With all thy train, athwart the moony sky

Apart - like fire-flies in Sicilian night,

And wing to other worlds another light!

Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle - and so be

To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban

Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,

The single-mooned eve! - on Earth we plight

Our faith to one love - and one moon adore

The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.

As sprang that yellow star from downy hours

Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,

And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain

Her way - but left not yet her Therasaean reign.

PART II

High on a mountain of enamell'd head

Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed

Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,

Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees,

With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"

What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven

Of rosy head, that towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

Of sunken suns at eve - at noon of night,

While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light

Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile

Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,

Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile

Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,

And nursled the young mountain in its lair.

Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall

Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall

Of their own dissolution, while they die

Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.

A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,

Sat gently on these columns as a crown

A window of one circular diamond, there,

Look'd out above into the purple air,

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain