47. 'We part!--O Laon, I must dare nor tremble, To meet those looks no more!--Oh, heavy stroke! Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble The agony of this thought?'--As thus she spoke The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke, _1085 And in my arms she hid her beating breast. I remained still for tears--sudden she woke As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed. 48. 'We part to meet again--but yon blue waste, _1090 Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess, Within whose happy silence, thus embraced We might survive all ills in one caress: Nor doth the grave--I fear 'tis passionless-- Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:--we meet again _1095 Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.' 49. I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep, _1100 Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow; So we arose, and by the starlight steep Went homeward--neither did we speak nor weep, But, pale, were calm with passion--thus subdued Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep, _1105 We moved towards our home; where, in this mood, Each from the other sought refuge in solitude. CANTO 3. 1. What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber That night, I know not; but my own did seem As if they might ten thousand years outnumber _1110 Of waking life, the visions of a dream Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast, Whose limits yet were never memory's theme: And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed, _1115 Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast. 2. Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace More time than might make gray the infant world, Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space: When the third came, like mist on breezes curled, _1120 From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled: Methought, upon the threshold of a cave I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave, Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave. _1125 3. We lived a day as we were wont to live, But Nature had a robe of glory on, And the bright air o'er every shape did weave Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone, The leafless bough among the leaves alone, _1130 Had being clearer than its own could be, And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown, In this strange vision, so divine to me, That if I loved before, now love was agony.