Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/410

380 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.

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.

'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.

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 of many a starry flower.

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.