Up rose the maiden in the yellow night, The single-moonèd eve!—on Earth we plight Our faith to one love, and one moon adore: The birth-place of young Beauty had no more. As sprang that yellow star from downy hours, Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain Her way—but left not yet her Therasæan reign. PART II. [Illustration] High on a mountain of enamelled head— Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed Of giant pasturage lying at his ease, Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees With many a muttered “hope to be forgiven” What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven— Of rosy head that, towering far away Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night, While the moon danced with the fair stranger light— Upreared upon such height arose a pile Of gorgeous columns on th’ unburthened air, Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile Far down upon the wave that sparkled there, And nursled the young mountain in its lair. Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall Of their own dissolution, while they die— Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. A dome, by linkèd light from Heaven let down, Sat gently on these columns as a crown— A window of one circular diamond, there, Looked out above into the purple air, And rays from God shot down that meteor chain And hallowed all the beauty twice again, Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring, Some eager spirit flapped his dusky wing. But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen The dimness of this world: that greyish green That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave Lurked in each cornice, round each architrave— And every sculptured cherub thereabout That from his marble dwelling peerèd out, Seemed earthly in the shadow of his niche— Achaian statues in a world so rich? Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis— From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss Of beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave Is now upon thee—but too late to save! Sound loves to revel in a summer night: Witness the murmur of the grey twilight That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco, Of many a wild star-gazer long ago— That stealeth ever on the ear of him Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim, And sees the darkness coming as a cloud— Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud? But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings A music with it—’tis the rush of wings— A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain, And Nesace is in her halls again. From the wild energy of wanton haste Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart; The zone that clung around her gentle waist Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart. Within the centre of that hall to breathe She paused and panted, Zanthe! all beneath, The fairy light that kissed her golden hair And longed to rest, yet could but sparkle there!