At length, as ever in such vision-hours,
Came the bright maiden, riding the great horse. 
And then at once the will sprang up awake,
And, like a necromantic sage, forbade
What came unbidden to depart at will. 
So on that form he rested his sad thoughts,
Till he began to wonder what her lot;
How she had fared in spinning history
Into a psyche-cradle, where to die;
And then emerge—­what butterfly? pure white,
With silver dust of feathers on its wings? 
Or that dull red, seared with its ebon spots? 
And then he thought:  “I know some women fail,
And cease to be so very beautiful. 
And I have heard men rave of certain eyes,
In which I could not rest a moment’s space.” 
Straightway the fount of possibilities
Began to gurgle, under, in his soul. 
Anon the lava-stream burst forth amain,
And glowed, and scorched, and blasted as it flowed. 
For purest souls sometimes have direst fears,
In ghost-hours when the shadow of the earth
Is cast on half her children, from the sun
Who is afar and busy with the rest. 
“If my high lady be but only such
As some men say of women—­very pure
When dressed in white, and shining in men’s eyes,
And with the wavings of great unborn wings
Around them in the aether of the souls,
Felt at the root where senses meet in one
Like dim-remembered airs and rhymes and hues;
But when alone, at best a common thing,
With earthward thoughts, and feet that are of earth! 
Ah no—­it cannot be!  She is of God. 
But then, fair things may perish; higher life
Gives deeper death; fair gifts make fouler faults: 
Women themselves—­I dare not think the rest. 
And then they say that in her London world,
They have other laws and judgments than in ours.” 
And so the thoughts walked up and down his soul,
And found at last a spot wherein to rest,
Building a resolution for the day.

But next day, and the next, he was too worn
With the unrest of this chaotic night—­
As if a man had sprung to life before
The spirit of God moved on the waters’ face,
And made his dwelling ready, who in pain,
Himself untuned, groaned for a harmony,
For order and for law around his life—­
Too tired he was to do as he had planned. 
But on the next, a genial south-born wind
Waved the blue air beneath the golden sun,
Bringing glad news of summer from the south. 
Into his little room the bright rays shone,
And, darting through the busy blazing fire,
Turning it ghostly pale, slew it almost;
As the great sunshine of the further life
Quenches the glow of this, and giveth death. 
He had lain gazing at the wondrous strife
And strange commingling of the sun and fire,
Like spiritual and vital energies,
Whereof the one doth bear the other first,
And then destroys it for a better birth;
And now he rose to help the failing fire,
Because the sunshine came not near enough