Or now like Bradamant, as brave as just, In complete steel, her pure face lit with scorn, At heathen castles, dens of demon lust, Winding her bugle-horn. Another Una; and in chastity A second Britomart; in beauty far O'er her who led King Charles's chivalry And Paynim lands to war.... Now she, from Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,-- 'Mid which white stars and never-waning moons Make marriage; and dim lips of musk-mouthed flowers Sigh faint and fragrant tunes,-- Implores me follow; and, in shadowy shapes Of sunset, shows me,--mile on misty mile Of purple precipice,--all the haunted capes Of her enchanted isle. Where, bowered in bosks and overgrown with vine, Upon a headland breasting violet seas, Her castle towers, like a dream divine, With stairs and galleries. And at her casement, Circe-beautiful, Above the surgeless reaches of the deep, She sits, while, in her gardens, fountains lull The perfumed wind to sleep. Or, round her brow a diadem of spars, She leans to hearken, from her raven height, The nightingales that, choiring to the stars, Haunt with wild song the night. Or, where the moon is mirrored in the waves, To mark, deep down, the Sea King's city rolled, Wrought of huge shells and labyrinthine caves, Ribbed pale with pearl and gold. There doth she wait forever; and the kings Of all the world have wooed her: but she cares For none but him, the Heart, that dreams and sings, That sings and dreams and dares. THE VALLEY OF MUSIC I Oh, cool as the flutter of fountains, And fresh as the fall of the dew, Wet as the hues of the rain-arch, In that vale, is the dawn, when, o'er mountains, Pearl-peaked and hyaline blue, Through the Memnonian blue, Her spirit, like music, comes slowly, A music of light and of fire, Leaving her footsteps in roses There on its summits, while holy, Fair on her brow is her tire, Gemmed with the morning-star's fire. II And still as the incense of altars, And dim as the deeps of a cloud, Mystic as winds of the woodlands, In that vale, is the night when she falters In the sorrowful folds of her shroud, The far-blowing dusk of her shroud, By the scarlet-strewn bier of her lover, The day, lying faded and fair In his chamber of purple and vair.-- When, above it, you see her uncover Her star-girdled darkness of hair-- Gold-hooped with the gold of the even-- And for the day's burial prepare, The spirit of night in the heaven, O'er that vale, is most hauntingly fair; So fair that you wish it were given That you in the rays of her hair, Might die! in her gold-girdled hair. III