46. The water flashed,-like sunlight, by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven;
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow

In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven,
The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro;
Beneath, the billows, having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
The swift and steady motion of the keel.

47. Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,

The Lady Witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain

His storm-outspeeding wings the Hermaphrodite ;
She to the austral waters took her way,

Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana.

48. Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, Which rain could never bend or whirlblast shake, With the antarctic constellations paven,

Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake-
There she would build herself a windless haven,
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by :-

49. A haven beneath whose translucent floor

The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably;
And around which the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

50. And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash

Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash

Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke-this haven
Was as a gem to copy heaven engraven.

51. On which that Lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star
(Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks

Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are)
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water; till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
To journey from the misty east began.

52. And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden, and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits.

In mighty legions million after million
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere

They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.

53. They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen Of woven exhalations, underlaid

With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid With crimson silk. Cressets from the serene Hung there, and on the water for her tread A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. 54. And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught Upon those wandering isles of aery dew Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, She sate, and heard all that had happened new Between the earth and moon since they had brought The last intelligence and now she grew Pale as that moon lost in the watery night, And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. 55. These were tame pleasures.-She would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air.

Oft-time,

Following the serpent lightning's winding track,

She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behind.
56. And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round
She would ascend, and win the Spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed,
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.
57. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads
Egypt and Ethiopia from the steep

Of utmost Axumé until he spreads,

Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain,—and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid

58. By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal-chamber floors, Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,

Or charioteering ghastly alligators,

Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes

Of those huge forms;-within the brazen doors
Of the Great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

59. And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased, but tremble ever

Like things which every cloud can doom to die,–
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever

The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs and towers and fanes,-'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night.

60. With motion like the spirit of that wind

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,—
Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined
With many a dark and subterranean street

Under the Nile; through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.

61. 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 linkèd 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.

62. 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."
63. 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
O'er its wild 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.

64. And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike 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.

65. 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.
66. 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.

67. Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given For such a charm, when Tithon became greyOr 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 payTo any witch who would have taught you it? The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

68. '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 none,
Among those mortal forms the Wizard Maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

69. 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 overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.

70. For, on the night that they were buried, she Restored the embalmer's 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.
71. 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.

72. 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.

73. 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.

74. 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 mockbird 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!

75. The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares :—in a band
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis-much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.