I LEFT fair Athens with the morn; the sun
Looked from his skyey temple, and inspired
Gladness and life in all. I wandered on
Free as the sea-breeze, dallying with my joy,
And, to avoid the windings of the shore,
I struck into the woodlands. Full of love
Abounding was my bosom. Nature shed
On me her happiness; sighings of the trees
Buried in the soft azure, choirs of birds,
The fall of distant waters, and the low
Deep murmurings of the full and voiceful Sea,
Bore burthen to the universal song.
Among the dim glades as I passed, peeped forth
Shapes of hoofed Satyrs red as autumn's fruits;
Through wind-swung boughs I heard Pan's oaten reed;
I saw the shy fauns hurrying in their flight.

Thou know'st, loved friend! each haunt of those wild paths;
How there the cedar and the cypress cast
Magnificence of shadow; olives pale,
The linden, and the feminine silver fir,
Hanging its golden flower; the mistletoe
Pensile from oaken boughs; where like a king
The lustrous rhododendron throws around
His purple clusters, where the giant myrtle
Fashions impervious bowers of cloudiest green,
Star-roofed with jessamine and eglantine:
How the grey crags shoot up from tangled copse,
Baring their veteran brows, o'erseamed with scars
Of tempests past, and crowned with laurel wreaths,
Meed of endurance due and trophy won:
How there the o'ershadowing woods together cling,
Cresting the cliffs 'mid depths of the blue hills;
And how the azure Sea with dimpling smiles
Steals into the embraces of the land,
Its many arms and covert nooks, and fills
Each silent haunt through which it glides along
With a low note of music and of joy.

I felt the spirit of beauty breathed o'er all,
Attuning life and love to harmony
That vibrated through my responsive frame.
With a light buoyant step and lighter heart
I bounded on; now lingering for awhile
To mark the sinuous windings of the shore,
Or some fantastic oak, or anything
To feed my wandering fancies. Then I thought
Of blind Mæonides, the lord of song,
And how the deities once trod the earth,
And talked with mortal heroes, and I felt
This was their chosen region; when, behold!
Wasted upon the crisp and growing breeze,
I heard a sound of melody.
I stood
In the deep hollow of a shadowed dell;
The sun, in mid-heaven throned, scarce entered there.
Above me towered grey crags and mountain woods,
And summits shaped fantastically rose
Like clouds on clouds couched round the twilight sky.
Beneath, within a bow-shot, stretched the sands,
Gleaming a golden light through mossy trees,
That veiled them dimly with their leafy screen.

I scarce had gathered breath when rose a choir
Of voices from the bosom of the Sea;
A full and breathing tone of harmony,
An exhalation rising from the deep,
And floating on the slumberous hyaline;
A sound so fine, so faint, it scarcely was;
Yet audible to feeling; name it then
A flowing respiration, sighing forth
From the still bosom of the infinite Air,
Opening the tongue of silence into sound!

It thrilled my inmost spirit, entering
Like a rich stream of fragrance, filling me
With languor and a voiceless ecstasy.
I stood entranced, and motionless with awe
And wonderment and joy. When, lo! from forth
The bosom of the waters slowly rose
A sea-nymph beautiful as morning, fair
As ocean's feathery foam. Then others rose,
Till, hand in hand, twelve Nereids, circling, joined

Upon the yellow sands, and, bending, made
Obeisance to the Sea, which reverence was
The harmony of motion. Lightly then
As on the fine air floats the gossamer,
Yet silent as the stars in their bright course,
They met in the embracing dance; they twined
Within each other's arms, now parting, now
Opening a void in their spread ranks, now met
Ordered and regular in phalanx joined.
Methought, it might be a vague fantasy,
They in their mystic measures shadowed forth
The eternal courses of the hosts of heaven.

A trumpet peal re-echoed from the deep:
They stopped, and, joining circle, rapidly
Tripped to the margin of the golden sands.
Grey Triton raised his wreathèd horn, and blew
A low, long melody: anon a choir
Of Sea-nymphs answered from the wave; I saw
Deep-bosomed Galatea in her shell;
The sandalled Thetis, and Alpheus sad,
Left for awhile bright Arethusa's arms.
They bore along a car, from coral hewn,
Shaped like the moon her lessening crescent shown.
I marvelled who should fill its hollowed seat;
When, lo! an odour stole upon the sense,
From incense burning round it, filling air
With its faint exhalation, softening,
And wrapping up the sinking heart, entranced
In dreams of passion and delight.
Then rose
A vision from the deep! for it was not
Like aught that eye had phantasied. I saw
The immortal Aphrodite, the queen of love,
She to whom gods succumb, and men adore,
As when from sea-foam, cloud-like, she arose;
Then when the boy of Ida looked on her,
When his eyes dimmed and his heart sank beneath
The majesty of beauty, and confessed
That wisdom is the mockery of love.

Her long rich golden hair, with dew-drops starred,
Floated, wave-like, down her voluptuous neck;
Her zone cinctured her waist with golden clasps,
And heaved reluctantly beneath the yoke
Her swelling breast. She sate within her shell,
And glided like a wreath of mist to land.
Then, circling as the stars around the orbed
And stately Moon, the attendants plied their tasks.
The one untangled her bright hair, bedewed
With foam, and wrung it playfully in air;
One plaited the light foldings of her robe;
A third her sandals and her footstool brings;
Then raising from their sides their chorded shells,
Slowly they sang the Aphrodital hymn.

O then my joy was at its full! I stood
Gazing on their bright forms until my heart
The might of their o'erpowering beauty owned;
The impotence of the resisting will
Struggling against the thrilling chains of love.
I stood entranced in passionate ecstasy;
But their rich voices, blending into song,
Rising like odours, stole upon the sense,
Reminding me it was reality.
The lay was such as Aphrodité hears;
It told love's emanation from the soul,
Pure as fount-drops ere caught one stain of earth.
It traced its stream-like course, embracing heaven
In its absorbing bosom, giving back
The beauty it receives and mirrors there;
Or, rushing on perturbed with darker course,
Ruffled with fiercer passions, perishing
In its own fall, or, parting, dried and lost
In arid deserts.
Then, with melting chords,
It pictured love's first wild ecstatic tears
From fullness of o'erwrought delight; regrets
Dwelling entranced on the remembered past,
And hope prophetic of the bliss to come.
She heard them not; her cheek leaned on her hand,
Her tresses in dishevelled gracefulness
Falling, half-shadowed, half-revealed her neck
And shoulders lustrous in their ivory light.
Her parted lips, like opening coral-gates,
Showed that the mind was absent, and had left
Tenantless its deserted dwelling-place.
Wan was her cheek, perchance more lovely thus;
Her eyes abstracted to the azure raised,
Saw nought, yet seemed on inner thought to dwell.
Perchance her heart was to Adonis fled,
Or musing on her conquered lord of war.

I gazed until my measureless bliss o'erflowed.
The witchery of the scene, the melody,
And their immortal beauty, entered me;
Their thrilling voices held me prisoner,
Struggling to free myself from earth and die.
I stretched my hands forth in wild ecstasy,
And from my covert rushed to where they stood,
To kneel and worship, and relieve my heart,
Inebriate with joy; a mortal, I
Heedlessly breaking on their haunted ground!
When, lo! they vanished from before mine eyes,
Like summer lightning, from the spot where they
Had stood forth in their glory and palpable.

I trod upon the place which they had left;
I looked along the sands to find and mark
The traces of their heavenly steps, to know
That hallowing deities had trodden there.
The ground was ribbed with lines the water left
From its bed ebbing, clear, distinctly traced,
Unsullied, and unbroken.
Where were they?
Stood they on earth, those glorious forms of life?
Or where they things that lived upon the Air,
Resolved again to their fine element?
I was alone; the quiet sky looked on me,
The trees, with waiting aspect, watched around;
And all my dreams of love, and hope, and joy,
Were fled together. Then, like one who wakes
Unwillingly from an absorbing trance,
A blessed vision that, unreal, had borne him
Into Hesperian gardens, I retraced,
Thoughtful and slow, my solitary way.