome, I send      
My herald thought into a wilderness:      
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress           60   
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed      
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.      
   
  Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread      
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed      
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots           65   
Into o’er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.      
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,      
Where no man went; and if from shepherd’s keep      
A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,      
Never again saw he the happy pens           70   
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,      
Over the hills at every nightfall went.      
Among the shepherds, ’twas believed ever,      
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever      
From the white flock, but pass’d unworried           75   
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,      
Until it came to some unfooted plains      
Where fed the herds of Pan: ay great his gains      
Who thus one lamb did lose. Paths there were many,      
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,           80   
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly      
To a wide lawn, whence one could only see      
Stems thronging all around between the swell      
Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell      
The freshness of the space of heaven above,           85   
Edg’d round with dark tree tops? through which a dove      
Would often beat its wings, and often too      
A little cloud would move across the blue.      
   
  Full in the middle of this pleasantness      
There stood a marble altar, with a tress           90   
Of flowers budded newly; and the dew      
Had taken fairy phantasies to strew      
Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve,      
And so the dawned light in pomp receive.      
For ’twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire           95   
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre      
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein      
A melancholy spirit well might win      
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine      
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine           100   
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;      
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run      
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;      
Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass      
Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold,           105   
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.      
   
  Now while the silent workings of the dawn      
Were busiest, into that self-same lawn      
All suddenly, with joyful cries, there sped      
A troop of little children garlanded;           110   
Who gathering round the altar, seemed to pry      
Earnestly round as wishing to espy      
Some folk of holiday: nor had they waited      
For many moments, ere their ears were sated      
With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then           115   
Fill’d out its voice, and died away again.      
Within a little space again it gave      
Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave,      
To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking      
Through copse-clad vallies,—ere their death, oer-taking           120   
The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea.      
   
  And now, as deep into the wood as we      
Might mark a lynx’s eye, there glimmered light      
Fair faces and a rush of garments white,      
Plainer and plainer shewing, till at last           125   
Into the widest alley they all past,      
Making directly for the woodland altar.      
O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter      
In telling of this goodly company,      
Of their old piety, and of their glee:           130   
But let a portion of ethereal dew      
Fall on my head, and presently unmew      
My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring,      
To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.      
   
  Leading the way, young damsels danced along,           135   
Bearing the burden of a shepherd song;      
Each having a white wicker over brimm’d      
With April’s tender younglings: next, well trimm’d,      
A crowd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks      
As may be read of in Arcadian books;           140   
Such as sat listening round Apollo’s pipe,      
When the great deity, for earth too ripe,      
Let his divinity o’er-flowing die      
In music, through the vales of Thessaly:      
Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground,           145   
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound      
With ebon-tipped flutes: close after these,      
Now coming from beneath the forest trees,      
A venerable priest full soberly,      
Begirt with ministring looks: alway his eye           150   
Stedfast upon the matted turf he kept,      
And after him his sacred vestments swept.      
From his right hand there swung a vase, milk-white,      
Of mingled wine, out-sparkling generous light;      
And in his left he held a basket full           155   
Of all sweet herbs that searching eye could cull:      
Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still      
Than Leda’s love, and cresses from the rill.      
His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath,      
Seem’d like a poll of ivy in the teeth           160   
Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd      
Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud      
Their share of the ditty. After them appear’d,      
Up-followed by a multitude that rear’d      
Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car,           165   
Easily rolling so as scarce to mar      
The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown:      
Who stood therein did seem of great renown      
Among the throng. His youth was fully blown,      
Shewing like Ganymede to manhood grown;           170   
And, for those simple times, his garments were      
A chieftain king’s: beneath his breast, half bare,      
Was hung a silver bugle, and between      
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.      
A smile was on his countenance; he seem’d,           175   
To common lookers on, like one who dream’d      
Of idleness in groves Elysian:      
But there were some who feelingly could scan      
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,      
And see that oftentimes the reins would slip           180   
Through his forgotten hands: then would they sigh,      
And think of yellow leaves, of owlets cry,      
Of logs piled solemnly.—Ah, well-a-day,      
Why should our young Endymion pine away!      
   
  Soon the assembly, in a circle rang’d,           185   
Stood silent round the shrine: each look was chang’d      
To sudden veneration: women meek      
Beckon’d their sons to silence; while each cheek      
Of virgin bloom paled gently for slight fear.      
Endymion too, without a forest peer,           190   
Stood, wan, and pale, and with an awed face,      
Among his brothers of the mountain chase.      
In midst of all, the venerable priest      
Eyed them with joy from greatest to the least,      
And, after lifting up his aged hands,           195   
Thus spake he: “Men of Latmos! shepherd bands!      
Whose care it is to guard a thousand flocks:      
Whether descended from beneath the rocks      
That overtop your mountains; whether come      
From vallies where the pipe is never dumb;           200   
Or from your swelling downs, where sweet air stirs      
Blue hare-bells lightly, and where prickly furze      
Buds lavish gold; or ye, whose precious charge      
Nibble their fill at ocean’s very marge,      
Whose mellow reeds are touch’d with sounds forlorn           205   
By the dim echoes of old Triton’s horn:      
Mothers and wives! who day by day prepare      
The scrip, with needments, for the mountain air;      
And all ye gentle girls who foster up      
Udderless lambs, and in a little cup           210   
Will put choice honey for a favoured youth:      
Yea, every one attend! for in good truth      
Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.      
Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than      
Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains           215   
Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains      
Green’d over April’s lap? No howling sad      
Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had      
Great bounty from Endymion our lord.      
The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour’d           220   
His early song against yon breezy sky,      
That spreads so clear o’er our solemnity.”      
   
  Thus ending, on the shrine he heap’d a spire      
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;      
Anon he stain’d the thick and spongy sod           225   
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.      
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while      
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,      
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright      
’Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light           230   
Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang:      
   
  “O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang      
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth      
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death      
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;           235   
Who lov’st to see the hamadryads dress      
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;      
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken      
The dreary melody of bedded reeds—      
In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds           240   
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth;      
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth      
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx—do thou now,      
By thy love’s milky brow!      
By all the trembling mazes that she ran,           245   
Hear us, great Pan!      
   
  “O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles      
Passion their voices cooingly ’mong myrtles,      
What time thou wanderest at eventide      
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side           250   
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom      
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom      
Their ripen’d fruitage; yellow girted bees      
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas      
Their fairest-blossom’d beans and poppied corn;           255   
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,      
To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries      
Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies      
Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year      
All its completions—be quickly near,           260   
By every wind that nods the mountain pine,      
O forester divine!      
   
  “Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies      
For willing service; whether to surprise      
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;           265   
Or upward ragged precipices flit      
To save poor lambkins from the eagle’s maw;      
Or by mysterious enticement draw      
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;      
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,           270   
And gather up all fancifullest shells      
For thee to tumble into Naiads’ cells,      
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;      
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,      
The while they pelt each other on the crown           275   
With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown—      
By all the echoes that about thee ring,      
Hear us, O satyr king!      
   
  “O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears,      
While ever and anon to his shorn peers           280   
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn,      
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn      
Anger our huntsman: Breather round our farms,      
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:      
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,           285   
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,      
And wither drearily on barren moors:      
Dread opener of the mysterious doors      
Leading to universal knowledge—see,      
Great son of Dryope,           290   
The many that are come to pay their vows      
With leaves about their brows!      
   
  Be still the unimaginable lodge      
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge      
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,           295   
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,      
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth      
Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth:      
Be still a symbol of immensity;      
A firmament reflected in a sea;           300   
An element filling the space between;      
An unknown—but no more: we humbly screen      
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,      
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,      
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,           305   
Upon thy Mount Lycean!      
   
  Even while they brought the burden to a close,      
A shout from the whole multitude arose,      
That lingered in the air like dying rolls      
Of abrupt thunder, when Ionian shoals           310   
Of dolphins bob their noses through the brine.      
Meantime, on shady levels, mossy fine,      
Young companies nimbly began dancing      
To the swift treble pipe, and humming string.      
Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly           315   
To tunes forgotten—out of memory:      
Fair creatures! whose young children’s children bred      
Thermopylæ its heroes—not yet dead,      
But in old marbles ever beautiful.      
High genitors, unconscious did they cull           320   
Time’s sweet first-fruits—they danc’d to weariness,      
And then in quiet circles did they press      
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end      
Of some strange history, potent to send      
A young mind from its bodily tenement.           325   
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent      
On either side; pitying the sad death      
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath      
Of Zephyr slew him,—Zephyr penitent,      
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,           330   
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.      
The archers too, upon a wider plain,      
Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,      
And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft      
Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,           335   
Call’d up a thousand thoughts to envelope      
Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee      
And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,      
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young      
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue           340   
Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,      
And very, very deadliness did nip      
Her motherly cheeks. Arous’d from this sad mood      
By one, who at a distance loud halloo’d,      
Uplifting his strong bow into the air,           345   
Many might after brighter visions stare:      
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze      
Tossing about on Neptune’s restless ways,      
Until, from the horizon’s vaulted side,      
There shot a golden splendour far and wide,           350   
Spangling those million poutings of the brine      
With quivering ore: ’twas even an awful shine      
From the exaltation of Apollo’s bow;      
A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.      
Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,           355   
Might turn their steps towards the sober ring      
Where sat Endymion and the aged priest      
’Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas’d      
The silvery setting of their mortal star.      
There they discours’d upon the fragile bar           360   
That keeps us from our homes ethereal;      
And what our duties there: to nightly call      
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;      
To summon all the downiest clouds together      
For the sun’s purple couch; to emulate           365   
In ministring the potent rule of fate      
With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;      
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons      
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,      
A world of other unguess’d offices.           370   
Anon they wander’d, by divine converse,      
Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse      
Each one his own anticipated bliss.      
One felt heart-certain that he could not miss      
His quick gone love, among fair blossom’d boughs,           375   
Where every zephyr-sigh pouts and endows      
Her lips with music for the welcoming.      
Another wish’d, mid that eternal spring,      
To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,      
Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales:           380   
Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,      
And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;      
And, ever after, through those regions be      
His messenger, his little Mercury.      
Some were athirst in soul to see again           385   
Their fellow huntsmen o’er the wide champaign      
In times long past; to sit with them, and talk      
Of all the chances in their earthly walk;      
Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores      
Of happiness, to when upon the moors,           390   
Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,      
And shar’d their famish’d scrips. Thus all out-told      
Their fond imaginations,—saving him      
Whose eyelids curtain’d up their jewels dim,      
Endymion: yet hourly had he striven           395   
To hide the cankering venom, that had riven      
His fainting recollections. Now indeed      
His senses had swoon’d off: he did not heed      
The sudden silence, or the whispers low,      
Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe,           400   
Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,      
Or maiden’s sigh, that grief itself embalms:      
But in the self-same fixed trance he kept,      
Like one who on the earth had never stept.      
Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,           405   
Frozen in that old tale Arabian.      
   
  Who whispers him so pantingly and close?      
Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,      
His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,      
And breath’d a sister’s sorrow to persuade           410   
A yielding up, a cradling on her care.      
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:      
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse      
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,      
Along a path between two little streams,—           415   
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,      
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow      
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;      
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,      
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,           420   
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush      
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.      
A little shallop, floating there hard by,      
Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;      
And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,           425   
And dipt again, with the young couple’s weight,—      
Peona guiding, through the water straight,      
Towards a bowery island opposite;      
Which gaining presently, she steered light      
Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove,           430   
Where nested was an arbour, overwove      
By many a summer’s silent fingering;      
To whose cool bosom she was used to bring      
Her playmates, with their needle broidery,      
And minstrel memories of times gone by.           435   
   
  So she was gently glad to see him laid      
Under her favourite bower’s quiet shade,      
On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,      
Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves      
When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,           440   
And the tann’d harvesters rich armfuls took.      
Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:      
But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest      
Peona’s busy hand against his lips,      
And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips           445   
In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps      
A patient watch over the stream that creeps      
Windingly by it, so the quiet maid      
Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade      
Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling           450   
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling      
Among seer leaves and twigs, might all be heard.      
   
  O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,      
That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind      
Till it is hush’d and smooth! O unconfin’d           455   
Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key      
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,      
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,      
Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves      
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world           460   
Of silvery enchantment!—who, upfurl’d      
Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour,      
But renovates and lives?—Thus, in the bower,      
Endymion was calm’d to life again.      
Opening his eyelids with a healthier brain,           465   
He said: “I feel this thine endearing love      
All through my bosom: thou art as a dove      
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings      
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings      
Such morning incense from the fields of May,           470   
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray      
From those kind eyes,—the very home and haunt      
Of sisterly affection. Can I want      
Aught else, aught nearer heaven, than such tears?      
Yet dry them up, in bidding hence all fears           475   
That, any longer, I will pass my days      
Alone and sad. No, I will once more raise      
My voice upon the mountain-heights; once more      
Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar:      
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll           480   
Around the breathed boar: again I’ll poll      
The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow:      
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low,      
Again I’ll linger in a sloping mead      
To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed           485   
Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet,      
And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat      
My soul to keep in its resolved course.”      
   
  Hereat Peona, in their silver source,      
Shut her pure sorrow drops with glad exclaim,           490   
And took a lute, from which there pulsing came      
A lively prelude, fashioning the way      
In which her voice should wander. ’Twas a lay      
More subtle cadenced, more forest wild      
Than Dryope’s lone lulling of her child;           495   
And nothing since has floated in the air      
So mournful strange. Surely some influence rare      
Went, spiritual, through the damsel’s hand;      
For still, with Delphic emphasis, she spann’d      
The quick invisible strings, even though she saw           500   
Endymion’s spirit melt away and thaw      
Before the deep intoxication.      
But soon she came, with sudden burst, upon      
Her self-possession—swung the lute aside,      
And earnestly said: “Brother, ’tis vain to hide           505   
That thou dost know of things mysterious,      
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus      
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinn’d in aught      
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught      
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?           510   
Thy deathful bow against some deer-herd bent,      
Sacred to Dian? Haply, thou hast seen      
Her naked limbs among the alders green;      
And that, alas! is death. No, I can trace      
Something more high perplexing in thy face!”           515   
   
  Endymion look’d at her, and press’d her hand,      
And said, “Art thou so pale, who wast so bland      
And merry in our meadows? How is this?      
Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!—      
Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change           520   
Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange?      
Or more complete to overwhelm surmise?      
Ambition is no sluggard: ’tis no prize,      
That toiling years would put within my grasp,      
That I have sigh’d for: with so deadly gasp           525   
No man e’er panted for a mortal love.      
So all have set my heavier grief above      
These things which happen. Rightly have they done:      
I, who still saw the horizontal sun      
Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world,           530   
Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl’d      
My spear aloft, as signal for the chace—      
I, who, for very sport of heart, would race      
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down      
A vulture from his towery perching; frown           535   
A lion into growling, loth retire—      
To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,      
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast      
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.      
   
  “This river does not see the naked sky,           540   
Till it begins to progress silverly      
Around the western border of the wood,      
Whence, from a certain spot, its winding flood      
Seems at the distance like a crescent moon:      
And in that nook, the very pride of June,           545   
Had I been used to pass my weary eves;      
The rather for the sun unwilling leaves      
So dear a picture of his sovereign power,      
And I could witness his most kingly hour,      
When he doth lighten up the golden reins,           550   
And paces leisurely down amber plains      
His snorting four. Now when his chariot last      
Its beams against the zodiac-lion cast,      
There blossom’d suddenly a magic bed      
Of sacred ditamy, and poppies red:           555   
At which I wondered greatly, knowing well      
That but one night had wrought this flowery spell;      
And, sitting down close by, began to muse      
What it might mean. Perhaps, thought I, Morpheus,      
In passing here, his owlet pinions shook;           560   
Or, it may be, ere matron Night uptook      
Her ebon urn, young Mercury, by stealth,      
Had dipt his rod in it: such garland wealth      
Came not by common growth. Thus on I thought,      
Until my head was dizzy and distraught.           565   
Moreover, through the dancing poppies stole      
A breeze, most softly lulling to my soul;      
And shaping visions all about my sight      
Of colours, wings, and bursts of spangly light;      
The which became more strange, and strange, and dim,           570   
And then were gulph’d in a tumultuous swim:      
And then I fell asleep. Ah, can I tell      
The enchantment that afterwards befel?      
Yet it was but a dream: yet such a dream      
That never tongue, although it overteem           575   
With mellow utterance, like a cavern spring,      
Could figure out and to conception bring      
All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay      
Watching the zenith, where the milky way      
Among the stars in virgin splendour pours;           580   
And travelling my eye, until the doors      
Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight,      
I became loth and fearful to alight      
From such high soaring by a downward glance:      
So kept me stedfast in that airy trance,           585   
Spreading imaginary pinions wide.      
When, presently, the stars began to glide,      
And faint away, before my eager view:      
At which I sigh’d that I could not pursue,      
And dropt my vision to the horizon’s verge;           590   
And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge      
The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er      
A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar      
So passionately bright, my dazzled soul      
Commingling with her argent spheres did roll           595   
Through clear and cloudy, even when she went      
At last into a dark and vapoury tent—      
Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train      
Of planets all were in the blue again.      
To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d           600   
My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed      
By a bright something, sailing down apace,      
Making me quickly veil my eyes and face:      
Again I look’d, and, O ye deities,      
Who from Olympus watch our destinies!           605   
Whence that completed form of all completeness?      
Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness?      
Speak, stubborn earth, and tell me where, O Where      
Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair?      
Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun;           610   
Not—thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun      
Such follying before thee—yet she had,      
Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad;      
And they were simply gordian’d up and braided,      
Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded,           615   
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;      
The which were blended in, I know not how,      
With such a paradise of lips and eyes,      
Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs,      
That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings           620   
And plays about its fancy, till the stings      
Of human neighbourhood envenom all.      
Unto what awful power shall I call?      
To what high fane?—Ah! see her hovering feet,      
More bluely vein’d, more soft, more whitely sweet           625   
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose      
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows      
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion;      
’Tis blue, and over-spangled with a million      
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed,           630   
Over the darkest, lushest blue-bell bed,      
Handfuls of daisies.”—“Endymion, how strange!      
Dream within dream!”—“She took an airy range,      
And then, towards me, like a very maid,      
Came blushing, waning, willing, and afraid,           635   
And press’d me by the hand: Ah! ’twas too much;      
Methought I fainted at the charmed touch,      
Yet held my recollection, even as one      
Who dives three fathoms where the waters run      
Gurgling in beds of coral: for anon,           640   
I felt upmounted in that region      
Where falling stars dart their artillery forth,      
And eagles struggle with the buffeting north      
That balances the heavy meteor-stone;—      
Felt too, I was not fearful, nor alone,           645   
But lapp’d and lull’d along the dangerous sky.      
Soon, as it seem’d, we left our journeying high,      
And straightway into frightful eddies swoop’d;      
Such as ay muster where grey time has scoop’d      
Huge dens and caverns in a mountain’s side:           650   
There hollow sounds arous’d me, and I sigh’d      
To faint once more by looking on my bliss—      
I was distracted; madly did I kiss      
The wooing arms which held me, and did give      
My eyes at once to death: but ’twas to live,           655   
To take in draughts of life from the gold fount      
Of kind and passionate looks; to count, and count      
The moments, by some greedy help that seem’d      
A second self, that each might be redeem’d      
And plunder’d of its load of blessedness.           660   
Ah, desperate mortal! I ev’n dar’d to press      
Her very cheek against my crowned lip,      
And, at that moment, felt my body dip      
Into a warmer air: a moment more,      
Our feet were soft in flowers. There was store           665   
Of newest joys upon that alp. Sometimes      
A scent of violets, and blossoming limes,      
Loiter’d around us; then of honey cells,      
Made delicate from all white-flower bells;      
And once, above the edges of our nest,           670   
An arch face peep’d,—an Oread as I guess’d.      
   
  “Why did I dream that sleep o’er-power’d me      
In midst of all this heaven? Why not see,      
Far off, the shadows of his pinions dark,      
And stare them from me? But no, like a spark           675   
That needs must die, although its little beam      
Reflects upon a diamond, my sweet dream      
Fell into nothing—into stupid sleep.      
And so it was, until a gentle creep,      
A careful moving caught my waking ears,           680   
And up I started: Ah! my sighs, my tears,      
My clenched hands;—for lo! the poppies hung      
Dew-dabbled on their stalks, the ouzel sung      
A heavy ditty, and the sullen day      
Had chidden herald Hesperus away,           685   
With leaden looks: the solitary breeze      
Bluster’d, and slept, and its wild self did teaze      
With wayward melancholy; and r thought,      
Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought      
Faint fare-thee-wells, and sigh-shrilled adieus!—           690   
Away I wander’d—all the pleasant hues      
Of heaven and earth had faded: deepest shades      
Were deepest dungeons; heaths and sunny glades      
Were full of pestilent light; our taintless rills      
Seem’d sooty, and o’er-spread with upturn’d gills           695   
Of dying fish; the vermeil rose had blown      
In frightful scarlet, and its thorns out-grown      
Like spiked aloe. If an innocent bird      
Before my heedless footsteps stirr’d, and stirr’d      
In little journeys, I beheld in it           700   
A disguis’d demon, missioned to knit      
My soul with under darkness; to entice      
My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:      
Therefore I eager followed, and did curse      
The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,           705   
Rock’d me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!      
These things, with all their comfortings, are given      
To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,      
Sweet sister, help to stem the ebbing sea      
Of weary life.”

                  Thus ended he, and both           710   
Sat silent: for the maid was very loth      
To answer; feeling well that breathed words      
Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords      
Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps      
Of grasshoppers against the sun. She weeps,           715   
And wonders; struggles to devise some blame;      
To put on such a look as would say, Shame      
On this poor weakness! but, for all her strife,      
She could as soon have crush’d away the life      
From a sick dove. At length, to break the pause,           720   
She said with trembling chance: “Is this the cause?      
This all? Yet it is strange, and sad, alas!      
That one who through this middle earth should pass      
Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave      
His name upon the harp-string, should achieve           725   
No higher bard than simple maidenhood,      
Singing alone, and fearfully,—how the blood      
Left his young cheek; and how he used to stray      
He knew not where; and how he would say, nay,      
If any said ’twas love: and yet ’twas love;           730   
What could it be but love? How a ring-dove      
Let fall a sprig of yew tree in his path;      
And how he died: and then, that love doth scathe,      
The gentle heart, as northern blasts do roses;      
And then the ballad of his sad life closes           735   
With sighs, and an alas!—Endymion!      
Be rather in the trumpet’s mouth,—anon      
Among the winds at large—that all may hearken!      
Although, before the crystal heavens darken,      
I watch and dote upon the silver lakes           740   
Pictur’d in western cloudiness, that takes      
The semblance of gold rocks and bright gold sands,      
Islands, and creeks, and amber-fretted strands      
With horses prancing o’er them, palaces      
And towers of amethyst,—would I so tease           745   
My pleasant days, because I could not mount      
Into those regions? The Morphean fount      
Of that fine element that visions, dreams,      
And fitful whims of sleep are made of, streams      
Into its airy channels with so subtle,           750   
So thin a breathing, not the spider’s shuttle,      
Circled a million times within the space      
Of a swallow’s nest-door, could delay a trace,      
A tinting of its quality: how light      
Must dreams themselves be; seeing they’re more slight           755   
Than the mere nothing that engenders them!      
Then wherefore sully the entrusted gem      
Of high and noble life with thoughts so sick?      
Why pierce high-fronted honour to the quick      
For nothing but a dream?” Hereat the youth           760   
Look’d up: a conflicting of shame and ruth      
Was in his plaited brow: yet his eyelids      
Widened a little, as when Zephyr bids      
A little breeze to creep between the fans      
Of careless butterflies: amid his pains           765   
He seem’d to taste a drop of manna-dew,      
Full palatable; and a colour grew      
Upon his cheek, while thus he lifeful spake.      
   
  “Peona! ever have I long’d to slake      
My thirst for the world’s praises: nothing base,           770   
No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace      
The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar’d—      
Though now ’tis tatter’d; leaving my bark bar’d      
And sullenly drifting: yet my higher hope      
Is of too wide, too rainbow-large a scope,           775   
To fret at myriads of earthly wrecks.      
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks      
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,      
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,      
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold           780   
The clear religion of heaven! Fold      
A rose leaf round thy finger’s taperness,      
And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress      
Of music’s kiss impregnates the free winds,      
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds           785   
Eolian magic from their lucid wombs:      
Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs;      
Old ditties sigh above their father’s grave;      
Ghosts of melodious prophecyings rave      
Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;           790   
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,      
Where long ago a giant battle was;      
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass      
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.      
Feel we these things?—that moment have we stept           795   
Into a sort of oneness, and our state      
Is like a floating spirit’s. But there are      
Richer entanglements, enthralments far      
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,      
To the chief intensity: the crown of these           800   
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high      
Upon the forehead of humanity.      
All its more ponderous and bulky worth      
Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth      
A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,           805   
There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop      
Of light, and that is love: its influence,      
Thrown in our eyes, genders a novel sense,      
At which we start and fret; till in the end,      
Melting into its radiance, we blend,           810   
Mingle, and so become a part of it,—      
Nor with aught else can our souls interknit      
So wingedly: when we combine therewith,      
Life’s self is nourish’d by its proper pith,      
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.           815   
Aye, so delicious is the unsating food,      
That men, who might have tower’d in the van      
Of all the congregated world, to fan      
And winnow from the coming step of time      
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime           820   
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,      
Have been content to let occasion die,      
Whilst they did sleep in love’s elysium.      
And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb,      
Than speak against this ardent listlessness:           825   
For I have ever thought that it might bless      
The world with benefits unknowingly;      
As does the nightingale, upperched high,      
And cloister’d among cool and bunched leaves—      
She sings but to her love, nor e’er conceives           830   
How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood.      
Just so may love, although ’tis understood      
The mere commingling of passionate breath,      
Produce more than our searching witnesseth:      
What I know not: but who, of men, can tell           835   
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell      
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,      
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,      
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,      
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,           840   
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,      
If human souls did never kiss and greet?      
   
  “Now, if this earthly love has power to make      
Men’s being mortal, immortal; to shake      
Ambition from their memories, and brim           845   
Their measure of content; what merest whim,      
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,      
To one, who keeps within his stedfast aim      
A love immortal, an immortal too.      
Look not so wilder’d; for these things are true,           850   
And never can be born of atomies      
That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,      
Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I’m sure,      
My restless spirit never could endure      
To brood so long upon one luxury,           855   
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy      
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.      
My sayings will the less obscured seem,      
When I have told thee how my waking sight      
Has made me scruple whether that same night           860   
Was pass’d in dreaming. Hearken, sweet Peona!      
Beyond the matron-temple of Latona,      
Which we should see but for these darkening boughs,      
Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows      
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,           865   
And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,      
And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide      
Past them, but he must brush on every side.      
Some moulder’d steps lead into this cool cell,      
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,           870   
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye      
Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.      
Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set      
Like vestal primroses, but dark velvet      
Edges them round, and they have golden pits:           875   
’Twas there I got them, from the gaps and slits      
In a mossy stone, that sometimes was my seat,      
When all above was faint with mid-day heat.      
And there in strife no burning thoughts to heed,      
I’d bubble up the water through a reed;           880   
So reaching back to boy-hood: make me ships      
Of moulted feathers, touchwood, alder chips,      
With leaves stuck in them; and the Neptune be      
Of their petty ocean. Oftener, heavily,      
When love-lorn hours had left me less a child,           885   
I sat contemplating the figures wild      
Of o’er-head clouds melting the mirror through.      
Upon a day, while thus I watch’d, by flew      
A cloudy Cupid, with his bow and quiver;      
So plainly character’d, no breeze would shiver           890   
The happy chance: so happy, I was fain      
To follow it upon the open plain,      
And, therefore, was just going; when, behold!      
A wonder, fair as any I have told—      
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep,           895   
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap      
Through the cool depth.—It moved as if to flee—      
I started up, when lo! refreshfully,      
There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,      
Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,           900   
Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,      
Bathing my spirit in a new delight.      
Aye, such a breathless honey-feel of bliss      
Alone preserved me from the drear abyss      
Of death, for the fair form had gone again.           905   
Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain      
Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth      
On the deer’s tender haunches: late, and loth,      
’Tis scar’d away by slow returning pleasure.      
How sickening, how dark the dreadful leisure           910   
Of weary days, made deeper exquisite,      
By a fore-knowledge of unslumbrous night!      
Like sorrow came upon me, heavier still,      
Than when I wander’d from the poppy hill:      
And a whole age of lingering moments crept           915   
Sluggishly by, ere more contentment swept      
Away at once the deadly yellow spleen.      
Yes, thrice have I this fair enchantment seen;      
Once more been tortured with renewed life.      
When last the wintry gusts gave over strife           920   
With the conquering sun of spring, and left the skies      
Warm and serene, but yet with moistened eyes      
In pity of the shatter’d infant buds,—      
That time thou didst adorn, with amber studs,      
My hunting cap, because I laugh’d and smil’d,           925   
Chatted with thee, and many days exil’d      
All torment from my breast;—’twas even then,      
Straying about, yet, coop’d up in the den      
Of helpless discontent,—hurling my lance      
From place to place, and following at chance,           930   
At last, by hap, through some young trees it struck,      
And, plashing among bedded pebbles, stuck      
In the middle of a brook,—whose silver ramble      
Down twenty little falls, through reeds and bramble,      
Tracing along, it brought me to a cave,           935   
Whence it ran brightly forth, and white did lave      
The nether sides of mossy stones and rock,—      
’Mong which it gurgled blythe adieus, to mock      
Its own sweet grief at parting. Overhead,      
Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds, and spread           940   
Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph’s home.      
“Ah! impious mortal, whither do I roam?”      
Said I, low voic’d: “Ah whither! ’Tis the grot      
Of Proserpine, when Hell, obscure and hot,      
Doth her resign; and where her tender hands           945   
She dabbles, on the cool and sluicy sands:      
Or ’tis the cell of Echo, where she sits,      
And babbles thorough silence, till her wits      
Are gone in tender madness, and anon,      
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone           950   
Of sadness. O that she would take my vows,      
And breathe them sighingly among the boughs,      
To sue her gentle ears for whose fair head,      
Daily, I pluck sweet flowerets from their bed,      
And weave them dyingly—send honey-whispers           955   
Round every leaf, that all those gentle lispers      
May sigh my love unto her pitying!      
O charitable echo! hear, and sing      
This ditty to her!—tell her”—so I stay’d      
My foolish tongue, and listening, half afraid,           960   
Stood stupefied with my own empty folly,      
And blushing for the freaks of melancholy.      
Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name      
Most fondly lipp’d, and then these accents came:      
‘Endymion! the cave is secreter           965   
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir      
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise      
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys      
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.”      
At that oppress’d I hurried in.—Ah! where           970   
Are those swift moments? Whither are they fled?      
I’ll smile no more, Peona; nor will wed      
Sorrow the way to death, but patiently      
Bear up against it: so farewel, sad sigh;      
And come instead demurest meditation,           975   
To occupy me wholly, and to fashion      
My pilgrimage for the world’s dusky brink.      
No more will I count over, link by link,      
My chain of grief: no longer strive to find      
A half-forgetfulness in mountain wind           980   
Blustering about my ears: aye, thou shalt see,      
Dearest of sisters, what my life shall be;      
What a calm round of hours shall make my days.      
There is a paly flame of hope that plays      
Where’er I look: but yet, I’ll say ’tis naught—           985   
And here I bid it die. Have not I caught,      
Already, a more healthy countenance?      
By this the sun is setting; we may chance      
Meet some of our near-dwellers with my car.”      
   
  This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star           990   
Through autumn mists, and took Peona’s hand:      
They stept into the boat, and launch’d from land.

Endymion   
   
Book II   
   
   
O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!      
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,      
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:      
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears      
Have become indolent; but touching thine,           5   
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,      
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.      
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o’er their blaze,      
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,      
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades           10   
Into some backward corner of the brain;      
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain      
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.      
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!      
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!           15   
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds      
Along the pebbled shore of memory!      
Many old rotten-timber’d boats there be      
Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified      
To goodly vessels; many a sail of pride,           20   
And golden keel’d, is left unlaunch’d and dry.      
But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly      
About the great Athenian admiral’s mast?      
What care, though striding Alexander past      
The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?           25   
Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers      
The glutted Cyclops, what care?—Juliet leaning      
Amid her window-flowers,—sighing,—weaning      
Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,      
Doth more avail than these: the silver flow           30   
Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen,      
Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den,      
Are things to brood on with more ardency      
Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully      
Must such conviction come upon his head,           35   
Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread,      
Without one muse’s smile, or kind behest,      
The path of love and poesy. But rest,      
In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear      
Than to be crush’d, in striving to uprear           40   
Love’s standard on the battlements of song.      
So once more days and nights aid me along,      
Like legion’d soldiers.

                        Brain-sick shepherd-prince,      
What promise hast thou faithful guarded since      
The day of sacrifice? Or, have new sorrows           45   
Come with the constant dawn upon thy morrows?      
Alas! ’tis his old grief. For many days,      
Has he been wandering in uncertain ways:      
Through wilderness, and woods of mossed oaks;      
Counting his woe-worn minutes, by the strokes           50   
Of the lone woodcutter; and listening still,      
Hour after hour, to each lush-leav’d rill.      
Now he is sitting by a shady spring,      
And elbow-deep with feverous fingering      
Stems the upbursting cold: a wild rose tree           55   
Pavilions him in bloom, and he doth see      
A bud which snares his fancy: lo! but now      
He plucks it, dips its stalk in the water: how!      
It swells, it buds, it flowers beneath his sight;      
And, in the middle, there is softly pight           60   
A golden butterfly; upon whose wings      
There must be surely character’d strange things,      
For with wide eye he wonders, and smiles oft.      
   
  Lightly this little herald flew aloft,      
Follow’d by glad Endymion’s clasped hands:           65   
Onward it flies. From languor’s sullen bands      
His limbs are loos’d, and eager, on he hies      
Dazzled to trace it in the sunny skies.      
It seem’d he flew, the way so easy was;      
And like a new-born spirit did he pass           70   
Through the green evening quiet in the sun,      
O’er many a heath, through many a woodland dun,      
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams      
The summer time away. One track unseams      
A wooded cleft, and, far away, the blue           75   
Of ocean fades upon him; then, anew,      
He sinks adown a solitary glen,      
Where there was never sound of mortal men,      
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences      
Melting to silence, when upon the breeze           80   
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet,      
To cheer itself to Delphi. Still his feet      
Went swift beneath the merry-winged guide,      
Until it reached a splashing fountain’s side      
That, near a cavern’s mouth, for ever pour’d           85   
Unto the temperate air: then high it soar’d,      
And, downward, suddenly began to dip,      
As if, athirst with so much toil, ’twould sip      
The crystal spout-head: so it did, with touch      
Most delicate, as though afraid to smutch           90   
Even with mealy gold the waters clear.      
But, at that very touch, to disappear      
So fairy-quick, was strange! Bewildered,      
Endymion sought around, and shook each bed      
Of covert flowers in vain; and then he flung           95   
Himself along the grass. What gentle tongue,      
What whisperer disturb’d his gloomy rest?      
It was a nymph uprisen to the breast      
In the fountain’s pebbly margin, and she stood      
’Mong lilies, like the youngest of the brood.           100   
To him her dripping hand she softly kist,      
And anxiously began to plait and twist      
Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: “Youth!      
Too long, alas, hast thou starv’d on the ruth,      
The bitterness of love: too long indeed,           105   
Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed      
Thy soul of care, by heavens, I would offer      
All the bright riches of my crystal coffer      
To Amphitrite; all my clear-eyed fish,      
Golden, or rainbow-sided, or purplish,           110   
Vermilion-tail’d, or finn’d with silvery gauze;      
Yea, or my veined pebble-floor, that draws      
A virgin light to the deep; my grotto-sands      
Tawny and gold, ooz’d slowly from far lands      
By my diligent springs; my level lilies, shells,           115   
My charming rod, my potent river spells;      
Yes, every thing, even to the pearly cup      
Meander gave me,—for I bubbled up      
To fainting creatures in a desert wild.      
But woe is me, I am but as a child           120   
To gladden thee; and all I dare to say,      
Is, that I pity thee; that on this day      
I’ve been thy guide; that thou must wander far      
In other regions, past the scanty bar      
To mortal steps, before thou cans’t be ta’en           125   
From every wasting sigh, from every pain,      
Into the gentle bosom of thy love.      
Why it is thus, one knows in heaven above:      
But, a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel!      
I have a ditty for my hollow cell.”           130   
   
  Hereat, she vanished from Endymion’s gaze,      
Who brooded o’er the water in amaze:      
The dashing fount pour’d on, and where its pool      
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,      
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,           135   
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill      
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,      
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr      
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;      
And, while beneath the evening’s sleepy frown           140   
Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps,      
Thus breath’d he to himself: “Whoso encamps      
To take a fancied city of delight,      
O what a wretch is he! and when ’tis his,      
After long toil and travelling, to miss           145   
The kernel of his hopes, how more than vile:      
Yet, for him there’s refreshment even in toil;      
Another city doth he set about,      
Free from the smallest pebble-bead of doubt      
That he will seize on trickling honey-combs:           150   
Alas, he finds them dry; and then he foams,      
And onward to another city speeds.      
But this is human life: the war, the deeds,      
The disappointment, the anxiety,      
Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh,           155   
All human; bearing in themselves this good,      
That they are sill the air, the subtle food,      
To make us feel existence, and to shew      
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,      
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,           160   
There is no depth to strike in: I can see      
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand      
Upon a misty, jutting head of land—      
Alone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,      
When mad Eurydice is listening to ’t;           165   
I’d rather stand upon this misty peak,      
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,      
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen love,      
Than be—I care not what. O meekest dove      
Of heaven! O Cynthia, ten-times bright and fair!           170   
From thy blue throne, now filling all the air,      
Glance but one little beam of temper’d light      
Into my bosom, that the dreadful might      
And tyranny of love be somewhat scar’d!      
Yet do not so, sweet queen; one torment spar’d,           175   
Would give a pang to jealous misery,      
Worse than the torment’s self: but rather tie      
Large wings upon my shoulders, and point out      
My love’s far dwelling. Though the playful rout      
Of Cupids shun thee, too divine art thou,           180   
Too keen in beauty, for thy silver prow      
Not to have dipp’d in love’s most gentle stream.      
O be propitious, nor severely deem      
My madness impious; for, by all the stars      
That tend thy bidding, I do think the bars           185   
That kept my spirit in are burst—that I      
Am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!      
How beautiful thou art! The world how deep!      
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep      
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,           190   
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains      
Is airy goal, haply some bower veils      
Those twilight eyes? Those eyes!—my spirit fails—      
Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air      
Will gulph me—help!”—At this with madden’d stare,           195   
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;      
Like old Deucalion mountain’d o’er the flood,      
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.      
And, but from the deep cavern there was borne      
A voice, he had been froze to senseless stone;           200   
Nor sigh of his, nor plaint, nor passion’d moan      
Had more been heard. Thus swell’d it forth: “Descend,      
Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend      
Into the sparry hollows of the world!      
Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl’d           205   
As from thy threshold, day by day hast been      
A little lower than the chilly sheen      
Of icy pinnacles, and dipp’dst thine arms      
Into the deadening ether that still charms      
Their marble being: now, as deep profound           210   
As those are high, descend! He ne’er is crown’d      
With immortality, who fears to follow      
Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow,      
The silent mysteries of earth, descend!”      
   
  He heard but the last words, nor could contend           215   
One moment in reflection: for he fled      
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head      
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.      
   
  ’Twas far too strange, and wonderful for sadness;      
Sharpening, by degrees, his appetite           220   
To dive into the deepest. Dark, nor light,      
The region; nor bright, nor sombre wholly,      
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;      
A dusky empire and its diadems;      
One faint eternal eventide of gems.           225   
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,      
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,      
With all its lines abrupt and angular:      
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,      
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,           230   
Like Vulcan’s rainbow, with some monstrous roof      
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,      
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss      
Fancy into belief: anon it leads      
Through winding passages, where sameness breeds           235   
Vexing conceptions of some sudden change;      
Whether to silver grots, or giant range      
Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge      
Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge      
Now fareth he, that o’er the vast beneath           240   
Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth      
A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come      
But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb      
His bosom grew, when first he, far away,      
Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray           245   
Old darkness from his throne: ’twas like the sun      
Uprisen o’er chaos: and with such a stun      
Came the amazement, that, absorb’d in it,      
He saw not fiercer wonders—past the wit      
Of any spirit to tell, but one of those           250   
Who, when this planet’s sphering time doth close,      
Will be its high remembrancers: who they?      
The mighty ones who have made eternal day      
For Greece and England. While astonishment      
With deep-drawn sighs was quieting, he went           255   
Into a marble gallery, passing through      
A mimic temple, so complete and true      
In sacred custom, that he well nigh fear’d      
To search it inwards, whence far off appear’d,      
Through a long pillar’d vista, a fair shrine,           260   
And, just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,      
A quiver’d Dian. Stepping awfully,      
The youth approach’d; oft turning his veil’d eye      
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.      
And when, more near against the marble cold           265   
He had touch’d his forehead, he began to thread      
All courts and passages, where silence dead      
Rous’d by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:      
And long he travers’d to and fro, to acquaint      
Himself with every mystery, and awe;           270   
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw      
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim      
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.      
There, when new wonders ceas’d to float before,      
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore           275   
The journey homeward to habitual self!      
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,      
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,      
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,      
Into the bosom of a hated thing.           280   
   
  What misery most drowningly doth sing      
In lone Endymion’s ear, now he has caught      
The goal of consciousness? Ah, ’tis the thought,      
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!      
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow           285   
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild      
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil’d,      
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,      
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest      
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;           290   
But far from such companionship to wear      
An unknown time, surcharg’d with grief, away,      
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,      
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?      
“No!” exclaimed he, “why should I tarry here?”           295   
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.      
At which he straightway started, and ’gan tell      
His paces back into the temple’s chief;      
Warming and glowing strong in the belief      
Of help from Dian: so that when again           300   
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,      
Moving more near the while. “O Haunter chaste      
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,      
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen      
Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen,           305   
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?      
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos      
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree      
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe’er it be,      
’Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste           310   
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste      
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;      
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,      
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee      
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,           315   
An exil’d mortal, sounds its pleasant name!      
Within my breast there lives a choking flame—      
O let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!      
A homeward fever parches up my tongue—      
O let me slake it at the running springs!           320   
Upon my ear a noisy nothing rings—      
O let me once more hear the linnet’s note!      
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float—      
O let me ’noint them with the heaven’s light!      
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?           325   
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!      
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?      
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!      
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,      
Oh think how I should love a bed of flowers!—           330   
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!      
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!”      
   
  Thus ending loudly, as he would o’erleap      
His destiny, alert he stood: but when      
Obstinate silence came heavily again,           335   
Feeling about for its old couch of space      
And airy cradle, lowly bow’d his face      
Desponding, o’er the marble floor’s cold thrill.      
But ’twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill      
To its old channel, or a swollen tide           340   
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,      
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns      
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns      
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide—      
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride           345   
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew      
Before his footsteps; as when heav’d anew      
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,      
Down whose green back the short-liv’d foam, all hoar,      
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.           350   
   
  Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,      
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;      
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes      
One moment with his hand among the sweets:      
Onward he goes—he stops—his bosom beats           355   
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm      
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,      
This sleepy music, forc’d him walk tiptoe:      
For it came more softly than the east could blow      
Arion’s magic to the Atlantic isles;           360   
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles      
Of thron’d Apollo, could breathe back the lyre      
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.      
   
  O did he ever live, that lonely man,      
Who lov’d—and music slew not? ’Tis the pest           365   
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;      
That things of delicate and tenderest worth      
Are swallow’d all, and made a seared dearth,      
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse      
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.           370   
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,      
Is miserable. ’Twas even so with this      
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian’s ear;      
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,      
Vanish’d in elemental passion.           375   
   
  And down some swart abysm he had gone,      
Had not a heavenly guide benignant led      
To where thick myrtle branches, ’gainst his head      
Brushing, awakened: then the sounds again      
Went noiseless as a passing noontide rain           380   
Over a bower, where little space he stood;      
For as the sunset peeps into a wood      
So saw he panting light, and towards it went      
Through winding alleys; and lo, wonderment!      
Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there,           385   
Cupids a slumbering on their pinions fair.      
   
  After a thousand mazes overgone,      
At last, with sudden step, he came upon      
A chamber, myrtle wall’d, embowered high,      
Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy,           390   
And more of beautiful and strange beside:      
For on a silken couch of rosy pride,      
In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth      
Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth,      
Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach:           395   
And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,      
Or ripe October’s faded marigolds,      
Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds—      
Not hiding up an Apollonian curve      
Of neck and shoulder, nor the tenting swerve           400   
Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light;      
But rather, giving them to the filled sight      
Officiously. Sideway his face repos’d      
On one white arm, and tenderly unclos’d,      
By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth           405   
To slumbery pout; just as the morning south      
Disparts a dew-lipp’d rose. Above his head,      
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed      
To make a coronal; and round him grew      
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,           410   
Together intertwin’d and trammel’d fresh:      
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,      
Shading its Ethiop berries; and woodbine,      
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine;      
Convolvulus in streaked vases flush;           415   
The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush;      
And virgin’s bower, trailing airily;      
With others of the sisterhood. Hard by,      
Stood serene Cupids watching silently.      
One, kneeling to a lyre, touch’d the strings,           420   
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings;      
And, ever and anon, uprose to look      
At the youth’s slumber; while another took      
A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew,      
And shook it on his hair; another flew           425   
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise      
Rain’d violets upon his sleeping eyes.      
   
  At these enchantments, and yet many more,      
The breathless Latmian wonder’d o’er and o’er;      
Until, impatient in embarrassment,           430   
He forthright pass’d, and lightly treading went      
To that same feather’d lyrist, who straightway,      
Smiling, thus whisper’d: “Though from upper day      
Thou art a wanderer, and thy presence here      
Might seem unholy, be of happy cheer!           435   
For ’tis the nicest touch of human honour,      
When some ethereal and high-favouring donor      
Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense;      
As now ’tis done to thee, Endymion. Hence      
Was I in no wise startled. So recline           440   
Upon these living flowers. Here is wine,      
Alive with sparkles—never, I aver,      
Since Ariadne was a vintager,      
So cool a purple: taste these juicy pears,      
Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears           445   
Were high about Pomona: here is cream,      
Deepening to richness from a snowy gleam;      
Sweeter than that nurse Amalthea skimm’d      
For the boy Jupiter: and here, undimm’d      
By any touch, a bunch of blooming plums           450   
Ready to melt between an infant’s gums:      
And here is manna pick’d from Syrian trees,      
In starlight, by the three Hesperides.      
Feast on, and meanwhile I will let thee know      
Of all these things around us.” He did so,           455   
Still brooding o’er the cadence of his lyre;      
And thus: “I need not any hearing tire      
By telling how the sea-born goddess pin’d      
For a mortal youth, and how she strove to bind      
Him all in all unto her doting self.           460   
Who would not be so prison’d? but, fond elf,      
He was content to let her amorous plea      
Faint through his careless arms; content to see      
An unseiz’d heaven dying at his feet;      
Content, O fool! to make a cold retreat,           465   
When on the pleasant grass such love, lovelorn,      
Lay sorrowing; when every tear was born      
Of diverse passion; when her lips and eyes      
Were clos’d in sullen moisture, and quick sighs      
Came vex’d and pettish through her nostrils small.           470   
Hush! no exclaim—yet, justly mightst thou call      
Curses upon his head.—I was half glad,      
But my poor mistress went distract and mad,      
When the boar tusk’d him: so away she flew      
To Jove’s high throne, and by her plainings drew           475   
Immortal tear-drops down the thunderer’s beard;      
Whereon, it was decreed he should be rear’d      
Each summer time to life. Lo! this is he,      
That same Adonis, safe in the privacy      
Of this still region all his winter-sleep.           480   
Aye, sleep; for when our love-sick queen did weep      
Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower      
Heal’d up the wound, and, with a balmy power,      
Medicined death to a lengthened drowsiness:      
The which she fills with visions, and doth dress           485   
In all this quiet luxury; and hath set      
Us young immortals, without any let,      
To watch his slumber through. ’Tis well nigh pass’d,      
Even to a moment’s filling up, and fast      
She scuds with summer breezes, to pant through           490   
The first long kiss, warm firstling, to renew      
Embower’d sports in Cytherea’s isle.      
Look! how those winged listeners all this while      
Stand anxious: see! behold!”—This clamant word      
Broke through the careful silence; for they heard           495   
A rustling noise of leaves, and out there flutter’d      
Pigeons and doves: Adonis something mutter’d,      
The while one hand, that erst upon his thigh      
Lay dormant, mov’d convuls’d and gradually      
Up to his forehead. Then there was a hum           500   
Of sudden voices, echoing, “Come! come!      
Arise! awake! Clear summer has forth walk’d      
Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk’d      
Full soothingly to every nested finch:      
Rise, Cupids! or we’ll give the blue-bell pinch           505   
To your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin!”      
At this, from every side they hurried in,      
Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists,      
And doubling overhead their little fists      
In backward yawns. But all were soon alive:           510   
For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive      
In nectar’d clouds and curls through water fair,      
So from the arbour roof down swell’d an air      
Odorous and enlivening; making all      
To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call           515   
For their sweet queen: when lo! the wreathed green      
Disparted, and far upward could be seen      
Blue heaven, and a silver car, air-borne,      
Whose silent wheels, fresh wet from clouds of morn,      
Spun off a drizzling dew,—which falling chill           520   
On soft Adonis’ shoulders, made him still      
Nestle and turn uneasily about.      
Soon were the white doves plain, with necks stretch’d out,      
And silken traces lighten’d in descent;      
And soon, returning from love’s banishment,           525   
Queen Venus leaning downward open arm’d:      
Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm’d      
A tumult to his heart, and a new life      
Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife,      
But for her comforting! unhappy sight,           530   
But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can write      
Of these first minutes? The unchariest muse      
To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse.      
   
  O it has ruffled every spirit there,      
Saving love’s self, who stands superb to share           535   
The general gladness: awfully he stands;      
A sovereign quell is in his waving hands;      
No sight can bear the lightning of his bow;      
His quiver is mysterious, none can know      
What themselves think of it; from forth his eyes           540   
There darts strange light of varied hues and dyes:      
A scowl is sometimes on his brow, but who      
Look full upon it feel anon the blue      
Of his fair eyes run liquid through their souls.      
Endymion feels it, and no more controls           545   
The burning prayer within him; so, bent low,      
He had begun a plaining of his woe.      
But Venus, bending forward, said: “My child,      
Favour this gentle youth; his days are wild      
With love—he—but alas! too well I see           550   
Thou know’st the deepness of his misery.      
Ah, smile not so, my son: I tell thee true,      
That when through heavy hours I used to rue      
The endless sleep of this new-born Adon’,      
This stranger ay I pitied. For upon           555   
A dreary morning once I fled away      
Into the breezy clouds, to weep and pray      
For this my love: for vexing Mars had teaz’d      
Me even to tears: thence, when a little eas’d,      
Down-looking, vacant, through a hazy wood,           560   
I saw this youth as he despairing stood:      
Those same dark curls blown vagrant in the wind:      
Those same full fringed lids a constant blind      
Over his sullen eyes: I saw him throw      
Himself on wither’d leaves, even as though           565   
Death had come sudden; for no jot he mov’d,      
Yet mutter’d wildly. I could hear he lov’d      
Some fair immortal, and that his embrace      
Had zoned her through the night. There is no trace      
Of this in heaven: I have mark’d each cheek,           570   
And find it is the vainest thing to seek;      
And that of all things ’tis kept secretest.      
Endymion! one day thou wilt be blest:      
So still obey the guiding hand that fends      
Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends.           575   
’Tis a concealment needful in extreme;      
And if I guess’d not so, the sunny beam      
Thou shouldst mount up to with me. Now adieu!      
Here must we leave thee.”—At these words up flew      
The impatient doves, up rose the floating car,           580   
Up went the hum celestial. High afar      
The Latmian saw them minish into nought;      
And, when all were clear vanish’d, still he caught      
A vivid lightning from that dreadful bow.      
When all was darkened, with Etnean throe           585   
The earth clos’d—gave a solitary moan—      
And left him once again in twilight lone.      
   
  He did not rave, he did not stare aghast,      
For all those visions were o’ergone, and past,      
And he in loneliness: he felt assur’d           590   
Of happy times, when all he had endur’d      
Would seem a feather to the mighty prize.      
So, with unusual gladness, on he hies      
Through caves, and palaces of mottled ore,      
Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquois floor,           595   
Black polish’d porticos of awful shade,      
And, at the last, a diamond balustrade,      
Leading afar past wild magnificence,      
Spiral through ruggedest loopholes, and thence      
Stretching across a void, then guiding o’er           600   
Enormous chasms, where, all foam and roar,      
Streams subterranean tease their granite beds;      
Then heighten’d just above the silvery heads      
Of a thousand fountains, so that he could dash      
The waters with his spear; but at the splash,           605   
Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose      
Sudden a poplar’s height, and ’gan to enclose      
His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round      
Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound,      
Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet shells           610   
Welcome the float of Thetis. Long he dwells      
On this delight; for, every minute’s space,      
The streams with changed magic interlace:      
Sometimes like delicatest lattices,      
Cover’d with crystal vines; then weeping trees,           615   
Moving about as in a gentle wind,      
Which, in a wink, to watery gauze refin’d,      
Pour’d into shapes of curtain’d canopies,      
Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries      
Of flowers, peacocks, swans, and naiads fair.           620   
Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare;      
And then the water, into stubborn streams      
Collecting, mimick’d the wrought oaken beams,      
Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof,      
Of those dusk places in times far aloof           625   
Cathedrals call’d. He bade a loth farewel      
To these founts Protean, passing gulph, and dell,      
And torrent, and ten thousand jutting shapes,      
Half seen through deepest gloom, and griesly gapes,      
Blackening on every side, and overhead           630   
A vaulted dome like Heaven’s, far bespread      
With starlight gems: aye, all so huge and strange,      
The solitary felt a hurried change      
Working within him into something dreary,—      
Vex’d like a morning eagle, lost, and weary,           635   
And purblind amid foggy, midnight wolds.      
But he revives at once: for who beholds      
New sudden things, nor casts his mental slough?      
Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below,      
Came mother Cybele! alone—alone—           640   
In sombre chariot; dark foldings thrown      
About her majesty, and front death-pale,      
With turrets crown’d. Four maned lions hale      
The sluggish wheels; solemn their toothed maws,      
Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws           645   
Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails      
Cowering their tawny brushes. Silent sails      
This shadowy queen athwart, and faints away      
In another gloomy arch.

                          Wherefore delay,      
Young traveller, in such a mournful place?           650   
Art thou wayworn, or canst not further trace      
The diamond path? And does it indeed end      
Abrupt in middle air? Yet earthward bend      
Thy forehead, and to Jupiter cloud-borne      
Call ardently! He was indeed wayworn;           655   
Abrupt, in middle air, his way was lost;      
To cloud-borne Jove he bowed, and there crost      
Towards him a large eagle, ’twixt whose wings,      
Without one impious word, himself he flings,      
Committed to the darkness and the gloom:           660   
Down, down, uncertain to what pleasant doom,      
Swift as a fathoming plummet down he fell      
Through unknown things; till exhaled asphodel,      
And rose, with spicy fannings interbreath’d,      
Came swelling forth where little caves were wreath’d           665   
So thick with leaves and mosses, that they seem’d      
Large honey-combs of green, and freshly teem’d      
With airs delicious. In the greenest nook      
The eagle landed him, and farewel took.      
   
  It was a jasmine bower, all bestrown           670   
With golden moss. His every sense had grown      
Ethereal for pleasure; ’bove his head      
Flew a delight half-graspable; his tread      
Was Hesperean; to his capable ears      
Silence was music from the holy spheres;           675   
A dewy luxury was in his eyes;      
The little flowers felt his pleasant sighs      
And stirr’d them faintly. Verdant cave and cell      
He wander’d through, oft wondering at such swell      
Of sudden exaltation: but, “Alas!           680   
Said he, “will all this gush of feeling pass      
Away in solitude? And must they wane,      
Like melodies upon a sandy plain,      
Without an echo? Then shall I be left      
So sad, so melancholy, so bereft!           685   
Yet still I feel immortal! O my love,      
My breath of life, where art thou? High above,      
Dancing before the morning gates of heaven?      
Or keeping watch among those starry seven,      
Old Atlas’ children? Art a maid of the waters,           690   
One of shell-winding Triton’s bright-hair’d daughters?      
Or art, impossible! a nymph of Dian’s,      
Weaving a coronal of tender scions      
For very idleness? Where’er thou art,      
Methinks it now is at my will to start           695   
Into thine arms; to scare Aurora’s train,      
And snatch thee from the morning; o’er the main      
To scud like a wild bird, and take thee off      
From thy sea-foamy cradle; or to doff      
Thy shepherd vest, and woo thee mid fresh leaves.           700   
No, no, too eagerly my soul deceives      
Its powerless self: I know this cannot be.      
O let me then by some sweet dreaming flee      
To her entrancements: hither sleep awhile!      
Hither most gentle sleep! and soothing foil           705   
For some few hours the coming solitude.”      
   
  Thus spake he, and that moment felt endued      
With power to dream deliciously; so wound      
Through a dim passage, searching till he found      
The smoothest mossy bed and deepest, where           710   
He threw himself, and just into the air      
Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss!      
A naked waist: “Fair Cupid, whence is this?”      
A well-known voice sigh’d, “Sweetest, here am I!”      
At which soft ravishment, with doating cry           715   
They trembled to each other.—Helicon!      
O fountain’d hill! Old Homer’s Helicon!      
That thou wouldst spout a little streamlet o’er      
These sorry pages; then the verse would soar      
And sing above this gentle pair, like lark           720   
Over his nested young: but all is dark      
Around thine aged top, and thy clear fount      
Exhales in mists to heaven. Aye, the count      
Of mighty Poets is made up; the scroll      
Is folded by the Muses; the bright roll           725   
Is in Apollo’s hand: our dazed eyes      
Have seen a new tinge in the western skies:      
The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet,      
Although the sun of poesy is set,      
These lovers did embrace, and we must weep           730   
That there is no old power left to steep      
A quill immortal in their joyous tears.      
Long time in silence did their anxious fears      
Question that thus it was; long time they lay      
Fondling and kissing every doubt away;           735   
Long time ere soft caressing sobs began      
To mellow into words, and then there ran      
Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips.      
“O known Unknown! from whom my being sips      
Such darling essence, wherefore may I not           740   
Be ever in these arms? in this sweet spot      
Pillow my chin for ever? ever press      
These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess?      
Why not for ever and for ever feel      
That breath about my eyes? Ah, thou wilt steal           745   
Away from me again, indeed, indeed—      
Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed      
My lonely madness. Speak, my kindest fair!      
Is—is it to be so? No! Who will dare      
To pluck thee from me? And, of thine own will,           750   
Full well I feel thou wouldst not leave me. Still      
Let me entwine thee surer, surer—now      
How can we part? Elysium! who art thou?      
Who, that thou canst not be for ever here,      
Or lift me with thee to some starry sphere?           755   
Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,      
By the most soft completion of thy face,      
Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes,      
And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties—      
These tenderest, and by the nectar-wine,           760   
The passion”————“O lov’d Ida the divine!      
Endymion! dearest! Ah, unhappy me!      
His soul will ’scape us—O felicity!      
How he does love me! His poor temples beat      
To the very tune of love—how sweet, sweet, sweet.           765   
Revive, dear youth, or I shall faint and die;      
Revive, or these soft hours will hurry by      
In tranced dulness; speak, and let that spell      
Affright this lethargy! I cannot quell      
Its heavy pressure, and will press at least           770   
My lips to thine, that they may richly feast      
Until we taste the life of love again.      
What! dost thou move? dost kiss? O bliss! O pain!      
I love thee, youth, more than I can conceive;      
And so long absence from thee doth bereave           775   
My soul of any rest: yet must I hence:      
Yet, can I not to starry eminence      
Uplift thee; nor for very shame can own      
Myself to thee. Ah, dearest, do not groan      
Or thou wilt force me from this secrecy,           780   
And I must blush in heaven. O that I      
Had done it already; that the dreadful smiles      
At my lost brightness, my impassion’d wiles,      
Had waned from Olympus’ solemn height,      
And from all serious Gods; that our delight           785   
Was quite forgotten, save of us alone!      
And wherefore so ashamed? ’Tis but to atone      
For endless pleasure, by some coward blushes:      
Yet must I be a coward!—Horror rushes      
Too palpable before me—the sad look           790   
Of Jove—Minerva’s start—no bosom shook      
With awe of purity—no Cupid pinion      
In reverence veiled—my crystaline dominion      
Half lost, and all old hymns made nullity!      
But what is this to love? O I could fly           795   
With thee into the ken of heavenly powers,      
So thou wouldst thus, for many sequent hours,      
Press me so sweetly. Now I swear at once      
That I am wise, that Pallas is a dunce—      
Perhaps her love like mine is but unknown—           800   
O I do think that I have been alone      
In chastity: yes, Pallas has been sighing,      
While every eve saw me my hair uptying      
With fingers cool as aspen leaves. Sweet love,      
I was as vague as solitary dove,           805   
Nor knew that nests were built. Now a soft kiss—      
Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss,      
An immortality of passion’s thine:      
Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine      
Of heaven ambrosial; and we will shade           810   
Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;      
And I will tell thee stories of the sky,      
And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy.      
My happy love will overwing all bounds!      
O let me melt into thee; let the sounds           815   
Of our close voices marry at their birth;      
Let us entwine hoveringly—O dearth      
Of human words! roughness of mortal speech!      
Lispings empyrean will I sometime teach      
Thine honied tongue—lute-breathings, which I gasp           820   
To have thee understand, now while I clasp      
Thee thus, and weep for fondness—I am pain’d,      
Endymion: woe! woe! is grief contain’d      
In the very deeps of pleasure, my sole life?”—      
Hereat, with many sobs, her gentle strife           825   
Melted into a languor. He return’d      
Entranced vows and tears.

                          Ye who have yearn’d      
With too much passion, will here stay and pity,      
For the mere sake of truth; as ’tis a ditty      
Not of these days, but long ago ’twas told           830   
By a cavern wind unto a forest old;      
And then the forest told it in a dream      
To a sleeping lake, whose cool and level gleam      
A poet caught as he was journeying      
To Phoebus’ shrine; and in it he did fling           835   
His weary limbs, bathing an hour’s space,      
And after, straight in that inspired place      
He sang the story up into the air,      
Giving it universal freedom. There      
Has it been ever sounding for those ears           840   
Whose tips are glowing hot. The legend cheers      
Yon centinel stars; and he who listens to it      
Must surely be self-doomed or he will rue it:      
For quenchless burnings come upon the heart,      
Made fiercer by a fear lest any part           845   
Should be engulphed in the eddying wind.      
As much as here is penn’d doth always find      
A resting place, thus much comes clear and plain;      
Anon the strange voice is upon the wane—      
And ’tis but echo’d from departing sound,           850   
That the fair visitant at last unwound      
Her gentle limbs, and left the youth asleep.—      
Thus the tradition of the gusty deep.      
   
  Now turn we to our former chroniclers.—      
Endymion awoke, that grief of hers           855   
Sweet paining on his ear: he sickly guess’d      
How lone he was once more, and sadly press’d      
His empty arms together, hung his head,      
And most forlorn upon that widow’d bed      
Sat silently. Love’s madness he had known:           860   
Often with more than tortured lion’s groan      
Moanings had burst from him; but now that rage      
Had pass’d away: no longer did he wage      
A rough-voic’d war against the dooming stars.      
No, he had felt too much for such harsh jars:           865   
The lyre of his soul Eolian tun’d      
Forgot all violence, and but commun’d      
With melancholy thought: O he had swoon’d      
Drunken from pleasure’s nipple; and his love      
Henceforth was dove-like.—Loth was he to move           870   
From the imprinted couch, and when he did,      
’Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid      
In muffling hands. So temper’d, out he stray’d      
Half seeing visions that might have dismay’d      
Alecto’s serpents; ravishments more keen           875   
Than Hermes’ pipe, when anxious he did lean      
Over eclipsing eyes: and at the last      
It was a sounding grotto, vaulted, vast,      
O’er studded with a thousand, thousand pearls,      
And crimson mouthed shells with stubborn curls,           880   
Of every shape and size, even to the bulk      
In which whales arbour close, to brood and sulk      
Against an endless storm. Moreover too,      
Fish-semblances, of green and azure hue,      
Ready to snort their streams. In this cool wonder           885   
Endymion sat down, and ’gan to ponder      
On all his life: his youth, up to the day      
When ’mid acclaim, and feasts, and garlands gay,      
He stept upon his shepherd throne: the look      
Of his white palace in wild forest nook,           890   
And all the revels he had lorded there:      
Each tender maiden whom he once thought fair,      
With every friend and fellow-woodlander—      
Pass’d like a dream before him. Then the spur      
Of the old bards to mighty deeds: his plans           895   
To nurse the golden age ’mong shepherd clans:      
That wondrous night: the great Pan-festival:      
His sister’s sorrow; and his wanderings all,      
Until into the earth’s deep maw he rush’d:      
Then all its buried magic, till it flush’d           900   
High with excessive love. “And now,” thought he,      
“How long must I remain in jeopardy      
Of blank amazements that amaze no more?      
Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core      
All other depths are shallow: essences,           905   
Once spiritual, are like muddy lees,      
Meant but to fertilize my earthly root,      
And make my branches lift a golden fruit      
Into the bloom of heaven: other light,      
Though it be quick and sharp enough to blight           910   
The Olympian eagle’s vision, is dark,      
Dark as the parentage of chaos. Hark!      
My silent thoughts are echoing from these shells;      
Or they are but the ghosts, the dying swells      
Of noises far away?—list!”—Hereupon           915   
He kept an anxious ear. The humming tone      
Came louder, and behold, there as he lay,      
On either side outgush’d, with misty spray,      
A copious spring; and both together dash’d      
Swift, mad, fantastic round the rocks, and lash’d           920   
Among the conchs and shells of the lofty grot,      
Leaving a trickling dew. At last they shot      
Down from the ceiling’s height, pouring a noise      
As of some breathless racers whose hopes poize      
Upon the last few steps, and with spent force           925   
Along the ground they took a winding course.      
Endymion follow’d—for it seem’d that one      
Ever pursued, the other strove to shun—      
Follow’d their languid mazes, till well nigh      
He had left thinking of the mystery,—           930   
And was now rapt in tender hoverings      
Over the vanish’d bliss. Ah! what is it sings      
His dream away? What melodies are these?      
They sound as through the whispering of trees,      
Not native in such barren vaults. Give ear!           935   
   
  “O Arethusa, peerless nymph! why fear      
Such tenderness as mine? Great Dian, why,      
Why didst thou hear her prayer? O that I      
Were rippling round her dainty fairness now,      
Circling about her waist, and striving how           940   
To entice her to a dive! then stealing in      
Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin.      
O that her shining hair was in the sun,      
And I distilling from it thence to run      
In amorous rillets down her shrinking form!           945   
To linger on her lily shoulders, warm      
Between her kissing breasts, and every charm      
Touch raptur’d!—See how painfully I flow:      
Fair maid, be pitiful to my great woe.      
Stay, stay thy weary course, and let me lead,           950   
A happy wooer, to the flowery mead      
Where all that beauty snar’d me.”—“Cruel god,      
Desist! or my offended mistress’ nod      
Will stagnate all thy fountains:—tease me not      
With syren words—Ah, have I really got           955   
Such power to madden thee? And is it true—      
Away, away, or I shall dearly rue      
My very thoughts: in mercy then away,      
Kindest Alpheus for should I obey      
My own dear will, ’twould be a deadly bane.”—           960   
“O, Oread-Queen! would that thou hadst a pain      
Like this of mine, then would I fearless turn      
And be a criminal.”—“Alas, I burn,      
I shudder—gentle river, get thee hence.      
Alpheus! thou enchanter! every sense           965   
Of mine was once made perfect in these woods.      
Fresh breezes, bowery lawns, and innocent floods,      
Ripe fruits, and lonely couch, contentment gave;      
But ever since I heedlessly did lave      
In thy deceitful stream, a panting glow           970   
Grew strong within me: wherefore serve me so,      
And call it love? Alas, ’twas cruelty.      
Not once more did I close my happy eyes      
Amid the thrush’s song. Away! Avaunt!      
O ’twas a cruel thing.”—“Now thou dost taunt           975   
So softly, Arethusa, that I think      
If thou wast playing on my shady brink,      
Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid!      
Stifle thine heart no more;—nor be afraid      
Of angry powers: there are deities           980   
Will shade us with their wings. Those fitful sighs      
’Tis almost death to hear: O let me pour      
A dewy balm upon them!—fear no more,      
Sweet Arethusa! Dian’s self must feel      
Sometimes these very pangs. Dear maiden, steal           985   
Blushing into my soul, and let us fly      
These dreary caverns for the open sky.      
I will delight thee all my winding course,      
From the green sea up to my hidden source      
About Arcadian forests; and will shew           990   
The channels where my coolest waters flow      
Through mossy rocks; where, ’mid exuberant green,      
I roam in pleasant darkness, more unseen      
Than Saturn in his exile; where I brim      
Round flowery islands, and take thence a skim           995   
Of mealy sweets, which myriads of bees      
Buzz from their honied wings: and thou shouldst please      
Thyself to choose the richest, where we might      
Be incense-pillow’d every summer night.      
Doff all sad fears, thou white deliciousness,           1000   
And let us be thus comforted; unless      
Thou couldst rejoice to see my hopeless stream      
Hurry distracted from Sol’s temperate beam,      
And pour to death along some hungry sands.”—      
“What can I do, Alpheus? Dian stands           1005   
Severe before me: persecuting fate!      
Unhappy Arethusa! thou wast late      
A huntress free in”—At this, sudden fell      
Those two sad streams adown a fearful dell.      
The Latmian listen’d, but he heard no more,           1010   
Save echo, faint repeating o’er and o’er      
The name of Arethusa. On the verge      
Of that dark gulph he wept, and said: “I urge      
Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,      
By our eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,           1015   
If thou art powerful, these lovers pains;      
And make them happy in some happy plains.      
   
  He turn’d—there was a whelming sound—he stept,      
There was a cooler light; and so he kept      
Towards it by a sandy path, and lo!           1020   
More suddenly than doth a moment go,      
The visions of the earth were gone and fled—      
He saw the giant sea above his head.