Before the starry threshold of Joves Court,
to the final couplet:
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n it self would stoop to her.
But there are passages in which these memorable lines appear as so much rich embroidery superimposed upon the baser fabric of the verse, not woven of the woof. They are in their nature more easily detached, and often form the best known and most often quoted passages of the work. Take the first speech of the Lady, concerning which something has already been said. Here we find the lines:
They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev'n
Like a sad Votarist in Palmer's weed
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain;
or again:
A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory
Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire,
And airy tongues, that syllable mens names
On Sands, and Shoars, and desert Wildernesses;
or yet again:
Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
We have the song: