In some eddy to hum out my life in her ear,
Like a spider-caught bee,—­and in aid of that fear
Came the tardy remembrance—­Oh falsest of men! 
Why was not that beauty remember’d till then? 
My love, my safe love, whose glad life would have run
Into mine—­like a drop—­that our fate might be one,
That now, even now,—­may-be,—­clasp’d in a dream,
That form which I gave to some jilt of the stream,
And gazed with fond eyes that her tears tried to smother
On a mock of those eyes that I gave to another!

Then I rose from the stream, but the eyes of my mind,
Still full of the tempter, kept gazing behind
On her crystalline face, while I painfully leapt
To the bank, and shook off the curst waters, and wept
With my brow in the reeds; and the reeds to my ear
Bow’d, bent by no wind, and in whispers of fear,
Growing small with large secrets, foretold me of one
That loved me,—­but oh to fly from her, and shun
Her love like a pest—­though her love was as true
To mine as her stream to the heavenly blue;
For why should I love her with love that would bring
All misfortune, like hate, on so joyous a thing? 
Because of her rival,—­even Her whose witch-face
I had slighted, and therefore was doom’d in that place
To roam, and had roam’d, where all horrors grew rank,
Nine days ere I wept with my brow on that bank;
Her name be not named, but her spite would not fail
To our love like a blight; and they told me the tale
Of Scylla,—­and Picus, imprison’d to speak
His shrill-screaming woe through a woodpecker’s beak.

Then they ceased—­I had heard as the voice of my star
That told me the truth of my fortunes—­thus far
I had read of my sorrow, and lay in the hush
Of deep meditation,—­when lo! a light crush
Of the reeds, and I turn’d and look’d round in the night
Of new sunshine, and saw, as I sipp’d of the light
Narrow-winking, the realized nymph of the stream,
Rising up from the wave with the bend and the gleam
Of a fountain, and o’er her white arms she kept throwing
Bright torrents of hair, that went flowing and flowing
In falls to her feet, and the blue waters roll’d
Down her limbs like a garment, in many a fold,
Sun-spangled, gold-broider’d, and fled far behind,
Like an infinite train.  So she came and reclined
In the reeds, and I hunger’d to see her unseal
The buds of her eyes that would ope and reveal
The blue that was in them;—­they oped and she raised
Two orbs of pure crystal, and timidly gazed
With her eyes on my eyes; but their color and shine
Was of that which they look’d on, and mostly of mine—­
For she loved me,—­except when she blush’d, and they sank,
Shame-humbled, to number the stones on the bank,
Or her play-idle fingers, while lisping she told me
How she put on her veil, and in love to behold me
Would wing through the sun till she fainted away