To Mary
(on her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its containing no human interest)
How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written
Because they tell no story, false or true?
5What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
10 The youngest of inconstant April’s minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky
Where the swan sings amid the sun’s dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die
When day shall hide within her twilight pinions,
15The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
To thy fair feet a winged Vision came
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
20 And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift sun went his way—
And that is dead.—O, let me not believe
That any thing of mine is fit to live!
25Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
30 Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
35Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
40Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness’.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow,
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
45In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
If you unveil my Witch, no Priest or Primate
Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
50 Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
55A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden
In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas
60 So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of grey rock in which she lay—
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
65’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
70 On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:
Then into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
75With that bright sign the billows to indent
The sea-deserted sand—like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went—
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
80Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty—deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a temple’s cloven roof—her hair
85Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
90 And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved;—all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
95And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
Such gentleness and power even to behold.
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
100 His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
105And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
110 Teazing the God to sing them something new
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
And Universal Pan, ’tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,—through the adamant
115Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
And through those living spirits, like a want
He past out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—
120And she felt him upon her emerald throne.
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree
And every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks
Who drives her white waves over the green sea;
And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,
125And quaint Priapus with his company
All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came
130 And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
135Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed and bird-footed.
For she was beautiful—her beauty made
The bright world dim, and every thing beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
140 No thought of living spirit could abide—
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed—
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
145Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
150 In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,
155Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of chrystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die—yet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
160And the regret they leave remains alone.
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis;
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss
165It was its work to bear to many a saint
Whose heart adores that shrine which holiest is,
Even Love’s—and others white, green, grey and black,
And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.
And odours in a kind of aviary
170 Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
Clipt in a floating net a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept—
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
175When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
180 Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her chrystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, ’tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
185Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
190 And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood—till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above.
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
195Obey the spells of wisdom’s wizard skill;
Time, Earth and Fire—the Ocean and the Wind
And all their shapes—and man’s imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Love—let the prophane
200Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father’s power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
205Carved lamps and chalices and phials which shone
In their own golden beams—each like a flower
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
210 And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
215Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
Through all the regions which he shines upon.
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
220 Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
And far beneath the matted roots of trees
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live forever in the light
Of her sweet presence—each a satellite.
225‘This may not be,’ the wizard maid replied;
‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
230 The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew
Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust—
‘And ye with them will perish one by one:
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
235If I must weep when the surviving Sun
Shall smile on your decay—Oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must—over me
Your leaves shall glance—the streams in which ye dwell
240Shall be my paths henceforth, and so, farewell!’
She spoke and wept—the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
245And intertangled lines of light—a knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o’er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof
250 Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity
Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
255In hues outshining heaven—and ever she
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—
260 Each flame of it is as a precious stone
Dissolved in ever moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
265This lady never slept, but lay in trance
All night within the fountain—as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance:
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
270 Like fire-flies—and withal did ever keep
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet and folded palm.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
275She passed at dewfall to a space extended,
Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson fire, full even to the brim
280And overflowing all the margin trim.
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star,
O’er woods and lawns—the serpent heard it flicker
285In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar—
And when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.
She had a Boat which some say Vulcan wrought
290 For Venus, as the chariot of her star;
But it was found too feeble to be fraught
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
295Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat
Which ever upon mortal stream did float.
And others say, that when but three hours old
The first-born Love out of his cradle leapt
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
300 And like an horticultural adept,
Stole a strange seed, and wrapt it up in mould
And sowed it in his mother’s star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
305The plant grew strong and green—the snowy flower
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o’er
310 The solid rind, like a leaf’s veined fan—
Of which Love scooped this boat—and with soft motion
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
315Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
One of the twain at Evan’s feet that sit—
Or as on Vesta’s sceptre a swift flame—
Or on blind Homer’s heart a winged thought—
320In joyous expectation lay the boat.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love—all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
325And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow—
A living Image, which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
330 It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both—
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
335Some artist that his skill should never die,
Imaging forth such perfect purity.
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipt with the speed of liquid lightenings—
340 Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere.
She led her creature to the boiling springs
Where the light boat was moored, and said: ‘Sit here!’
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder with opposing feet.
345And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace past;
350 By many a star-surrounded pyramid
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
The silver noon into that winding dell
With slanted gleam athwart the forest-tops
355Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell
When earth over her face night’s mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high
360Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o’er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
365Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
370 Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o’er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters all besprent
375With sand and polished pebbles—mortal boat
In such a shallow rapid could not float.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
380 Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fled—the circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
385And when the wizard lady would ascend
The labyrinths of some many winding vale
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend—
She called ‘Hermaphroditus!’ and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
390 Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
395And from above into the Sun’s dominions
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime
400With which frost paints the pines in winter-time.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aetherial vans—and speeding there
Like a star up the torrent of the night
405Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
The water flashed like sunlight by the prow
410 Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains—loosely driven
The lady’s radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
415Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
420 Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, th’ Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,—
425Where like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay th’ Austral lake—
There she would build herself a windless haven
430 Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by.
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
435And around which, the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags; and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey
440And 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
445Of 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,
450 Circling the image of a shooting star,
Even as a tyger 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
455Of 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—
460 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.
465They 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
470 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,
475Which 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—
480And 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
485Ride 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
490 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
495Wandered 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 Aethiopia, from the steep
500 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.
505By Moeris 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
510 Of those huge forms—within the brazen doors
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie
515And never are erased—but tremble ever
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-pav’n canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, ’twas her delight
520To 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,
525Through 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
530 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 linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
535Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song—
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
540 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.’
545And 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—
550 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
555In 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,
560And 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
565Only 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
570 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,
575Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm, when Tithon became grey?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heaven
580 Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
585’Tis said in after times her spirit free
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone—
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion
Than now this lady—like a sexless bee
590 Tasting all blossoms and confined to none—
Among those mortal forms the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a chrystal bowl.
595They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
And lived thenceforward as if some controul
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
600Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.
For on the night that they were buried, she
Restored the embalmer’s ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
605And 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,
610 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
615In 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
620 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.
625The 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
630 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,
635And 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,
640And 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,
645Beating their swords to ploughshares;—in a band
The jailors 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
650 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,
655Blushed 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
660 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.
665These 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 shew their subtle slights,
I will declare another time; for it is
670 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.