O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung   By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung   Even into thine own soft-conched ear: Surely I dream'd to-day, or did I see   The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes? I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,   And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side   In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof   Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran         A brooklet, scarce espied: 'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,   Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;   Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;   Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber   At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:         The winged boy I knew;   But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?         His Psyche true!

O latest-born and loveliest vision far   Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,   Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,         Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan         Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet   From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat   Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,   Too, too late for the fond believing lyre, When holy were the haunted forest boughs,   Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retired   From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,   Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan           Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet   From swinged censer teeming: Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat   Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane   In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,   Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees   Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,   The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,   With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,   Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same; And there shall be for thee all soft delight         That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,         To let the warm Love in!