Have no heaven-habitants e’er felt a void
In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed? 
E’er longed to mingle with a mortal fate
Intense with pathos of its briefer date? 
Could she partake, and live, our human stains? 
Even with the thought there tingles through my veins 90
Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead,
Receive and house again the ardor fled,
As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim
Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb,
And life, like Spring returning, brings the key
That sets my senses from their winter free,
Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame. 
Her passion, purified to palest flame,
Can it thus kindle?  Is her purpose this? 
I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss 100
That makes me dream Tithonus’ fortune mine,
(Or what of it was palpably divine
Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;)
I cannot curb my hope’s imperious drift
That wings with fire my dull mortality;
Though fancy-forged, ’tis all I feel or see.

IV

My Goddess sinks; round Latmos’ darkening brow
Trembles the parting of her presence now,
Faint as the perfume left upon the grass
By her limbs’ pressure or her feet that pass 110
By me conjectured, but conjectured so
As things I touch far fainter substance show. 
Was it mine eyes’ imposture I have seen
Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen
Through the wood-openings?  Nay, I see her now
Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow
The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow
Across her crescent, goldening as they go
High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown,
Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. 120
If dream, turn real!  If a vision, stay! 
Take mortal shape, my philtre’s spell obey! 
If hags compel thee from thy secret sky
With gruesome incantations, why not I,
Whose only magic is that I distil
A potion, blent of passion, thought, and will,
Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich,
Than e’er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch
From moon-enchanted herbs,—­a potion brewed
Of my best life in each diviner mood? 130
Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl
Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. 
Taste and be humanized:  what though the cup,
With thy lips frenzied, shatter?  Drink it up! 
If but these arms may clasp, o’erquited so,
My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know.

V

Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half,
As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. 
Yet if life’s solid things illusion seem,
Why may not substance wear the mask of dream? 140
In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams,
And, as her image in a thousand streams,
So in my veins, that her obey, she sees,