Below me slept a valley, with its fields O’erflowing with the ripe and yellow corn: And harvesters, whose distance-mellowed peals Of laughter touched the ear, as echoes borne At vesper hour from some far Alpine horn, Reclined, at length, beside a narrow stream That lingered lullingly beneath its worn, Wild-blossomed banks awhile, and then would gleam Away and windingly, like music in a dream. Slow sloping shores, o’er-velveted with green— Old oaks, which, sighing softly, seemed aware That summer is not always, as between Their branches breathed the wing-unweary air— Blue skies that bent above, serenely fair— And tinklings faint of distant bells among The snowy sheep and herds of kine, that where The grass was deepest browsed—gave to the young, Reposing there, an Eden-hour, and brightly hung, Round age’s mem’ries, as at eventide, By lighted lamps, glow carved transparencies. I felt the perfume-freighted zephyrs glide On tiptoe by me from the midst of these: And as they whispered lowly, by degrees My brain grew dizzy with felicity; And fancy, with the warm realities, Mingled such floating, fairy imagery, That all was isles of Greece and air of Italy. There seemed low music swelling from afar. Which, as it nearer came, grew lovelier; And then smooth, iv’ry voices, such as are Heard only from some heavenly messenger, With harp-like pinions, warning ere we err In words that die not, and through after time, When evil tempts us, draw us nearer her. And as in thought I saw the Past, sublime, With many a sunny sky and calm Arcadian clime, The cooling rippling of the stream of song More deeply in its tone went sweeping by; For other rills, its winding way along, Had mingled with its waters leapingly. And skimming swift the waves with ear and eye, I found the fountains whence the river came— A group of singing sylphs—and standing by The one that _looked_ the queen, though robed the same, And languishingly lovely—Idleness her name. Her dark, luxuriant hair fell loosely o’er A neck that said a thousand things unthinking, And soft as if ’twere only fashioned for A pillow to support a loved head sinking Beneath the draught, deliriously drinking, Of her resistless beauty; and her eyes Were open volumes, which, like planets blinking, Seemed saying, “Read us, all around us lies The starry Infinite—the realm of Mysteries.”