We trod the shadow of the downward hill;
  We pass’d from light to dark.  On the other side
  Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall,
  Which none have fathom’d.  If you go far in
  (The country people rumour) you may hear
  The moaning of the woman and the child,
  Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. 
  I too have heard a sound—­perchance of streams
  Running far-off within its inmost halls,
  The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth,
  Half overtrailed with a wanton weed
  Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly
  Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,
  Is presently received in a sweet grove
  Of eglantine, a place of burial
  Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen
  But taken with the sweetness of the place,
  It giveth out a constant melody
  That drowns the nearer echoes.  Lower down
  Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, makes
  Cushions of yellow sand; and from the woods
  That belt it rise three dark tall cypresses;
  Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe,
  That men plant over graves.

                   Hither we came,
  And sitting down upon the golden moss
  Held converse sweet and low—­low converse sweet,
  In which our voices bore least part.  The wind
  Told a love-tale beside us, how he woo’d
  The waters, and the crisp’d waters lisp’d
  The kisses of the wind, that, sick with love,
  Fainted at intervals, and grew again
  To utterance of passion.  Ye cannot shape
  Fancy so fair as is this memory. 
  Methought all excellence that ever was
  Had drawn herself from many thousand years,
  And all the separate Edens of this earth,
  To centre in this place and time.  I listen’d,
  And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness
  Into my heart, as thronged fancies come,
  All unawares, into the poet’s brain;
  Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung,
  When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs,
  Creep down into the bottom of the flower. 
  Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms
  Strung in the very negligence of Art,
  Or in the art of Nature, where each rose
  Doth faint upon the bosom of the other,
  Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears. 
  So each with each inwoven lived with each,
  And were in union more than double-sweet. 
  What marvel my Camilla told me all? 
  It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place,
  And I was as the brother of her blood,
  And by that name was wont to live in her speech,
  Dear name! which had too much of nearness in it
  And heralded the distance of this time. 
  At first her voice was very sweet and low,
  As tho’ she were afeard of utterance;
  But in the onward current of her speech,
  (As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks
  Are fashioned by the channel which they keep)
  His words did of their meaning borrow