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Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers: this well
May be, for heaven and earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
5. My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature

As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons-but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days,
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre

She wears he, proud as dandy with his stays.
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress

Like King Lear's looped and windowed raggedness. 6. If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow

Scorched by hell's hyperequatorial climate

Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow;

A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at:
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,—if sin there be
In love when it becomes idolatry.

THE WITCH OF ATLAS.

1. BEFORE those cruel twins whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime
And left us nothing to believe in, worth

The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain
Within a cavern by a secret fountain.

2. Her mother was one of the Atlantides.

The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden

In the warm shadow of her loveliness;

He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of grey rock in which she lay.
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.

3. 'Tis said she was first changed into a vapour :
And then into a cloud,-such clouds as flit
(Like splendour-winged moths about a taper)
Round the red west when the Sun dies in it;

And then into a meteor, such as caper

On hill-tops when the Moon is in a fit;
Then into one of those mysterious stars

Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.

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Te time the Mother of the Months had bent
20 beste the folding-star, and bidden
that bright sign the billows to indent
se-deserted sand—(like children chidden,
command they ever came and went)—
so that cave a dewy splendour hidden
s share and motion. With the living form
as emboited Power the cave grew warm.
armented in light

V beauty: dear her eyes as are
a miathomalie night

tmnes's cloven roof; her hair
dia bram, whirls dizzy with delight,
Her soft smiles shone afar;
var was heard like love, and drew
towards this wonder new.

spotted camelopard came;

i usar, feries elephant;
semen, in the gaiden name
varumas intervalved. All gaunt

bests her gene looks made tame,—

res beter her at her sacred fount; ** *** ** a beating heart mew bold, Pas ant nower ever to behold.

es e iri her young,

trast them how they should forego Saan, the pard unstrung

7.8 SHOWS & he is, and sought to know,
DASS VAR MALS Sste without a tongue,
76WX BAs the do

The rage crie a her way and eres
alage Faurs de mpaanse

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Tazing de Gat or sing them something new;
Till a mis are her bund N LAT JERK.
Sizing upon sen af emerald sune.

1. And universal Par, his self was there.

And, thagh more sy him-drvest the adamant
Of de deep mountains Sean the rackless a
And through those bring shirts. Se a wing —

He passed out of his evertseny ar

Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, And felt that wondrous Lady all alone. —

And she felt him upon her emerald throne.

30. And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every Shepherdess of Ocean's flocks
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company,-

All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth:
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

II. The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt :
Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts, and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.

12. For she was beautiful. Her beauty made

The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
No thought of living spirit could abide
(Which to her looks had ever been betrayed)
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,—
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

13. Which when the Lady knew, she took her spindle,
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with, and she
As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;

And with these threads a subtle veil she wove-
A shadow for the splendour of her love.

14. The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

Were stored with magic treasures :-sounds of air
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;

Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die—yet, ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone.

15. And there lay Visions swift and sweet and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ;-
Some eager to burst forth; some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss

It is their work to bear to many a saint

Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's; and others, white, green, grey, and black
And of all shapes :—and each was at her beck.

16 And odours in a kind of aviary

fever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Cupped in a flating net a love-sick Fairy

Had woven frota dew-beams while the moon yet slept
As hats at the wired window of a dairy,

They beat their vans; and each was an adept--
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds -
To so sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.
And brors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Codd medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
Ari Sange eternal death into a night

ceites dreams-or, if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight-
She in her crystal phials did closely keep :
men could drink of these clear phials, 'tis said
The ring were not envied of the dead.

15. Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
at the expiations at whose price
3er from the Gods might win that happy age
Shi'r los, releeming native vice —
A ve mal quench the earth-consuming rage
In Dove, till men should live and move
moncus is the sacred stars above:-

Ay how i dag that seem untameable,
Na to be checked and not to be contined,
Over the sells of Wisdom's wizard skill;

me, cirth mi fire, the ocean, and the wind,
Uni Li ther Stares, and man's imperial will :-
And other strolls whose writings did unbind
" in lice of love-let the profane
TRENE 22 ASK what secrets they contain.
20 Ani wanitas works of stances unknown,

To which the enchantment of her Father's power
Hat changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
W be a the recesses of her bower;
Crved ans mi chalies and phials which shone
In der evi gollen lean-each like a flower
du a vhss sich a many shakes his light

BAL & JUN 2 I SITES D

A: Fe she Zoead alone in ths wild home,

And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Coding themetes or with the ocean foam,

o with the wad or with the speed of fic,
Domi elerer perpas must come

Taw dead: sach power her mighty Sire
For gir dom with whether to fly or run
Chod do the regions which he shines upon

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