No other light was there but one torch, flaring Against a square of sky possess’d by the wind, And never another sound but the tongued flames creeping. ’At last, my eyes staring into the clouded gloom, Saw that the caverned room with shadowy forms was strewn In heavy sleep or swoon fallen, who did not move But lay as mortals lie in the sweet release of love. And stark between them stood huge eunuchs of ebony, Mute, motionless, as they had been carven of black wood. But these I scarcely saw, for, through the flame was seen Another, a queen, with heavy closèd eyes White against the skies of that empurpled night In her loveliness she lay, and leaned upon her hand: And my blood leapt at the sight, so that I could not stand But fell upon my knees, pleading, and cried aloud For her white loveliness as Ixion for his cloud: And my cry the silence broke, and the sleepers awoke From their slumber, stirred, and rose every one,--save those Mute eunuchs of ebony, those frowning caryatides. Slowly she looked at me, and when I cried again In yearning and in pain, she beckoned with her hand. Then from my knees rose I, and greatly daring, Through the hazy air, past the brazier flaring And the hissing flame, crept, until I came Unto the carven seat, and kissed her white feet; And she smiled, but spake not. When she smiled the sleepers wavered as the grass Of a cornfield wavers when the ears are swept By the breath of brown reapers singing as they pass, Or grass of woody glades when a wind that has slept Wakens, and invades their moonlit solitude, When the hazels shiver and the birch is blown To a billow of silver, but oaks in the wood Stand firm nor quiver, stand firm as stone: So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood. When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat Of that painted room a silken sound I heard, And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney, Stranger far than any music mortal made Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale. Sweet it was, and clear as light, or as the tears That sad Narcissus wears in the spring of the year On barren mountain ranges where rain falls cool And every lonely pool is sprayed with broken light: So cool, so beautiful, and so divinely strange I doubted if it came from any marshy reed Or hollow fluting stem pluck’d by the hands of men, Unless it were indeed that airy fugitive Syrinx, who cried and ran before the laughing eyes Of goat-footed Pan, and must for ever live A shadowy green reed by an Arcadian river-- But never music made of Ladon’s reedy daughter Or singing river-water more sweet than that which stole, Slow as amber honey wells from the honeycomb, Into my weary soul with solace and strange peace. So, trembling as I lay in a dream more desolate Than is the darkened day of the mid-winter north, I heard the voice of one who sang in a strange tongue, And I know not what he sang save that he sang of love,