Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
  The single-mooned 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 Therasaean reign [15].

PART II.

  High on a mountain of enamell’d 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 mutter’d “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 danc’d with the fair stranger light—­
  Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile
  Of gorgeous columns on th’ uuburthen’d 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 [16]
  Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall
  Of their own dissolution, while they die—­
  Adorning then the dwellings of the sky. 
  A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
  Sat gently on these columns as a crown—­
  A window of one circular diamond, there,
  Look’d out above into the purple air
  And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
  And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,
  Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
  Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing. 
  But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
  The dimness of this world:  that grayish green
  That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
  Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—­
  And every sculptured cherub thereabout
  That from his marble dwelling peered out,
  Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—­
  Achaian statues in a world so rich? 
  Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis [17]—­
  From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
  Of beautiful Gomorrah!  Oh, the wave [18]
  Is now upon thee—­but too late to save! 
  Sound loves to revel in a summer night: 
  Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
  That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco [19],
  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? [20]
   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