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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

      Under her favourite bower’s quiet shade,

      On her own couch, new made of flower leaves,

      Dried carefully on the cooler side of sheaves

      When last the sun his autumn tresses shook,

      And the tann’d harvesters rich armfuls took.

      Soon was he quieted to slumbrous rest:

      But, ere it crept upon him, he had prest

      Peona’s busy hand against his lips,

      And still, a sleeping, held her finger-tips

      In tender pressure. And as a willow keeps

      A patient watch over the stream that creeps

      Windingly by it, so the quiet maid

      Held her in peace: so that a whispering blade

      Of grass, a wailful gnat, a bee bustling

      Down in the bluebells, or a wren light rustling

      Among sere leaves and twigs, might all be heard.

      O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,

      That

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