From the centre of the high dome swung a topaz solar bright, Which through all the palace darted gleams of glad and glorious light, Emerald lamplets ranked around it, tempered this with cooler ray; While, without, the welkin poured one pale and ever-dawning day. There the feast was flowing ever; stream-like music ceaseless played; There the dance was always weaving; minstrels chanting in the shade; There for aye the chase was bounding over dale and hill and plain, And fair Christine, on hound-high steed, the foremost of the elfin train. Still she saddened when she minded of the simple garlands she Wove of wild rose and of woodbine, with her playmates on the lea; And the hazel and brown beech nut which they gathered from the tree. What though clad in jewelled raiment, trilling, tripping, day and night, What though ply’d with queenly dainties, what though culling gold-blooms bright, Never in the feast delicious, nor the dance’s ’wildering whirl, Nor the wine-cups merry orbit, could forget that lonely girl The ancient hall where dwelled her sire, and, where, too, from her mother’s side, She, one summer’s eve, had stolen forth into the forest wide. “Drink the dew,” the Fairy Fate said, “that the poppy lends repose, Mingled with the fragrant nectar chaliced in the golden rose.” Then she drank the draught Lethean from the bowl with flowerets crowned, Flaming flowers, that all remembrance of her past existence drowned; Thus, with lustres vainly lapsing, to perpetual childhood bound. Never moon there marked the season; sun ne’er shadowed forth the time; Years themselves were undistinguished in that soft and listless clime. Now where mines of gold and silver branch, in many a gleaming vein, Through the bosom of the mountain, ’neath the many leaguéd plain; Where jasper and cornelian clear and alabaster pure, And purple spars and glass-bright rocks the glittering caves immure, She roamed; and all the virtues learned of every potent gem Or mystic or medicinal; all gifts that unto them Pertained of causing love, or hate, or infinite delight, Imperial wealth, tyrannic state, long life, and beauty bright; These into an armlet stringing, ruby, sapphire, emerald, pearl, Threaded on the sunny tendril of one desultory curl, As an amulet Titania gave to her, the spell-bound girl.