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.
33
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.
34
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.
35
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.
36
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.
37
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.
38
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.
39
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.
40
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.
41
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.
42
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.
43
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.
44
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.
45
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.
46
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.
47
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,—
48
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.
49
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
435And around which, the solid vapours hoar,
&
nbsp; 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.
50
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,—
51
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.
52
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.
53
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.
54
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.
55
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.
56
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.
57
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.
58
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,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
59
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.
60
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.
61
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.
62
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.’
63
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.
64
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.
65
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.
66
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 disgu
ise
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.
67
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.
68
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.
69
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.
70
Selected Poems and Prose Page 51
