47. 'Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?' 'Fear it!' she said, with brief and passionate cry, And spake no more: that silence made me start-- I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly, Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky; _545 Beneath the rising moon seen far away, Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high, Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay On the still waters--these we did approach alway. 48. And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion, _550 So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain-- Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign-- And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain Of waters, azure with the noontide day. _555 Ethereal mountains shone around--a Fane Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away. 49. It was a Temple, such as mortal hand Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream _560 Reared in the cities of enchanted land: 'Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day's purple stream Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam Of the unrisen moon among the clouds Is gathering--when with many a golden beam _565 The thronging constellations rush in crowds, Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods. 50. Like what may be conceived of this vast dome, When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce Genius beholds it rise, his native home, _570 Girt by the deserts of the Universe; Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse, Or sculpture's marble language, can invest That shape to mortal sense--such glooms immerse That incommunicable sight, and rest _575 Upon the labouring brain and overburdened breast. 51. Winding among the lawny islands fair, Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep, The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep, _580 Encircling that vast Fane's aerial heap: We disembarked, and through a portal wide We passed--whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep A glimmering o'er the forms on every side, Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed. _585 52. We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning's sheen In darkness, and now poured it through the woof Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen Its blinding splendour--through such veil was seen _590 That work of subtlest power, divine and rare; Orb above orb, with starry shapes between, And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair, On night-black columns poised--one hollow hemisphere!