30. And though their lustre now was spent and faded, _1675 Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien The likeness of a shape for which was braided The brightest woof of genius, still was seen-- One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene, And left it vacant--'twas her lover's face-- _1680 It might resemble her--it once had been The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace. 31. What then was I? She slumbered with the dead. Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone. _1685 Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone, Doth it not through the paths of night unknown, On outspread wings of its own wind upborne Pour rain upon the earth? The stars are shown, _1690 When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn. 32. Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man I left, with interchange of looks and tears, And lingering speech, and to the Camp began _1695 My war. O'er many a mountain-chain which rears Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears My frame; o'er many a dale and many a moor, And gaily now meseems serene earth wears The blosmy spring's star-bright investiture, _1700 A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure. 33. My powers revived within me, and I went, As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass, Through many a vale of that broad continent. At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass _1705 Before my pillow;--my own Cythna was, Not like a child of death, among them ever; When I arose from rest, a woful mass That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever, As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever. _1710 34. Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard, Haunted my thoughts.--Ah, Hope its sickness feeds With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds! _1715 Could she be Cythna?--Was that corpse a shade Such as self-torturing thought from madness breeds? Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made A light around my steps which would not ever fade. NOTES: _1625 Where]When edition 1818. CANTO 5. 1. Over the utmost hill at length I sped, _1720 A snowy steep:--the moon was hanging low Over the Asian mountains, and outspread The plain, the City, and the Camp below, Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow; The City's moonlit spires and myriad lamps, _1725 Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow, And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps, Like springs of flame, which burst where'er swift Earthquake stamps.