As she swept past me she bowed Most coquettishly and looked On me with her melting eyes, So that all my heart was stirred. Thrice that rout raged up and down Past my window, then did she, Ah, most beautiful of shades! Greet me with her precious smile. Even when the pageant dimmed And the tumult silent grew In my brain, that smiling face Shone and beckoned on and on. All that night I tossed and turned My o'erwearied limbs on straw, Musty straw. No feather-beds In Uraka's hut I found! And I mused: what might this mean, This mysterious beckoning? Why, Oh, why, Herodias, Held thy look such tenderness? [Illustration] CANTO XX Sunrise. Golden arrows dart Through the pallid ranks of mist Till they redden as with wounds And dissolve in shining light. Now hath triumph come to Day And the gleaming conqueror In his blinding glory treads O'er the ridges and the peaks. All the merry bands of birds Twitter in their hidden nests, And the scent of plants arises Like a psalm of odours rare. At the early glint of day Down the valley we had gone. While Lascaro dumb and dour Followed up the bear-tracks dim, I with musings sought to slay Time, but tired soon I grew Of my musings,--drear, ah, drear! Were my thoughts and void of joy. Weary, joyless, down I sank On a bank of softest moss 'Neath a great and kingly ash Where a little spring gushed forth. This with wondrous voice beguiled All my wayward mood until Thought and thinking vanished both In the music of the spring. Mighty longings seized me then, Madness, dreams and death-desires, Longings for those splendid queens Riding in that ghostly throng. Oh, ye lovely shapes of night, Banished by the rose of dawn, Whither, tell me, have ye fled, Whither have ye flown by day? Somewhere 'neath old temple-ruins In the wide Romagna hid, It is said Diana flees The dominion of the Christ. Only in the midnight gloom, Dare she venture forth, but then How she joys the merry chase And the pagan sports of old! Fay Abunda also fears All these sallow Nazarenes, So by day she hides herself Deep in secret Avalon. For this sacred island lies In the still and silent sea Of Romanticism, whither None save wingèd steeds may go. There no anchor Care may drop, Never there do steamships touch, Bringing loads of Philistines With tobacco-pipes, to stare. Never does that dismal, dull Ring of bells this stillness break-- That atrocious bumm-bamm sound Which all gentle fairies hate. There, abloom with lasting youth In unbroken joyfulness, Lives that merry-hearted dame, Golden-locked Abunda fair.