Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight 220
Is as a dead leaf’s in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper’s setting sphere
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.—­
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, 225
Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet,
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
Into the dreary cone of our life’s shade;
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between 230
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen: 
When a voice said:—­’O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.’ 
Then I—­’Where?’—­the world’s echo answered ‘where?’
And in that silence, and in my despair, 235
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither ’twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
And murmured names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; 240
But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:  245
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation’s breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife, 250
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,
In which she might have masked herself from me. 255
There,—­One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers: 
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,—­flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came, 260
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime 265
With ruins of unseasonable time.