15. 'The misery of a madness slow and creeping, Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air, And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping, In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair, Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there; _2960 And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore Thy mangled limbs for food!--Thus all things were Transformed into the agony which I wore Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core. 16. 'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing, _2965 The eagle, and the fountain, and the air; Another frenzy came--there seemed a being Within me--a strange load my heart did bear, As if some living thing had made its lair Even in the fountains of my life:--a long _2970 And wondrous vision wrought from my despair, Then grew, like sweet reality among Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng. 17. 'Methought I was about to be a mother-- Month after month went by, and still I dreamed _2975 That we should soon be all to one another, I and my child; and still new pulses seemed To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed There was a babe within--and, when the rain Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed, _2980 Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain, I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain. 18. 'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,-- It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine, Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth _2985 It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine Thine own, beloved!--'twas a dream divine; Even to remember how it fled, how swift, How utterly, might make the heart repine,-- Though 'twas a dream.'--Then Cythna did uplift _2990 Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift: 19. A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears; Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress She spoke: 'Yes, in the wilderness of years _2995 Her memory, aye, like a green home appears; She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love, For many months. I had no mortal fears; Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,-- It was a human thing which to my bosom clove. _3000 20. 'I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon When zenith stars were trembling on the wave, Or when the beams of the invisible moon, Or sun, from many a prism within the cave Their gem-born shadows to the water gave, _3005 Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand, From the swift lights which might that fountain pave, She would mark one, and laugh, when that command Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.