It told:  A dog had from the sea,
When the tide was raging fearfully, 1070
Dragged Lionel’s mother, weak and pale,
Then died beside her on the sand,
And she that temple thence had planned;
But it was Lionel’s own hand
Had wrought the image.  Each new moon 1075
That lady did, in this lone fane,
The rites of a religion sweet,
Whose god was in her heart and brain: 
The seasons’ loveliest flowers were strewn
On the marble floor beneath her feet, 1080
And she brought crowns of sea-buds white
Whose odour is so sweet and faint,
And weeds, like branching chrysolite,
Woven in devices fine and quaint. 
And tears from her brown eyes did stain 1085
The altar:  need but look upon
That dying statue fair and wan,
If tears should cease, to weep again: 
And rare Arabian odours came,
Through the myrtle copses steaming thence 1090
From the hissing frankincense,
Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome—­
That ivory dome, whose azure night
With golden stars, like heaven, was bright—­ 1095
O’er the split cedar’s pointed flame;
And the lady’s harp would kindle there
The melody of an old air,
Softer than sleep; the villagers
Mixed their religion up with hers, 1100
And, as they listened round, shed tears.

One eve he led me to this fane: 
Daylight on its last purple cloud
Was lingering gray, and soon her strain
The nightingale began; now loud, 1105
Climbing in circles the windless sky,
Now dying music; suddenly
’Tis scattered in a thousand notes,
And now to the hushed ear it floats
Like field smells known in infancy, 1110
Then failing, soothes the air again. 
We sate within that temple lone,
Pavilioned round with Parian stone: 
His mother’s harp stood near, and oft
I had awakened music soft 1115
Amid its wires:  the nightingale
Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale: 
‘Now drain the cup,’ said Lionel,
’Which the poet-bird has crowned so well
With the wine of her bright and liquid song! 1120
Heardst thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy? 
Heard’st thou not that those who die
Awake in a world of ecstasy? 
That love, when limbs are interwoven, 1125
And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
And thought, to the world’s dim boundaries clinging,
And music, when one beloved is singing,
Is death?  Let us drain right joyously
The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.’