roots to Hell Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well 30 May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil.

5.  My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise Clothes for our grandsons—­but she matches Peter, 35 Though he took nineteen years, and she three days In dressing.  Light the vest of flowing metre She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness.’ 40

6.  If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial climate Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:  A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at; In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. 45 If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate Can shrive you of that sin,—­if sin there be In love, when it becomes idolatry.

 THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

1.  Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, 50 Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth All those bright natures which adorned its prime, And left us nothing to believe in, worth The pains of putting into learned rhyme, A lady-witch there lived on Atlas’ mountain 55 Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.

2.  Her mother was one of the Atlantides:  The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden 60 In the warm shadow of her loveliness;—­ He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of gray rock in which she lay—­ She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

3.  ’Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour, 65 And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit, Like splendour-winged moths about a taper, Round the red west when the sun dies in it:  And then into a meteor, such as caper On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:  70 Then, into one of those mysterious stars Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

4.  Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden With that bright sign the billows to indent 75 The sea-deserted sand—­like children chidden, At her command they ever came and went—­ Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden Took shape and motion:  with the living form Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm. 80

5.  A lovely lady garmented in light From her own beauty—­deep her eyes, as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a Temple’s cloven roof—­her hair Dark—­the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight.