XIX.

When on my foes a sudden terror came,

And they fled, scattering.-Lo! with reinless speed
A black Tartarian horse of giant frame

Comes trampling o'er the dead; the living bleed
Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,
On which, like to an angel, robed in white,

Sate one waving a sword; the hosts recede

And fly, as through their ranks, with awful might, Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;

XX.

And its path made a solitude.-I rose

And marked its coming; it relaxed its course
As it approached me, and the wind that flows

Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose force
Might create smiles in death.-The Tartar horse
Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,
And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source
Of waters in the desert, as she said,

"Mount with me, Laon, now -I rapidly obeyed.

ΧΧΙ.

Then "Away! away!" she cried, and stretched her sword
As 'twere a scourge over the courser's head,

And lightly shook the reins.-We spake no word,

But like the vapour of the tempest fled

Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread,
Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast;
Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread
Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,

As o'er their glimmering forms the steed's broad shadow past;

XXII.

And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,
His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,
And turbulence, as if a whirlwind's gust
Surrounded us ;-and still away! away!

Through the desert night we sped, while she alway
Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest
Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray

Of the obscure stars gleamed;-its rugged breast
The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.

XXIII.

A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:

From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted
Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion

Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted

By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted
To music by the wand of Solitude,

That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted

Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood

Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean's curved flood.

XXIV.

One moment these were heard and seen-another
Past; 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.

XXV.

And for a space in my embrace she rested,

Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,

While my faint arms her languid frame invested:

At length she looked on me, and half unclosing

Her tremulous lips, said: "Friend, thy bands were losing

The battle, as I stood before the King

In bonds. I burst them then, and swiftly choosing The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring Upon his horse, and swift as on the whirlwind's wing,

XXVI.

"Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,
And we are here."-Then, turning to the steed,
She pressed the white moon on his front with pure
And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed
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 mountain flowers 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,
Memories, like awful ghosts which 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 grey rents with a verdurous woof,
A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.

The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, 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.

132

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
Of universal life, attuning its commotion.

To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapt
Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow

Of public hope was from our being snapt,
Though linked years had bound it there; for now
A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below
All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,
Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,
Came on us, as we sate in silence there,
Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air.

XXXI.

In silence which doth follow talk that causes
The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,
When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses
Of inexpressive speech :-the youthful years
Which we together past, their hopes and fears,
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
Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass,
A wandering Meteor, by some wild wind sent,
Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
A faint and pallid lustre; while the song

Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,
Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;
A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.

XXXIII.

The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,
And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties
Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight
My neck near hers, her dark and deepening eyes,
Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies
O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,
Swam in our mute and liquid ecstacies,

Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,

With their own fragrance pale, which spring but half uncloses.

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

In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep.

XXXV.

Was it one moment that confounded thus

All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one
Unutterable power, which shielded us

Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone
Into a wide and wild oblivion

Of tumult and of tenderness? or now

Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,
The seasons and mankind, their changes know,
Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?

XXXVI.

I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps The failing heart in languishment, or limb Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim Through tears of a wide mist, boundless and dim, In one caress? What is the strong control Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb, Where far over the world those vapours roll, Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?

XXXVII.

It is the shadow which doth float unseen,

But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality,

Whose divine darkness fled not from that green And lone recess, where lapt in peace did lie Our linked frames, till, from the changing sky, That night and still another day had fled; And then I saw and felt. The moon was high, And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread Under its orb,-loud winds were gathering overhead.

XXXVIII.

Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon, Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill, And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn O'er her pale bosom:-all within was still, And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill The depth of her unfathomable look ;— And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill, The waves contending in its caverns strook, For they foreknew the storm, and the grey ruin shook.

XXXIX.

There we unheeding sate, in the communion

Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite

Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.—
Few were the living hearts which could unite

Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night

With such close sympathies, for they had sprung
From linked youth, and from the gentle might
Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,

Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.

XL.

And such is Nature's law divine, that those
Who grow together cannot choose but love,
If faith or custom do not interpose,

Or common slavery mar what else might move
All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove
Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,
That living tree, which, if the arrowy dove
Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile.

But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;

XLL

And clings to them, when darkness may dissever
The close caresses of all duller plants

Which bloom on the wide earth-thus we for ever
Were linked, for love had nurst us in the haunts
Where knowledge from its secret source enchants
Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,
Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,

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,
Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,—

And so we sate, until our talk befel

Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,

And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,

Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison: well

For us,

this ruin made a watch-tower lone,

But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone

XLIII.

Since she had food:-therefore I did awaken
The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane,
Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,
Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,
Following me obediently; with pain
Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,
When lips and heart refuse to part again,
Till they have told their fill, could scarce express
The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,