19. 
Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,
I must have sought dark respite from its stress 830
In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—­
For to tread life’s dismaying wilderness
Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,
Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,
Is hard—­but I betrayed it not, nor less 835
With love that scorned return sought to unbind
The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.

20. 
With deathless minds which leave where they have passed
A path of light, my soul communion knew;
Till from that glorious intercourse, at last, 840
As from a mine of magic store, I drew
Words which were weapons;—­round my heart there grew
The adamantine armour of their power;
And from my fancy wings of golden hue
Sprang forth—­yet not alone from wisdom’s tower, 845
A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.

21. 
An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes
Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home
When I might wander forth; nor did I prize
Aught human thing beneath Heaven’s mighty dome 850
Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,
And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,
Since kin were cold, and friends had now become
Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,
Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee. 855

22. 
What wert thou then?  A child most infantine,
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;
Even then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage
A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, 860
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
With passion, o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

23. 
She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 865
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being—­in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,
To nourish some far desert; she did seem 870
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream.

24. 
As mine own shadow was this child to me,
A second self, far dearer and more fair; 875
Which clothed in undissolving radiancy
All those steep paths which languor and despair
Of human things, had made so dark and bare,
But which I trod alone—­nor, till bereft
Of friends, and overcome by lonely care, 880
Knew I what solace for that loss was left,
Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.