The Witch of Atlas | Page 6

of many a starry flower.
70.?For on the night when they were buried, she?Restored the embalmers' 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 smiles 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 mock-bird 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.
76.?And timid lovers who had been so coy,?They hardly knew whether they loved or not,?Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,?To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;?And when next day the maiden and the boy?Met one another, both, like sinners caught,?Blushed at the thing which each believed was done?Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone;
77.?And then the Witch would let them take no ill:?Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,?The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill?Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.?Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,?Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind!--?She did unite again with visions clear?Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
80.?These were the pranks she played among the cities?Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites?And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties?To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,?I will declare another time; for it is?A tale more fit for the weird winter nights?Than for these garish summer days, when we?Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
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