With dewfall redder than the dews of day,
  And earth-born lightnings out of bloodbright spray;
  Then through the flushed grey gloom on shadowy sheaves
  Low flights of falling leaves; 70
  And choirs of birds transfiguring as they throng
  All the world’s twilight and the soul’s to song.

        Voices more dimly deep [Ep. 2. 
        Than the inmost heart of sleep,
    And tenderer than the rose-mouthed morning’s lips;
        And midmost of them heard
        The viewless water’s word,
    The sea’s breath in the wind’s wing and the ship’s,
      That bids one swell and sound and smite 79
And rend that other in sunder as with fangs by night.

  But ah! the glory of shadow and mingling ray, [Str. 3. 
  The story of morn and even
  Whose tale was writ in heaven
  And had for scroll the night, for scribe the day! 
  For scribe the prophet of the morning, far
  Exalted over twilight and her star;
  For scroll beneath his Apollonian hand
  The dim twin wastes of sea and glimmering land. 
  Hark, on the hill-wind, clear
  For all men’s hearts to hear 90
  Sound like a stream at nightfall from the steep
  That all time’s depths might answer, deep to deep,
  With trumpet-measures of triumphal wail
  From windy vale to vale,
  The crying of one for love that strayed and sinned
  Whose brain took madness of the mountain wind.

  Between the birds of brighter and duskier wing, [Ant. 3. 
  What mightier-moulded forms
  Girt with red clouds and storms
  Mix their strong hearts with theirs that soar and sing? 100
  Before the storm-blast blown of death’s dark horn
  The marriage moonlight withers, that the morn
  For two made one may find three made by death
  One ruin at the blasting of its breath: 
  Clothed with heart’s flame renewed
  And strange new maidenhood,
  Faith lightens on the lips that bloomed for hire
  Pure as the lightning of love’s first-born fire: 
  Wide-eyed and patient ever, till the curse
  Find where to fall and pierce, 110
  Keen expiation whets with edge more dread
  A father’s wrong to smite a father’s head.

        Borgia, supreme from birth [Ep. 3. 
        As loveliest born on earth
    Since earth bore ever women that were fair;
        Scarce known of her own house
        If daughter or sister or spouse;
    Who holds men’s hearts yet helpless with her hair;
      The direst of divine things made,
Bows down her amorous aureole half suffused with shade. 120