Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile; through chambers high and deep She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

LXI.

A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;

There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linked innocently

In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem ;-and there lay calm, Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

LXII.

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

And pale imaginings of visioned 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

Or 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 couched under the glow
Of sun-like 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 lulled 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, murmured 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 Adonis had been doomed to pay, any witch who would have taught you it? The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

Το

LXVIII.

'Tis said in after times her spirit free Knew what love was, and felt itself alone— But holy Dian could not chaster be

Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,

Than now this lady-like a sexless bee

Tasting, all blossoms, and confined to noneAmong those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden Passed 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 thenceforward as if some control,

Mightier than life, were in them;

and the grave

Of such, when death oppressed 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 deathy 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 crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor when the morning came; And kissed-alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and

Walked out of quarters in somnambulism, Round the red anvils you might see them stand