But O, had all my infant nights been dark, Or almost dark, lit by the stars alone, Had never a teller of stories bid me hark The promised splendours of that moon unknown: How perfect then had been the revelation When first her gradual gold illumination Broke on a night upon the conscious child: My heart had stopped with beauty, seeing her arc Climbing the heavens, so far and undefiled, So large with light, so even and so mild. 14 Most wondrous Light, who bring'st this lovelier earth, This world of shadows cool with silver fires, Drawing us higher than our human birth: To whom our strange twin-natured kind suspires Its saddest thoughts, and tenderest and most fragrant Tears, and desires unnameable and vagrant: Watcher, who leanest quietly from above, Saying all mortal wars are nothing worth: Friend of the sorrowful, tranquil as the dove, Muse of all poets, lamp of all who love. 15 Alone and sad, alone and kind and sweet, But always peaceful and removed and proud, Whether with loveliness revealed complete, Or veiling from our vision in a cloud: Our souls' eternal listener, could we wonder That men who made of sun and storm and thunder The awful forms of strong divinity, Heard in each storm the noise of travelling feet, Should, gazing at thy face with hearts made free, Have felt a pure, immortal Power in thee? 16 Selene, Cynthia, and Artemis, The swift proud goddess with the silver bow, Diana, she whose downward-bending kiss One only knew, though all men yearned to know; The shepherd on a hill his flock was keeping, The night's pale huntress came and found him sleeping: She stooped: he woke, and saw her hair that shone, And lay, drawn up to cool and timeless bliss Lapt in her radiant arms, Endymion, All the still night, until the night was gone. 17 By many names they knew thee, but thy shape Was woman's always, transient and white: A flashing huntress leaving hinds agape, A sweet descent of beauty in the night: Yet some, more fierce and more distraught their dreaming, Brooded, until they fashioned from thy seeming, A lithe and luring queen with fatal breath, A witch the man who saw might not escape, A snare that gleamed in shadowy groves of death, The tall tiaraed Syrian Ashtoreth. 18