18. 
’It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,—­
It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,
Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth 2985
It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine
Thine own, beloved!—­’twas a dream divine;
Even to remember how it fled, how swift,
How utterly, might make the heart repine,—­
Though ’twas a dream.’—­Then Cythna did uplift 2990
Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift: 

19. 
A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness
Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears;
Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress
She spoke:  ’Yes, in the wilderness of years 2995
Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;
She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,
For many months.  I had no mortal fears;
Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,—­
It was a human thing which to my bosom clove. 3000

20. 
’I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon
When zenith stars were trembling on the wave,
Or when the beams of the invisible moon,
Or sun, from many a prism within the cave
Their gem-born shadows to the water gave, 3005
Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,
From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,
She would mark one, and laugh, when that command
Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

21. 
’Methought her looks began to talk with me; 3010
And no articulate sounds, but something sweet
Her lips would frame,—­so sweet it could not be,
That it was meaningless; her touch would meet
Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat
In response while we slept; and on a day 3015
When I was happiest in that strange retreat,
With heaps of golden shells we two did play,—­
Both infants, weaving wings for time’s perpetual way.

22. 
’Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown
Weary with joy, and tired with our delight, 3020
We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down
On one fair mother’s bosom:—­from that night
She fled,—­like those illusions clear and bright,
Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high
Pause ere it wakens tempest;—­and her flight, 3025
Though ’twas the death of brainless fantasy,
Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

23. 
’It seemed that in the dreary night the diver
Who brought me thither, came again, and bore
My child away.  I saw the waters quiver, 3030
When he so swiftly sunk, as once before: 
Then morning came—­it shone even as of yore,
But I was changed—­the very life was gone
Out of my heart—­I wasted more and more,
Day after day, and sitting there alone, 3035
Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.