A Hermitage

A Saxon eremite of old did rear My mossy walls beneath this pine-clad slope; From learned Iona, armed with clerkly lere, He went in youth, and dealt a deadly stroke Through all the lonely Arctic Cyclades On Pagan creeds; and o’er the misty seas In Suevia with Odin’s might did cope, The chief of blue Valhalla’s deities; Nor ceased, till from his forest temple dark Had fled each white-stoled oaken hierarch. His mission done, beneath my lowly roof His days he passed, from all the world aloof.

I saw a snake-girt embryon, crowned and dumb, Its rigid finger, pointed towards the sky; From whence the fiery breath of life must come, That kindles unborn lip and rayless eye.

I saw a demon beagle dark as night, A shadowy maiden, hounding through the air; And as she fled she shrieked with wild affright, And, Mœnad-like, behind her streamed her hair.

The bridal couch of sad Proserpina In grim Hephæstus’ realm mine eyes beheld; The ravished bride bewailed her home afar— Her temples bound with Stygian asphodel.

I saw the vast Plutonian gardens, where That cursed pomegranate shed its deadly bloom, Whose fatal fruitage, banned from upper air Sad Ceres’ daughter till the seventh moon.

I saw the Pleiads, in their skyey tent, Bemoan their starry sister, dead and cold; His bow against her fierce Orion bent— Orion zoned with belt of fretted gold.

I saw the Avengers with viperean hair Above the palace roofs at Argos fly; The matricide Orestes shuddered there, Obscene with matted locks and haggard eye.

I saw the loaded tables of the Sun, By ancient Nilus’ orbëd fountains spread; Where wont of old the happy gods to come, Twelve days by long-lived Ethiops richly fed.

Phantoms of air exhaled by dark madjoon, And visionary fabrics dim and vast; Like vapors gliding o’er the autumnal moon, Before imagination’s eye they passed.