Ode To Psyche

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 dreamt to-day, or did I see     The winged Psyche with awakend eyes?     I wanderd in a forest thoughtlessly,     And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,     Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side     In deepest grass, beneath the whispring roof     Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran     A brooklet, scarce espied:     Mid hushd, 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 touchd 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 Phoebes sapphire-regiond star,     Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;     Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,     Nor altar heapd 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-mouthd 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 retird     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-mouthd 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-clusterd trees     Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;     And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,     The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulld to sleep;     And in the midst of this wide quietness     A rosy sanctuary will I dress     With the wreathd trellis of a working brain,     With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,     With all the gardener Fancy eer 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 open at night,     To let the warm Love in!