Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, [fays; Clustered around by all her starry But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But,

in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruittree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

nal voice,

The region of thy choice,

there,

Mar the full burst of prayer;

the soul

Owns thy entire control ?

ly breathe,

And round us and beneath

Then keep the softening veil in mercy drawn,

Thou who canst love us, though thou read us true,

As on the bosom of the aerial lawn Melts in dim haze each coarse un

gentle hue.

So too may soothing hope thy leave enjoy

Sweet visions of long severed hearts to frame: Though absence may impair, or cares annoy,

Some constant mind may draw us still the same.

What shapeless form, half lost on high,

Half seen against the evening sky,
Seems like a ghost to glide,
And watch from Babel's crumbling
heap,

Where in her shadow, fast asleep,
Lies fallen imperial pride?

With half-closed eye a lion there
Is basking in his noontide lair

Or prowls in twilight gloom.
The golden city's king he seems,
Such as in old prophetic dreams

Sprang from rough ocean's womb.

But where are now his eagle wings, That sheltered erst a thousand kings, Hiding the glorious sky

No holier name, no mightier throne? That vision is gone by.