The Witch of Atlas | Page 5

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 fire-balls 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, where he threads?Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep?Of utmost Axume, 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 linked 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 gray??Or 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 pay,?To 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