57. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, _500 Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, His waters on the plain: and crested heads Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, And many a vapour-belted pyramid. 58. By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, _505 Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors, Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes Of those huge forms--within the brazen doors _510 Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. 59. And where within the surface of the river The shadows of the massy temples lie, And never are erased--but tremble ever _515 Like things which every cloud can doom to die, Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever The works of man pierced that serenest sky With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight To wander in the shadow of the night. _520 60. With motion like the spirit of that wind Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind. Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined _525 With many a dark and subterranean street Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. 61. A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. _530 Here lay two sister twins in infancy; There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linked innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem;--and there lay calm _535 Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. 62. But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, Not to be mirrored in a holy song-- Distortions foul of supernatural awe, And pale imaginings of visioned wrong; _540 And all the code of Custom's lawless law Written upon the brows of old and young: 'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.' 63. And little did the sight disturb her soul.-- _545 We, the weak mariners of that wide lake Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:-- But she in the calm depths her way could take, _550 Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.