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.

LXXI.

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.

LXXII.

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.

LXXIII.

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.

LXXIV.

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!

LXXV.

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.

LXXVI.

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 ;

LXXVII.

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.

LXXVIII.

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.

THE WANING MOON.

AND like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

I.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine.
In one another's being mingle;
Why not I with thine?

II.

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained it's brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?