Of some bird was above me,—­who, even in fear,
Would startle the thrush? and methought there drew near
A form as of AEgle,—­but it was not the face
Hope made, and I knew the witch-Queen of that place,
Even Circe the Cruel, that came like a Death,
Which I fear’d, and yet fled not, for want of my breath. 
There was thought in her face, and her eyes were not raised
From the grass at her foot, but I saw, as I gazed,
Her spite—­and her countenance changed with her mind
As she plann’d how to thrall me with beauty, and bind
My soul to her charms,—­and her long tresses play’d
From shade into shine and from shine into shade,
Like a day in mid-autumn,—­first fair, O how fair! 
With long snaky locks of the adder-black hair
That clung round her neck,—­those dark locks that I prize,
For the sake of a maid that once loved me with eyes
Of that fathomless hue,—­but they changed as they roll’d,
And brighten’d, and suddenly blazed into gold
That she comb’d into flames, and the locks that fell down
Turn’d dark as they fell, but I slighted their brown,
Nor loved, till I saw the light ringlets shed wild,
That innocence wears when she is but a child;
And her eyes,—­Oh I ne’er had been witched with their shine,
Had they been any other, my AEgle, than thine!

Then I gave me to magic, and gazed till I madden’d
In the full of their light,—­but I sadden’d and sadden’d
The deeper I look’d,—­till I sank on the snow
Of her bosom, a thing made of terror and woe,
And answer’d its throb with the shudder of fears,
And hid my cold eyes from her eyes with my tears,
And strain’d her white arms with the still languid weight
Of a fainting distress.  There she sat like the Fate
That is nurse unto Death, and bent over in shame
To hide me from her the true AEgle—­that came
With the words on her lips the false witch had fore-given
To make me immortal—­for now I was even
At the portals of Death, who but waited the hush
Of world-sounds in my ears to cry welcome, and rush
With my soul to the banks of his black-flowing river. 
Oh, would it had flown from my body forever,
Ere I listen’d those words, when I felt with a start,
The life-blood rush back in one throb to my heart,
And saw the pale lips where the rest of that spell
Had perished in horror—­and heard the farewell
Of that voice that was drown’d in the dash of the stream! 
How fain had I follow’d, and plunged with that scream
Into death, but my being indignantly lagg’d
Through the brutalized flesh that I painfully dragg’d
Behind me:—­O Circe!  O mother of spite! 
Speak the last of that curse! and imprison me quite
In the husk of a brute,—­that no pity may name
The man that I was,—­that no kindred may claim—­
“The monster I am!  Let me utterly be
Brute-buried, and Nature’s dishonor with me
Uninscribed!”—­But she listen’d