Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly

Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash

Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing;

And the incessant hail with stony clash

Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke-this haven Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven.

On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star,

Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks

Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.

And then she called out of the hollow turrets

Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion, The armies of her ministering spirits

In mighty legions, million after million,

They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere

They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.

They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk-cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.

And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught Upon those wandering isles of aëry dew, Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,

She sate, and heard all that had happened new Between the earth and moon, since they had brought

The last intelligence—and now she grew Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night— And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.

These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack

Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the Dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air ;—oft time
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.

And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,
She would ascend, and win the spirits there

To let her join their chorus. Mortals found

That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she past,
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.

But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
Egypt and Æthiopia, from the steep

Of utmost Axumè, until he spreads,

Like a calm flock of silver fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.

By Maris and the Mareotid lakes,

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

Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes

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

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

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

The works of man pierced that serenest sky

With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight To wander in the shadow of the night.

With motion like the spirit of that wind

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Past through the peopled haunts of human kind, Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined. With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;

There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linkèd innocently

In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm Old age with snow-bright air and folded palm.

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song—
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,

And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;
And all the code of custom's lawless law

Written upon the brows of old and young: "This," said the wizard maiden, "is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.”

And little did the sight disturb her soul.—

We, the weak mariners of that wide lake Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make

O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:—

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

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

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

The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,

And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

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

Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment: they

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

She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits-to her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair— And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own.