Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/188

152 Slow-stepp'd, and robed in philosophic gown:

Lycius shrank closer, as they met and past,

Into his mantle, adding wings to haste,

While hurried Lamia trembled: 'Ah,' said he,

'Why do you shudder, love, so ruefully?

Why does your tender palm dissolve in dew?'—

'I'm wearied,' said fair Lamia: 'tell me who

Is that old man? I cannot bring to mind

His features:—Lycius! wherefore did you blind

Yourself from his quick eyes?' Lycius replied,

T is Apollonius sage, my trusty guide

And good instructor; but to-night he seems

The ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams.'

While yet he spake they had arrived before

A pillar'd porch, with lofty portal door,

Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow

Reflected in the slabbed steps below,

Mild as a star in water; for so new

And so unsullied was the marble hue,

So through the crystal polish, liquid fine,

Ran the dark veins, that none but feet divine

Could e'er have touch'd there. Sounds Æolian

Breathed from the hinges, as the ample span

Of the wide doors disclosed a place unknown

Some time to any, but those two alone,

And a few Persian mutes, who that same year

Were seen about the markets: none knew where

They could inhabit; the most curious

Were foil'd, who watch'd to trace them to their house:

And but the flitter-winged verse must tell,

For truth's sake, what woe afterwards befell,

'T would humour many a heart to leave them thus,

Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.

in a hut, with water and a crust,

Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust;

Love in a palace is perhaps at last

More grievous torment than a hermit's fast:—

That is a doubtful tale from faery land,

Hard for the non-elect to understand.

Had Lycius lived to hand his story down,

He might have given the moral a fresh frown,

Or clench'd it quite: but too short was their bliss

To breed distrust and hate, that make the soft voice hiss.

Besides, there, nightly, with terrific glare,

Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair,

Hover'd and buzz'd his wings, with fearful roar,

Above the lintel of their chamber door,

And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor.

For all this came a ruin: side by side

They were enthroned, in the even tide,

Upon a couch, near to a curtaining

Whose airy texture, from a golden string,

Floated into the room, and let appear

Unveil'd the summer heaven, blue and clear,

Betwixt two marble shafts:—there they reposed,

Where use had made it sweet, with eyelids closed,

Saving a tithe which love still open kept,

That they might see each other while they almost slept;

When from the slope side of a suburb hill,