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O Goddess!
hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet
enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy
secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched
ear:
Surely I dreamt today, or did I see
The
winged Psyche with awakened eyes?
I wandered in a
forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting
with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side
by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A
brooklet, scarce espied:
'Mid hushed, cool-rooted
flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and
budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded
grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if
disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still
past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of
aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast
thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
O
latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus'
faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned
star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor
altar heaped with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make
delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice,
no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung
censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no
heat
Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.
O
brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too
late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the
haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and
the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retired
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among
the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes
inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy
pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of
pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.
Yes, I will be thy
priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of
my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with
pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the
wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-clustered
trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by
steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and
bees,
The moss-lain dryads shall be lulled to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy
sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a
working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars
without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er
could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed
the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft
delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright
torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm
Love in!
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