And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

And there the body lay, age after age,

Mute, breathing, beating, warm and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage

Of death or life; while they were still arraying

In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind

And fleeting generations of mankind.

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desart is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers,—all his evil gain

The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap ;-the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull

The old cant down; they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese By pastoral letters to each diocese.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne

Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey.—Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor, when the morning came, And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same!

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares ;—in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

And timid lovers who had been so coy,

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy

Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy—till the tenth moon shone;

And then the Witch would let them take no ill: Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.

Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,

Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!

She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

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

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

1820.

The Question.

THE QUESTION.

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wetsLike a child, half in tenderness and mirth—

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.