Image of Soul and Love! So Psyche crept
To the still chamber where her Eros slept;
While the light gladden'd round his face serene,[A]
As light doth ever,—when Love first is seen.
Felt he the touch of her dark locks descending,
Or with his breath her breathing fused and blending,
That, like a bird we startle from the spray,
Pass'd the light Sleep with sudden wings away?
Sighing he woke, and waking he beheld;
The sigh was silenced, as the look was spell'd;
Look charming look, the love that ever lies
In human hearts, like light'ning in the air,
Flash'd in the moment from those meeting eyes,
And open'd all the Heaven!
O Youth, beware!
For either, light should but forewarn the gaze;
Woe follows love, as darkness doth the blaze!
IV.
And their eyes met—one moment and no more;
Moment in time that centred years in feeling.
As when to Thetis, on her cavern'd shore,
Knelt her young King,—he rose, and murmur'd, kneeling.
Low though the murmur, it dissolved the charm
Which had in silence chain'd the modest feet;
And maiden shame and woman's swift alarm
Crimson'd her cheek and in her pulses beat:
She turn'd, and, as a spell that leaves the place
It fill'd with phantom beauty cold and bare,
She fled;—and over disenchanted space
Rush'd back the common air!
V.
Time waned—and thoughts intense, and grave and high,
With sterner truths foreshadow'd Minstrel dreams;
Yet never vanish'd from the Minstrel's eye
That meteor blended with the morning beams.
Time waned, and ripe became the long desire,
Which, nursed in youth, with restless manhood grew
A passion—to behold that heart of Earth,
Yet trembling with the silver Mantuan lyre,
To knightly arms by Tasso tuned anew:—
So the fair Pilgrim left his father's hearth.
Into his soul he drunk the lofty lore,
Floating like air around the clime of song;
Beheld the starry sage,[B] what time he bore
For truth's dear glory the immortal wrong;
Communed majestic with majestic minds;
And all the glorious wanderer heard or saw
Or felt or learn'd or dream'd, were as the winds
That swell'd the sails of his triumphant soul;
As then, ev'n then, with ardour yet in awe,
It swept Time's ocean to its distant goal.
VI.
It was the evening—and a group were strewn
O'er such a spot as ye, I ween, might see,
When basking in the summer's breathless noon,
With upward face beneath the drowsy tree;
While golden dreams the willing soul receives,
And Elf-land glimmers through the checkering leaves.
It was the evening—still it lay, and fair,
Lapp'd in the quiet of the lulling air;
Still, but how happy! like a living thing
All love itself—all love around it seeing;
And drinking from the earth, as from a spring,
The hush'd delight and essence of its being.
And round the spot (a wall of glossy shade)
The interlaced and bowering trees reposed;
And through the world of foliage had been made
Green lanes and vistas, which at length were closed
By fount, or fane, or statue white and hoar,
Startling the heart with the fond dreams of yore.
And near, half-glancing through its veil of leaves,
An antique temple stood in marble grace;
Where still, if fondly wise, the heart conceives
Faith in the lingering Genius of the Place:
Seen wandering yet perchance at earliest dawn
Or greyest eve—with Nymph or bearded Faun.
Dainty with mosses was the grass you press'd,
Through which the harmless lizard glancing crept.
And—wearied infants on Earth's gentle breast—
In every nook the little field-flowers slept.
But ever when the soft air draws its breath
(Breeze is a word too rude), with half-heard sigh,
From orange-shrubs and myrtles—wandereth
The Grove's sweet Dryad borne in fragrance by.
And aye athwart the alleys fitfully
Glanced the fond moth enamour'd of the star;
And aye, from out her watch-tower in the tree,
The music which a falling leaf might mar,
So faint—so faëry seem'd it—of the bird
Transform'd at Daulis thrillingly was heard.
And in the centre of that spot, which lay
A ring embosom'd in the wood's embrace,
A fountain, clear as ever glass'd the day,
Breathed yet a fresher luxury round the place;
But now it slept, as if its silver shower,
And the wide reach of its aspiring sound,
Were far too harsh for that transparent hour:—
Yet—like a gnome that mourneth underground—
You caught the murmur of the rill which gave
The well's smooth calm the passion of its wave;
Ev'n as man's heart that still, with secret sigh,
Stirs through each thought that would reflect the sky.