My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the grass By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show. Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown, Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay! Take mortal shape, my philtre’s spell obey! If hags compel thee from thy secret sky With gruesome incantations, why not I, Whose only magic is that I distil A potion, blent of passion, thought, and will, Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e’er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch From moon-enchanted herbs,--a potion brewed Of my best life in each diviner mood? Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. Taste and be humanized: what though the cup, With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up! If but these arms may clasp, o’erquited so, My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know. V. Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world’s remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone. With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull’s wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. If life’s most solid things illusion seem, Why should not substance wear the mask of dream? Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night’s bounty feed my beggared day. In dreams I see her lay the goddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o’erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams. VI.