Asia. Thou speakest, but thy words Are as the air: I feel them not: Oh, lift Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul !

Panthea. I lift them tho' they droop beneath the load

Of that they would express: what canst thou see

But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?

Asia. Thine eyes are like the deep; blue, boundless heaven

Contracted to two circles underneath Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,

Orb within orb, and line thro' line in

Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.

What shape is that between us? Its rude hair

Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard

Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air, For thro' its gray robe gleams the golden dew

Whose stars the noon has quenched not
Dream.
Follow! Follow!
Panthea. It is mine other dream.
Asia.
It disappears.
Panthea. It passes now into my
mind. Methought

As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds

Burst on yon lightning-blasted almondtree,

When swift from the white Scythian wilderness

A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:

As our voice recedeth
Thro' the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth;
(More distant)

O, follow, follow!

Thro' the caverns hollow,

As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew,
Thro' the noontide darkness deep,
By the odor-breathing sleep

Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Child of Ocean!

Asia. Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint

And distant.
Panthea.

nearer now.

List! the strain floats

Semichorus I of Spirits The path thro' which that lovely twain Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew, And each dark tree that ever grew, Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;

Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, Can pierce its interwoven bowers, Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,

Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, Between the trunks of the hoar trees,

Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers

Of the green laurel, blown anew; And bends, and then fades silently, One frail and fair anemone :

Or when some star of many a one That climbs and wanders thro' steep night,

Has found the cleft thro' which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,

By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around.
And underneath is the mossy ground.

Down streams made strong with moun tain-thaw:

And first there comes a gentle sound To those in talk or slumber bound And wakes the destined. Soft emotion Attracts, impels them: those who saw Say from the breathing earth behind There steams a plume-uplifting wind Which drives them on their path, while they

Believe their own swift wings and feet The sweet desires within obey: And so they float upon their way, Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, The storm of sound is driven along, Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet

Behind, its gathering billows meet And to the fatal mountain bear Like clouds amid the yielding air. First Faun. Canst thou imagine where those spirits live

Which make such delicate music in the woods?

We haunt within the least frequented

Panthea. Hither the sound has borne us--to the realm

Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,

And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,

That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain

To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
The voice which is contagion to the
world.

Asia. Fit throne for such a power!
Magnificent!

How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be

The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, Though evil stain its work, and it should

be

Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, I could fall down and worship that and thee.

Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!

Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy

brain:

Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, As a lake, paving in the morning sky,

Song of Spirits

To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;'

Through the veil and the bar

Of things which seem and are

Even to the steps of the remotest throne, Down, down!

While the sound whirls around,

Down, down!

As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapor,
As the weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both; to-day, to-morrow;

As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!

Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!

Where the air is no prism,

And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,

Nor the gloom to Earth given,

Where there is one pervading, one alone, Down, down!

In the depth of the deep,

Down, down!

Which from the links of the great chain of things,

To every thought within the mind of

man

Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels

Under the load towards the pit of death;

Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;

And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;

Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech

Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after

day;

And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia Utter his name: a world pining
in pain

Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.

Demogorgon. He reigns.
Asia.
Demogorgon.

I feel, I know it: who?
He reigns
Asia. Who reigns? There was the
Heaven and Earth at first.