_Adam._ Our spirits have climbed high By reason of the passion of our grief, And, from the top of sense, looked over sense To the significance and heart of things Rather than things themselves. _Eve._ And the dim twelve.... _Adam._ Are dim exponents of the creature-life As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved! By stricter apprehension of the sight, Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage The terror of the shadows,--what is known Subduing the unknown and taming it From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there, Presents a lion, albeit twenty times As large as any lion--with a roar Set soundless in his vibratory jaws, And a strange horror stirring in his mane. And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh-- Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws, Like a slow blot that spreads,--till all the ground, Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself. A bull stands hornèd here with gibbous glooms; And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark. This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard; And here, fantastic fishes duskly float, Using the calm for waters, while their fins Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air. While images more human---- _Eve._ How he stands, That phantasm of a man--who is not _thou_! Two phantasms of two men! _Adam._ One that sustains, And one that strives,--resuming, so, the ends Of manhood's curse of labour.[B] Dost thou see That phantasm of a woman? _Eve._ I have seen; But look off to those small humanities[C] Which draw me tenderly across my fear,-- Lesser and fainter than my womanhood, Or yet thy manhood--with strange innocence Set in the misty lines of head and hand. They lean together! I would gaze on them Longer and longer, till my watching eyes, As the stars do in watching anything, Should light them forward from their outline vague To clear configuration. [_Two Spirits, of Organic and Inorganic Nature, arise from the ground._ But what Shapes Rise up between us in the open space, And thrust me into horror, back from hope!