And 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 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 se-
lect

Some artist that his skill should never die,
Imaging forth such perfect purity.

40

wings,

Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,

Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,

Dyed in the ardors 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.

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 be

sprent

With sand and polished pebbles: mortal

boat

In such a shallow rapid could not float.

mountains vast,

Around their inland islets, and amid The panther-peopled forests, whose shade

cast

Darkness and odors, and a pleasure hid In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed; 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, Tempered 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;

43

Which to the inmost mountain upward tend,

She called "Hermaphroditus!"; and the pale

And heavy hue which slumber could extend
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.

And it unfurled its heaven-colored pinions, With stars of fire spotting the stream below;

And from above into the Sun's dominions
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-
wingèd minions,

All interwoven with fine feathery snow 49 And moonlight splendor of intensest rime,1 With 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 ethereal vans; and speeding there, Like a star upon the torrent of the night, Or 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

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

Indignant 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 interlunar2 night,
The Lady-Witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the
light

50

51

The bastions of the storm, when through the sky

The spirits of the tempest thundered by;

A haven, beneath whose translucent floor The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,

And around which the solid vapors hoar, 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 gray And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

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

Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash

Looked like the wreck of some windwandering

Fragment of inky thunder-smoke-this

haven

Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven;

On which that Lady played her many pranks,

Circling the image of a shooting star, Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest

are,

In her light boat; and many quips and cranks1

She played upon the water, till the car Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, To journey from the misty east began.

And then she called out of the hollow turrets

Of those high clouds, white, golden, and vermilion,

The armies of her ministering spirits;

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.

make

1 hoarfrost

That is, in the interval between the old moon

and the new.

Of woven exhalations, underlaid

great Queen

1 See L'Allegro, 27.

And mystic snatches of harmonious sound

Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed,

Egypt and Æthiopia, from the steep
Of utmost Axumé, 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 vapor-belted pyramid.

By Moris and the Mareotid lakes,

Strewn with faint blooms, like bridal chamber floors,

Where naked boys bridling tame watersnakes,

Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes 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.

And where within the surface of the river The shadows of the massy temples lie, And never are erased-but tremble ever Like things which every cloud can doom to die;

Through lotus-paven canals, and whereso

ever

The works of man pierced that serenest

sky

With tombs, and towers, and fanes,- 'twas her delight

To wander in the shadow of the night.

With motion like the spirit of that wind

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet

Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,

Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet;

Through fane and palace-court, and labyrinth mined

With many a dark and subterranean

street

Under the Nile, through chambers high and

deep

She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.

last.

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 linkèd innocently
In their loose locks which over both did

creep