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"Oh! 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-couched ear:
Surely I dreamt to day, 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 whispering 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!
{85}
O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebus sapphire-regioned star
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, tho' 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."