just beyond, on light tiptoe divine,A quiver’d Dian. Stepping awfully,
The youth approach’d; oft turning his veil’d eye
Down sidelong aisles, and into niches old.
And when, more near against the marble cold
He had touch’d his forehead, he began to thread
All courts and passages, where silence dead
Rous’d by his whispering footsteps murmured faint:
And long he travers’d to and fro, to acquaint
Himself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas’d to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the bosom of a hated thing.
What misery most drowningly doth sing
In lone Endymion’s ear, now he has caught
The goal of consciousness? Ah, ’tis the thought,
The deadly feel of solitude: for lo!
He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow
Of rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-pil’d,
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west,
Like herded elephants; nor felt, nor prest
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumberous air;
But far from such companionship to wear
An unknown time, surcharg’d with grief, away,
Was now his lot. And must he patient stay,
Tracing fantastic figures with his spear?
“No!” exclaimed he, “why should I tarry here?”
No! loudly echoed times innumerable.
At which he straightway started, and ‘gan tell
His paces back into the temple’s chief;
Warming and growing strong in the belief
Of help from Dian: so that when again
He caught her airy form, thus did he plain,
Moving more near the while. “O Haunter chaste
Of river sides, and woods, and heathy waste,
Where with thy silver bow and arrows keen
Art thou now forested? O woodland Queen,
What smoothest air thy smoother forehead woos?
Where dost thou listen to the wide halloos
Of thy disparted nymphs? Through what dark tree
Glimmers thy crescent? Wheresoe’er it be,
’Tis in the breath of heaven: thou dost taste
Freedom as none can taste it, nor dost waste
Thy loveliness in dismal elements;
But, finding in our green earth sweet contents,
There livest blissfully. Ah, if to thee
It feels Elysian, how rich to me,
An exil’d mortal, sounds its pleasant name!
Within my breast there lives a choking flame–
O let me cool it among the zephyr-boughs!
A homeward fever parches up my tongue–
O let me slake it at the running springs!
Upon my car a noisy nothing rings–
O let me once more hear the linnet’s note!
Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float–
O let me ‘noint them with the heaven’s light!
Dost thou now lave thy feet and ankles white?
O think how sweet to me the freshening sluice!
Dost thou now please thy thirst with berry-juice?
O think how this dry palate would rejoice!
If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice,
O think how I should love a bed of flowers!–
Young goddess! let me see my native bowers!
Deliver me from this rapacious deep!”
Thus ending loudly, as he would o’erleap
His destiny, alert he stood: but when
Obstinate silence came heavily again,
Feeling about for its old couch of space
And airy cradle, lowly bow’d his face
Desponding, o’er the marble floor’s cold thrill.
But ’twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide–
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav’d anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave to the shore,
Down whose green back the short-liv’d foam, all hoar,
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence.
Increasing still in heart, and pleasant sense,
Upon his fairy journey on he hastes;
So anxious for the end, he scarcely wastes
One moment with his hand among the sweets:
Onward he goes–he stops–his bosom beats
As plainly in his ear, as the faint charm
Of which the throbs were born. This still alarm,
This sleepy music, forc’d him walk tiptoe:
For it came more softly than the east could blow
Arion’s magic to the Atlantic isles;
Or than the west, made jealous by the smiles
Of thron’d Apollo, could breathe back the lyre
To seas Ionian and Tyrian.
O did he ever live, that lonely man,
Who lov’d–and music slew not? ’Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow’d all, and made a seared dearth,
By one consuming flame: it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.
Half-happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable. ’Twas even so with this
Dew-dropping melody, in the Carian’s ear;
First heaven, then hell, and then forgotten clear,
Vanish’d in elemental passion.
And
