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Aye, those fair living forms swam heavenly

       To tunes forgotten–out of memory:

       Fair creatures! whose young childrens’ children bred

       Thermopylæ its heroes–not yet dead,

       But in old marbles ever beautiful.

       High genitors, unconscious did they cull Time’s sweet first-fruits–they danc’d to weariness,

       And then in quiet circles did they press

       The hillock turf, and caught the latter end

       Of some strange history, potent to send

       A young mind from its bodily tenement.

       Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent

       On either side; pitying the sad death

       Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath

       Of Zephyr slew him,–Zephyr penitent,

       Who now, ere Phœbus mounts the firmament, Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.

       The archers too, upon a wider plain,

       Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft,

       And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft

       Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top,

       Call’d up a thousand thoughts to envelope

       Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee

       And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,

       Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young

       Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,

       And very, very deadliness did nip

       Her motherly cheeks. Arous’d from this sad mood

       By one, who at a distance loud halloo’d,

       Uplifting his strong bow into the air,

       Many might after brighter visions stare:

       After the Argonauts, in blind amaze

       Tossing about on Neptune’s restless ways,

       Until, from the horizon’s vaulted side,

       There shot a golden splendour far and wide, Spangling those million poutings of the brine

       With quivering ore: ’twas even an awful shine

       From the exaltation of Apollo’s bow;

       A heavenly beacon in their dreary woe.

       Who thus were ripe for high contemplating,

       Might turn their steps towards the sober ring

       Where sat Endymion and the aged priest

       ‘Mong shepherds gone in eld, whose looks increas’d

       The silvery setting of their mortal star.

       There they discours’d upon the fragile bar That keeps us from our homes ethereal;

       And what our duties there: to nightly call

       Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;

       To summon all the downiest clouds together

       For the sun’s purple couch; to emulate

       In ministring the potent rule of fate

       With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;

       To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons

       Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,

       A world of other unguess’d offices. Anon they wander’d, by divine converse,

       Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse

       Each one his own anticipated bliss.

       One felt heart-certain that he could not miss

       His quick gone love, among fair blossom’d boughs,

       Where every zephyr-sigh pouts, and endows

       Her lips with music for the welcoming.

       Another wish’d, mid that eternal spring,

       To meet his rosy child, with feathery sails,

       Sweeping, eye-earnestly, through almond vales: Who, suddenly, should stoop through the smooth wind,

       And with the balmiest leaves his temples bind;

       And, ever after, through those regions be

       His messenger, his little Mercury,

       Some were athirst in soul to see again

       Their fellow huntsmen o’er the wide champaign

       In times long past; to sit with them, and talk

       Of all the chances in their earthly walk;

       Comparing, joyfully, their plenteous stores

       Of happiness, to when upon the moors, Benighted, close they huddled from the cold,

       And shar’d their famish’d scrips. Thus all out-told

       Their fond imaginations,–saving him

       Whose eyelids curtain’d up their jewels dim,

       Endymion: yet hourly had he striven

       To hide the cankering venom, that had riven

       His fainting recollections. Now indeed

       His senses had swoon’d off: he did not heed

       The sudden silence, or the whispers low,

       Or the old eyes dissolving at his woe, Or anxious calls, or close of trembling palms,

       Or maiden’s sigh, that grief itself embalms:

       But in the selfsame fixed trance he kept,

       Like one who on the earth had never slept.

       Aye, even as dead-still as a marble man,

       Frozen in that old tale Arabian.

      Who whispers him so pantingly and close?

       Peona, his sweet sister: of all those,

       His friends, the dearest. Hushing signs she made,

       And breath’d a sister’s sorrow to persuade A yielding up, a cradling on her care.

       Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:

       She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse

       Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,

       Along a path between two little streams,–

       Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,

       From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow

       From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;

       Until they came to where these streamlets fall,

       With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush, Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush

       With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.

       A little shallop, floating there hard by,

       Pointed its beak over the fringed bank;

       And soon it lightly dipt, and rose, and sank,

       And dipt again, with the young couple’s weight,–

       Peona guiding, through the water straight,

       Towards a bowery island opposite;

       Which gaining presently, she steered light

       Into a shady, fresh, and ripply cove, Where nested was an arbour, overwove

       By many a summer’s silent fingering;

       To whose cool bosom she was used to bring

       Her playmates, with their needle broidery,

       And minstrel memories of times gone by.

      So she was gently glad to see him laid

      

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