In silence then they took the way 95
Beneath the forest’s solitude. 
It was a vast and antique wood,
Thro’ which they took their way;
And the gray shades of evening
O’er that green wilderness did fling 100
Still deeper solitude. 
Pursuing still the path that wound
The vast and knotted trees around
Through which slow shades were wandering,
To a deep lawny dell they came, 105
To a stone seat beside a spring,
O’er which the columned wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane
Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man’s early race once knelt beneath 110
The overhanging deity. 
O’er this fair fountain hung the sky,
Now spangled with rare stars.  The snake,
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, 115
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome’s eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
In the light of his own loveliness;
And the birds that in the fountain dip 120
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
Above and round him wheel and hover. 
The fitful wind is heard to stir
One solitary leaf on high;
The chirping of the grasshopper 125
Fills every pause.  There is emotion
In all that dwells at noontide here;
Then, through the intricate wild wood,
A maze of life and light and motion
Is woven.  But there is stillness now:  130
Gloom, and the trance of Nature now: 
The snake is in his cave asleep;
The birds are on the branches dreaming: 
Only the shadows creep: 
Only the glow-worm is gleaming:  135
Only the owls and the nightingales
Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
And gray shades gather in the woods: 
And the owls have all fled far away
In a merrier glen to hoot and play, 140
For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. 
The accustomed nightingale still broods
On her accustomed bough,
But she is mute; for her false mate
Has fled and left her desolate. 145

This silent spot tradition old
Had peopled with the spectral dead. 
For the roots of the speaker’s hair felt cold
And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
That a hellish shape at midnight led 150
The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
And sate on the seat beside him there,
Till a naked child came wandering by,
When the fiend would change to a lady fair! 
A fearful tale!  The truth was worse:  155
For here a sister and a brother