O destiny!

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Into a labyrinth now my soul would fly,

But with thy beauty will I deaden it.

Where didst thou melt to? By thee will I sit

For ever: let our fate stop here – a kid

I on this spot will offer. Pan will bid

Us live in peace, in love and peace among

His forest wildernesses. I have clung

To nothing, loved a nothing, nothing seen

Or felt but a great dream! O I have been

Presumptuous against love, against the sky,

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Against all elements, against the tie

Of mortals each to each, against the blooms

Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs

Of heroes gone! Against his proper glory

Has my own soul conspired: so my story

Will I to children utter, and repent.

There never lived a mortal man, who bent

His appetite beyond his natural sphere,

But starved and died. My sweetest Indian, here,

Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast

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My life from too thin breathing: gone and past

Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewell!

And air of visions, and the monstrous swell

Of visionary seas! No, never more

Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore

Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.

Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast

My love is still for thee. The hour may come

When we shall meet in pure elysium.

On earth I may not love thee; and therefore

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Doves will I offer up, and sweetest store

All through the teeming year: so thou wilt shine

On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,

And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss!

My river-lily bud! one human kiss!

One sigh of real breath – one gentle squeeze,

Warm as a dove’s nest among summer trees,

And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!

Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that! – all good

We’ll talk about – no more of dreaming. – Now,

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Where shall our dwelling be? Under the brow

Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun

Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none,

And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,

Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?

O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;

Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace

Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclined:

For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,

And by another, in deep dell below,

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See, through the trees, a little river go

All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.

Honey from out the gnarlèd hive I’ll bring,

And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,

Cresses that grow where no man may them see,

And sorrel untorn by the dew-clawed stag:

Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag,

That thou mayst always know whither I roam,

When it shall please thee in our quiet home

To listen and think of love. Still let me speak;

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Still let me dive into the joy I seek –

For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,

Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill

With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,

And thou shalt feed them from the squirrel’s barn.

Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,

And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells.

Its sides I’ll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,

And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.

I will entice this crystal rill to trace

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Love’s silver name upon the meadow’s face.

I’ll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire;

And to god Phoebus, for a golden lyre;

To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear;

To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear,

That I may see thy beauty through the night;

To Flora, and a nightingale shall light

Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,

And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods

Of gold, and lines of Naiads’ long bright tress.

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Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!

Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be

‘Fore which I’ll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:

Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak

Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,

Trembling or steadfastness to this same voice,

And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice:

And that affectionate light, those diamond things,

Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs,

Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure.

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Say, is not bliss within our perfect seizure?

O that I could not doubt!’

The mountaineer

Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear

His briared path to some tranquillity.

It gave bright gladness to his lady’s eye,

And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow;

Answering thus, just as the golden morrow

Beamed upward from the valleys of the east:

‘O that the flutter of this heart had ceased,

Or the sweet name of love had passed away.

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Young feathered tyrant! by a swift decay

Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:

And I do think that at my very birth

I lisped thy blooming titles inwardly,

For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,

With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven.

Art thou not cruel? Ever have I striven

To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do!

When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew

Favour from thee, and so I kisses gave

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To the void air, bidding them find out love:

But when I came to feel how far above

All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,

All earthly pleasure, all imagined good,

Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss –

Even then, that moment, at the thought of this,

Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,

And languished there three days. Ye milder powers,

Am I not cruelly wronged? Believe, believe

Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave

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With my own fancies garlands of sweet life,

Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife!

I may not be thy love: I am forbidden –

Indeed I am – thwarted, affrighted, chidden,

By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.

Twice hast thou asked whither I went. Henceforth

Ask me no more! I may not utter it,

Nor may I be thy love. We might commit

Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;

We might embrace and die – voluptuous thought!

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Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught

In trammels of perverse deliciousness.

No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,

And bid a long adieu.’

The Carian

No word returned: both lovelorn, silent, wan,

Into the valleys green together went.

Far wandering, they were perforce content

To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;

Nor at each other gazed, but heavily

770

Pored on its hazel cirque of shedded leaves.

Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves

Me to behold thee thus in last extreme –

Enskied ere this, but truly that I deem

Truth the best music in a first-born song.

Thy lute-voiced brother will I sing ere long,

And thou shalt aid – hast thou not aided me?

Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity

Has been thy meed for many thousand years;

Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,

Mourned as if yet thou wert a forester –

780

Forgetting the old tale.

He did not stir

His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse

Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls

Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays

Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.

A little onward ran the very stream

By which he took his first soft poppy dream;

And on the very bark ’gainst which he leant

A crescent he had carved, and round it spent

His skill in little stars. The teeming tree

790

Had swollen and greened the pious charactery,

But not ta’en out. Why, there was not a slope

Up which he had not feared the antelope;

And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade

He had not with his tamèd leopards played;

Nor could an arrow light, or javelin,

Fly in the air where his had never been –

And yet he knew it not.

O treachery!

Why does his lady smile, pleasing her eye

With all his sorrowing? He sees her not.

800

But who so stares on him? His sister sure!

Peona of the woods! – Can she endure –

Impossible! how dearly they embrace!

His lady smiles, delight is in her face –

It is no treachery.

‘Dear brother mine!

Endymion, weep not so! Why shouldst thou pine

When all great Latmos so exalt will be?

Thank the great gods, and look not bitterly;

And speak not one pale word, and sigh no more.

Sure I will not believe thou hast such store

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Of grief, to last thee to my kiss again.

Thou surely canst not bear a mind in pain,

Come hand in hand with one so beautiful.

Be happy both of you! for I will pull

The flowers of autumn for your coronals.

Pan’s holy priest for young Endymion calls;

And when he is restored, thou, fairest dame,

Shalt be our queen. Now, is it not a shame

To see ye thus – not very, very sad?

Perhaps ye are too happy to be glad:

820

O feel as if it were a common day,

Free-voiced as one who never was away.

No tongue shall ask, “Whence come ye? ”, but ye shall

Be gods of your own rest imperial.

Not even I, for one whole month, will pry

Into the hours that have passed us by,

Since in my arbour I did sing to thee.

O Hermes! on this very night will be

A hymning up to Cynthia, queen of light;

For the soothsayers old saw yesternight

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Good visions in the air – whence will befall,

As say these sages, health perpetual

To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,

In Dian’s face they read the gentle lore:

Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.

Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.

Many upon thy death have ditties made;

And many, even now, their foreheads shade

With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.

New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,

840

And pluck the sorrow from our huntsmen’s brows.

Tell me, my lady-queen, how to espouse

This wayward brother to his rightful joys!

His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise

His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray,

To lure – Endymion! dear brother, say

What ails thee?’ He could bear no more, and so

Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow,

And twanged it inwardly, and calmly said:

‘I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid!

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My only visitor! not ignorant though,

That those deceptions which for pleasure go

‘Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be:

But there are higher ones I may not see,

If impiously an earthly realm I take.

Since I saw thee, I have been wide awake

Night after night, and day by day, until

Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill.

Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me

More happy than betides mortality.

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A hermit young, I’ll live in mossy cave,

Where thou alone shalt come to me, and lave

Thy spirit in the wonders I shall tell.

Through me the shepherd realm shall prosper well,

For to thy tongue will I all health confide.

And, for my sake, let this young maid abide

With thee as a dear sister. Thou alone,

Peona, mayst return to me. I own

This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,

Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl

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Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!

Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share

This sister’s love with me?’ Like one resigned

And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind

In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:

‘Ay, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,

Of jubilee to Dian – truth I heard?

Well then I see there is no little bird,

Tender soever, but is Jove’s own care,

Long have I sought for rest, and, unaware,

880

Behold I find it! so exalted too!

So after my own heart! I knew, I knew

There was a place untenanted in it:

In that same void white Chastity shall sit,

And monitor me nightly to lone slumber.

With sanest lips I vow me to the number

Of Dian’s sisterhood; and, kind lady,

With thy good help, this very night shall see

My future days to her fane consecrate.’

As feels a dreamer what doth most create

890

His own particular fright, so these three felt;

Or like one who, in after ages, knelt

To Lucifer or Baal, when he’d pine

After a little sleep; or when in mine

Far underground, a sleeper meets his friends

Who know him not. Each diligently bends

Towards common thoughts and things for very fear;

Striving their ghastly malady to cheer,

By thinking it a thing of yes and no,

That housewives talk of. But the spirit-blow

900

Was struck, and all were dreamers. At the last

Endymion said: ‘Are not our fates all cast?

Why stand we here? Adieu, ye tender pair!

Adieu!’ Whereat those maidens, with wild stare,

Walked dizzily away. Painèd and hot

His eyes went after them, until they got

Near to a cypress grove, whose deadly maw,

In one swift moment, would what then he saw

Engulf for ever. ‘Stay!’ he cried, ‘ah, stay!

Turn, damsels! hist! one word I have to say.

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Sweet Indian, I would see thee once again.

It is a thing I dote on: so I’d fain,

Peona, ye should hand in hand repair

Into those holy groves, that silent are

Behind great Dian’s temple. I’ll be yon,

At Vesper’s earliest twinkle – they are gone –

But once, once, once again – ’ At this he pressed

His hands against his face, and then did rest

His head upon a mossy hillock green,

And so remained as he a corpse had been

920

All the long day, save when he scantly lifted

His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted

With the slow move of time – sluggish and weary

Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,

Had reached the river’s brim. Then up he rose,

And, slowly as that very river flows,

Walked towards the temple grove with this lament:

‘Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent

Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fall

Before the serene father of them all

930

Bows down his summer head below the west.

Now am I of breath, speech, and speed possessed,

But at the setting I must bid adieu

To her for the last time. Night will strew

On the damp grass myriads of lingering leaves,

And with them shall I die; nor much it grieves

To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.

Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord

Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,

Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbour roses.

940

My kingdom’s at its death, and just it is

That I should die with it: so in all this

We miscall grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe,

What is there to plain of? By Titan’s foe

I am but rightly served.’ So saying, he

Tripped lightly on, in sort of deathful glee,

Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun,

As though they jests had been: nor had he done

His laugh at nature’s holy countenance,

Until that grove appeared, as if perchance,

950

And then his tongue with sober seemlihed

Gave utterance as he entered: ‘Ha! I said,

“King of the butterflies”, but by this gloom,

And by old Rhadamanthus’ tongue of doom,

This dusk religion, pomp of solitude,

And the Promethean clay by thief endued,

By old Saturnus’ forelock, by his head

Shook with eternal palsy, I did wed

Myself to things of light from infancy;

And thus to be cast out, thus lorn to die,

960

Is sure enough to make a mortal man

Grow impious.’ So he inwardly began

On things for which no wording can be found,

Deeper and deeper sinking, until drowned

Beyond the reach of music: for the choir

Of Cynthia he heard not, though rough briar

Nor muffling thicket interposed to dull

The vesper hymn, far swollen, soft and full,

Through the dark pillars of those sylvan aisles.

He saw not the two maidens, nor their smiles,

970

Wan as primroses gathered at midnight

By chilly-fingered spring.