XXIV

One moment these were heard and seen--another

Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night

Each only heard or saw or felt the other;

As from the lofty steed she did alight,

Cythna (for, from the eyes whose deepest light

Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale

With influence strange of mournfullest delight,

My own sweet Cythna looked) with joy did quail,

And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.

From the green ruin plucked that

he might feed ;

But I to a stone seat that Maiden led, And, kissing her fair eyes, said, "Thou hast need

Of rest," and I heaped up the courser's bed

In a green mossy nook, with mountainflowers dispread.

XXVII

Within that ruin, where a shattered portal

Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now

By man, to be the home of things

immortal,

XXIX

We know not where we go, or what sweet dream

May pilot us through caverns strange and fair

Of far and pathless passion, while the

stream

Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,

Spreading swift wings as sails to

the dim air:

Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion

Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there

Louder and louder from the utmost

ocean

come and go,

And must inherit all he builds below,

When he is gone, a hall stood; o'er whose roof

Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,

Clasping its gray rents with a verdur

ous woof,

A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.

XXVIII

The autumnal winds, as if spellbound, had made

A natural couch of leaves in that recess,

Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade

Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress

With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness

Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars whene'er

The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;

Whose intertwining fingers ever there Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.

The blood itself which ran within our frames,

That likeness of the features which endears

The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,

And all the winged hours which speechless memory claims,

XXXII

Had found a voice:-and, ere that voice did pass,

The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent

XXXIV

The meteor to its far morass returned: The beating of our veins one interval Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned

Within her frame mingle with mine, and fall

Around my heart like fire; and over all

A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep

And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall

Two disunited spirits when they leap

As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging

Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.

XLII

The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were

Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,

Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite

The darkness and the tumult of their might

Borne on all winds.-Far, through the streaming rain

Floating, at intervals the garments white

Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again

reached the plain.