Gone is the time when phantasms could appease My quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease; When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt Through all my limbs a change immortal melt At touch of hers illuminate with soul. Not long could I be stilled with Fancy’s dole; Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught Red fire from her celestial flame, and fought For tyrannous control in all my veins: My fool’s prayer was accepted; what remains? Or was it some eidolon merely, sent By her who rules the shades in banishment, To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus, How ’scape I shame, whose will was traitorous? What shall-compensate an ideal dimmed? How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul’s shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life’s redemption paid hold cheap! But what resource when she herself descends From her blue throne, and o’er her vassal bends That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven’s remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman’s nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty’s praise? Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My noble pain that heightened all my years With crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; Nay, would that dream renounce once more to see Her from her sky there looking down at me! VII. Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; Give back the need to worship that still pours Down to the soul that virtue it adores! Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naught These frantic words, the reckless wind of thought; Still stoop, still grant,--I live but in thy will; Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still! Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe That what I prayed for I would fain receive. My moon is set; my vision set with her; No more can worship vain my pulses stir. Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven’s queen,--queen, too, of my earth and hell! THE BLACK PREACHER. A BRETON LEGEND. At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach, Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, ’Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone; ’Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me.