Of that cold animal whose tail with dread
Strikes trembling nations; and the night, where we
Now were, had made of her ascending tread
Two of her paces and was making three,
With wings through weariness less fully spread,
When I, in whom the weakness was alive
Of Adam’s nature, sank in slumber’s power
Where sat already on the grass all five.
Near to the dawning and about the hour
When first the little swallow wakes her lays
(Haply remembering her old woes afresh),
And when our mind, relieved of thinking, strays
More of a pilgrim from its cage of flesh
Till to its vision ‘tis almost divine,
Dreaming, I seemed to see in heaven suspended
An eagle that with golden plumes did shine
And with spread wings as he to swoop intended:
And in that place it seemed to be, methought,
Where Ganymede, abandoning his own,
Was up to heaven’s high consistory caught.