Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers: this well
May be, for heaven and earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.

5. My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature

As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days,
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

She wears he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

Like King Lear's looped and windowed raggedness. 6. If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow

Scorched by hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow;

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at:
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,-if sin there be
In love when it becomes idolatry.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

1. BEFORE those cruel twins whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth

The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

2. Her mother was one of the Atlantides.

The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

In the warm shadow of her loveliness;

He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of grey rock in which she lay.

She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

3. 'Tis said she was first changed into a vapour :
And then into a cloud,—such clouds as flit
(Like splendour-winged moths about a taper)
Round the red west when the Sun dies in it;

And then into a meteor, such as caper

On hill-tops when the Moon is in a fit;
Then into one of those mysterious stars

Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

A

the Mother of the Months had bent
how resule the folding-star, and bidden
t sign the billows to indent
se-deserted sand-like children chidden,
he command, they ever came and went)-—
#tha, cave & devr splendour hidden
w store and motion. With the living form
has embodied. Power the cave grew warm.
garmented in light

A beauty: deer her eyes as are
a unfathomalie night

tempest's cloven roof; her hair
the din brain whiris dizzy with delight,
g her form. Her soft smiles shone afar;
was heard like love, and drew

towards this wonder new.

spotted camelopard came;

macies elephant;

sment in the golden flame

ames interred. All gaunt

ress her gentle looks made tame,— at he at her sacred fount; ISAS a beating heart grew bold, NTS mi nove ever to behold.

Lex er fri fer vong,

ni teach them now they should forego Lrs a death the para unstrung

IS SHOWS IL no es mi sought to know, 12:20 MS TRULIS SUKe without a tongae, HOW MEGAs the doc. Teme a ne taur mi eres wise mures the myranes.

3 ani al Slents, studung 1 men cit ANVAS I A

Some hill side ses 2

at is rims vill the nooner der;

And Crepe mi. Frumus Iova má

Tazing de Ja sig den smelig x; Tinus are they cunt the Lary km. Sting upon a sen å merke su.

3. And universal Zen, is sal was there.

And, harga hone say im-through the adamant Of the deep mountains through the trackless L And through those bring sucks the a wint

He passed out of his everlasting lar

Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, And felt that wondrous Lady all alone. —

And she felt him upon her emerald throne.

10. And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every Shepherdess of Ocean's flocks
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company,-

All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth :
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

II. The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts, and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
12. For she was beautiful. Her beauty made

The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
No thought of living spirit could abide
(Which to her looks had ever been betrayed)
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,—
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

13. Which when the Lady knew, she took her spindle,
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she
As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;

And with these threads a subtle veil she wove-
A shadow for the splendour of her love.

14. The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

Were stored with magic treasures :-sounds of air
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;

Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die—yet, ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone.

15. And there lay Visions swift and sweet and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ;-
Some eager to burst forth; some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss

It is their work to bear to many a saint

Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,

Even Love's; and others, white, green, grey, and black
And of all shapes :-and each was at her beck.

16 And advers in a kind of aviary

fever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Cupped in a flating net a love-sick Fairy

Hai woven frota dew-beams while the moon yet slept
As hats at the wired window of a dairy,

They beat their vans; and each was an adept
"Vrem loosed and missioned, making wings of winds
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.
And Doors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
Ari dinge eternal death into a night

feccitas dreams-or, if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight-
She in her crystal phials did closely keep :
men could drink of these clear phials, 'tis said
The Crag were not envied of the dead.

15. Har cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,

ught the expiations at whose price

Men from the Gods might win that happy age
gat last, releeming native vice —

AL VIN SA quench the earth-consuming rage
you mi flood, till men should live and move
ATENCEALS as the sacred stars above :-

a dykrishing that seem untameable,
Jau be checked and not to be contined,
Dette ses of Wisdom's wizard skill ;

Time eith mi fire, the ocean, and the wind,
A.2. Der Capes and man's imperial will :-
snt tcher scrolls whose writings did unbind
"NZD lie of love-let the profane

SELUR IN AS What secrets they contain.

sa Ani witous works of sal Sances unknown,

To which the enchantment of her Father's power
Hal cuget de ragged blocks of savage stone,
Ja see hengel 2 the recesses of her bower;
Caret angs mi chalices, and phials which shon:
A der den gåden bein-eich like a flower
du a vase agch a druty shakes his light
BAL & OPUS 2 1 sales nig

A: Ane she lead alone in this wild home.

And her own, thoughs were each a minister,
Coching Chemeres or with the ocean foam,

ch with the wal & r & speed of fic,
Nomas livrer perpas zght come

The dead: sach power her mighty Sire
La girder with whether to fly or run
Ched the regions which he shines upon