These words awoke the stranger of dark tresses:

      Her dawning love-look rapt Endymion blesses

      With ‘haviour soft. Sleep yawned from underneath.

      “Thou swan of Ganges, let us no more breathe

      This murky phantasm! thou contented seem’st

      Pillow’d in lovely idleness, nor dream’st

      What horrors may discomfort thee and me.

      Ah, shouldst thou die from my heart-treachery!–

      Yet did she merely weep–her gentle soul

      Hath no revenge in it: as it is whole

      In tenderness, would I were whole in love!

      Can I prize thee, fair maid, till price above,

      Even when I feel as true as innocence?

      I do, I do.–What is this soul then? Whence

      Came it? It does not seem my own, and I

      Have no self-passion or identity.

      Some fearful end must be: where, where is it?

      By Nemesis, I see my spirit flit

      Alone about the dark–Forgive me, sweet:

      Shall we away?” He rous’d the steeds: they beat

      Their wings chivalrous into the clear air,

      Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.

      The good-night blush of eve was waning slow,

      And Vesper, risen star, began to throe

      In the dusk heavens silvery, when they

      Thus sprang direct towards the Galaxy.

      Nor did speed hinder converse soft and strange–

      Eternal oaths and vows they interchange,

      In such wise, in such temper, so aloof

      Up in the winds, beneath a starry roof,

      So witless of their doom, that verily

      ’Tis well nigh past man’s search their hearts to see;

      Whether they wept, or laugh’d, or griev’d, or toy’d–

      Most like with joy gone mad, with sorrow cloy’d.

      Fell facing their swift flight, from ebon streak,

      The moon put forth a little diamond peak,

      No bigger than an unobserved star,

      Or tiny point of fairy scymetar;

      Bright signal that she only stoop’d to tie

      Her silver sandals, ere deliciously

      She bow’d into the heavens her timid head.

      Slowly she rose, as though she would have fled,

      While to his lady meek the Carian turn’d,

      To mark if her dark eyes had yet discern’d

      This beauty in its birth–Despair! despair!

      He saw her body fading gaunt and spare

      In the cold moonshine. Straight he seiz’d her wrist;

      It melted from his grasp: her hand he kiss’d,

      And, horror! kiss’d his own–he was alone.

      Her steed a little higher soar’d, and then

      Dropt hawkwise to the earth.

      There lies a den,

      Beyond the seeming confines of the space

      Made for the soul to wander in and trace

      Its own existence, of remotest glooms.

      Dark regions are around it, where the tombs

      Of buried griefs the spirit sees, but scarce

      One hour doth linger weeping, for the pierce

      Of new-born woe it feels more inly smart:

      And in these regions many a venom’d dart

      At random flies; they are the proper home

      Of every ill: the man is yet to come

      Who hath not journeyed in this native hell.

      But few have ever felt how calm and well

      Sleep may be had in that deep den of all.

      There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall:

      Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate,

      Yet all is still within and desolate.

      Beset with plainful gusts, within ye hear

      No sound so loud as when on curtain’d bier

      The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none

      Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won.

      Just when the sufferer begins to burn,

      Then it is free to him; and from an urn,

      Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught–

      Young Semele such richness never quaft

      In her maternal longing. Happy gloom!

      Dark Paradise! where pale becomes the bloom

      Of health by due; where silence dreariest

      Is most articulate; where hopes infest;

      Where those eyes are the brightest far that keep

      Their lids shut longest in a dreamless sleep.

      O happy spirit-home! O wondrous soul!

      Pregnant with such a den to save the whole

      In thine own depth. Hail, gentle Carian!

      For, never since thy griefs and woes began,

      Hast thou felt so content: a grievous feud

      Hath let thee to this Cave of Quietude.

      Aye, his lull’d soul was there, although upborne

      With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn

      Because he knew not whither he was going.

      So happy was