Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart

490

Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown

495

Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learnèd imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it

The ivy and the wild-vine interknit

500

The volumes of their many-twining stems;

Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems

The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery

With Moon-light patches, or star atoms keen,

505

Or fragments of the day's intense serene;

Working mosaic on their Parian floors.

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream

510

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed

Thee to be lady of the solitude.

515

And I have fitted up some chambers there
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below.
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high spirits call
The future from its cradle, and the past

520

Out of its grave, and make the present last

In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.

Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore, still,
Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit

525

Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;

Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance

530

The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon-light
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
Be this our home in life, and when years heap

535

Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the over-hanging day,

The living soul of this Elysian isle,

Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile

540

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,

And wander in the meadows, or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend

With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;

545

Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,

Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, -
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one :- or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,

550

Through which the awakened day can never peep;

555

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.

560

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,

565

And our veins beat together; and our lips,

With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them; and the wells

Which boil under our being's inmost cells,

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,

570

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,

575

Till like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same

Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still

Burning, yet ever inconsumable :

In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!

580

585

The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love's rare Universe

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.—
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say: "We are the masters of thy slave;

"What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?" Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,

All singing loud: "Love's very pain is sweet,
"But its reward is in the world divine

"Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.”
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste
Over the hearts of
men, until meet
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,

ye

And bid them love each other and be bless'd :
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, for I am Love's.

ΤΟ

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

590

595

600

5

SONG.

I.

RARELY, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?

Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou art fled away.

II.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain.

Spirit false thou hast forgot

All but those who need thee not.

III.

As a lizard with the shade

Of a trembling leaf,

Thou with sorrow art dismayed;

Even the sighs of grief

Reproach thee, that thou art not near,

And reproach thou wilt not hear.

IV.

Let me set my mournful ditty

To a merry measure,

Thou wilt never come for pity,

Thou wilt come for pleasure.

Pity then will cut away

Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.