III.

A wild, inspirèd earnestness Her inmost being fills, And eager self-forgetfulness, That speaks not what it wills, But what unto her soul is given, A living oracle from Heaven, Which scarcely in her breast is born When on her trembling lips it thrills, And, like a burst of golden skies Through storm-clouds on a sudden torn, Like a glory of the morn, Beams marvellously from her eyes. And then, like a Spring-swollen river, Roll the deep waves of her full-hearted thought Crested with sun-lit spray, Her wild lips curve and quiver, And my rapt soul, on the strong tide upcaught, Unwittingly is borne away, Lulled by a dreamful music ever, Far--through the solemn twilight-gray Of hoary woods--through valleys green Which the trailing vine embowers, And where the purple-clustered grapes are seen Deep-glowing through rich clumps of waving flowers-- Now over foaming rapids swept And with maddening rapture shook-- Now gliding where the water-plants have slept For ages in a moss-rimmed nook-- Enwoven by a wild-eyed band Of earth-forgetting dreams, I float to a delicious land By a sunset heaven spanned, And musical with streams;-- Around, the calm, majestic forms And god-like eyes of early Greece I see, Or listen, till my spirit warms, To songs of courtly chivalry, Or weep, unmindful if my tears be seen, For the meek, suffering love of poor Undine.