And their eyes met--one moment and no more; Moment in time that centred years in feeling. As when to Thetis, on her cavern'd shore, Knelt her young King,--he rose, and murmur'd, kneeling. Low though the murmur, it dissolved the charm Which had in silence chain'd the modest feet; And maiden shame and woman's swift alarm Crimson'd her cheek and in her pulses beat: She turn'd, and, as a spell that leaves the place It fill'd with phantom beauty cold and bare, She fled;--and over disenchanted space Rush'd back the common air! V. Time waned--and thoughts intense, and grave and high, With sterner truths foreshadow'd Minstrel dreams; Yet never vanish'd from the Minstrel's eye That meteor blended with the morning beams. Time waned, and ripe became the long desire, Which, nursed in youth, with restless manhood grew A passion--to behold that heart of Earth, Yet trembling with the silver Mantuan lyre, To knightly arms by Tasso tuned anew:-- So the fair Pilgrim left his father's hearth. Into his soul he drunk the lofty lore, Floating like air around the clime of song; Beheld the starry sage,[B] what time he bore For truth's dear glory the immortal wrong; Communed majestic with majestic minds; And all the glorious wanderer heard or saw Or felt or learn'd or dream'd, were as the winds That swell'd the sails of his triumphant soul; As then, ev'n then, with ardour yet in awe, It swept Time's ocean to its distant goal. VI. It was the evening--and a group were strewn O'er such a spot as ye, I ween, might see, When basking in the summer's breathless noon, With upward face beneath the drowsy tree; While golden dreams the willing soul receives, And Elf-land glimmers through the checkering leaves.