its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make O’er its wild surface to an unknown goal:—­ But she in the calm depths her way could take, 550 Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.

64.  And she saw princes couched under the glow Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court In dormitories ranged, row after row, 555 She saw the priests asleep—­all of one sort—­ For all were educated to be so.—­ The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. 560

65.  And all the forms in which those spirits lay Were to her sight like the diaphanous Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment:  they 565 Move in the light of their own beauty thus.  But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them.

66.  She, all those human figures breathing there, Beheld as living spirits—­to her eyes 570 The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, And often through a rude and worn disguise She saw the inner form most bright and fair—­ And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, 575 Could make that spirit mingle with her own.

67.  Alas!  Aurora, what wouldst thou have given For such a charm when Tithon became gray?  Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina 580 Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt forgiven Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay, To any witch who would have taught you it?  The Heliad doth not know its value yet.

68.  ’Tis said in after times her spirit free 585 Knew what love was, and felt itself alone—­ But holy Dian could not chaster be Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, Than now this lady—­like a sexless bee Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, 590 Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.

69.  To those she saw most beautiful, she gave Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:—­ They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, 595 And lived thenceforward as if some control, Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, Was as a green and overarching bower Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 600

70.  For on the night when they were buried, she Restored the embalmers’ ruining, and shook The light out of the funeral lamps, to be A mimic day within that deathy nook; And she unwound the woven imagery