605 Of second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch.

71.  And there the body lay, age after age.  Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, 610 Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life; while they were still arraying In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind 615 And fleeting generations of mankind.

72.  And she would write strange dreams upon the brain Of those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent’s wake 620 Which the sand covers—­all his evil gain The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar’s lap;—­the lying scribe Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

73.  The priests would write an explanation full, 625 Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the God Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down; they licensed all to speak 630 Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese.

74.  The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 635 Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey.—­Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great Emperor, when the morning came, And kissed—­alas, how many kiss the same! 640

75.  The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and Walked out of quarters in somnambulism; Round the red anvils you might see them stand Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares;—­in a band 645 The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis.

76.  And timid lovers who had been so coy, They hardly knew whether they loved or not, 650 Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done 655 Only in fancy—­till the tenth moon shone;

77.  And then the Witch would let them take no ill:  Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, The Witch found one,—­and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. 660 Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart—­a wide wound, mind from mind!—­