LXII.

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirror'd in a holy song,
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,

And pale imaginings of vision'd wrong,
And all the code of custom's lawless law

Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This," said the wizard maiden," is the strife,
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life."
LXIII.

And little did the sight disturb her soul-
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake,
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,

Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wide surface to an unknown goal-

But she in the calm depths her way could take, Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide, Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

LXIV.

And she saw princes couch'd under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row,

She saw the priests asleep,--all of one sort,
For all were educated to be so ;-

The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lull'd within their dreamless graves.

LXV.

And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they

Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these, and all, now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

LXVI.

She all those human figures breathing there
Beheld as living spirits-to her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair-

And then, she had a charm of strange device, Which murmur'd on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

LXVII.

Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given, For such a charm, when Tithon became gray! Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heaven

Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven Which dear Adonais had been doom'd to pay, To any witch who would have taught you it! The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

LXVIII.

"Tis said in after-times her spirit free

Knew what love was, and felt itself aloneBut holy Dian could not chaster be

Before she stoop'd to kiss Endymion, Than now this lady-like a sexless bee

Tasting all blossoms, and confined to noneAmong those mortal forms, the wizard maiden Pass'd with an eye serene and heart unladen.

LXIX.

To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl.
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave
And lived thenceforth as if some control
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppress'd the weary soul,
Was as a green and over-arching bower,
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

LXX.

For on the night that they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathly nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery

Of second childhood's swaddling-bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

LXXI.

And there the body lay, age after age,

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage,

With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life; while they were still arraying In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind And fleeting generations of mankind.

LXXII.

And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
Which the sand covers,-all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap; the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple-doors, and pull

The old cant down; they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey.-Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawl'd to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor when the morning came; And kiss'd-alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

The soldiers dream'd that they were blacksmiths, and
Walk'd out of quarters in somnambulism:
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to plowshares;-in a band
The jailers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis; much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.

Nor wanted here the just similitude

Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er

The chariot roll'd, a captive multitude

Linping to reach the light which leaves them still Farther behind and deeper in the shade.

But not the less with impotence of will

Or misery, all who had their age subdued

By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drain'd to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;

All those whose fame or infamy must grow Till the great winter lay the form and name Of this green earth with them for ever low;

Round them and round each other, and fulfil

[There is a chasm here in the MS. which it is impossible to fill up. It appears from the context, that other shapes pass, and that Rousseau still stood beside the dreamer, as]

he pointed to a company,

Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs Of Cæsar's crime, from him to Constantine;

"When the sun linger'd o'er his ocean floor, To gild his rival's new prosperity. Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore

"Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee, The thought of which no other sleep will quell Nor other music blot from memory,

"So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell; And whether life had been before that sleep The heaven which I imagine, or a hell

"Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep I know not. I arose, and for a space

“With kindling green, touch'd by the azure clime Of the young year's dawn, I was laid asleep Under a mountain, which from unknown time

"Had yawn'd into a cavern, high and deep; And from it came a gentle rivulet, Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep

"Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet The stems of the sweet flowers, and fill'd the grove With sounds which whoso hears must needs forget

"All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love, Which they had known before that hour of rest; A sleeping mother then would dream not of

"Her only child who died upon her breast At eventide-a king would mourn no more The crown of which his brows were dispossest

Mantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendo Fell from her as she moved under the mass

"Out of the deep cavern, with palms so tender, Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow; She glided along the river, and did bend her

"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow, Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream That whisper'd with delight to be its pillow.

"As one enamor'd is upborne in dream O'er lily-paven lakes 'mid silver mist, To wondrous music, so this shape might seem

"Partly to tread the waves with feet which kiss'd The dancing foam; partly to glide along The air which roughen'd the moist amethyst,

"Or the faint morning beams that fell among The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees; And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song