We slept! Darkling we slept! Our busy schemes, Our cold mechanic world awhile was still; But O, their eyes are blinded even in dreams Who from the heavenlier Powers withdraw their will: Here did the dawn with purer light fulfil Thy happier eyes than ours, here didst thou see The quivering wonder-light in flower and dew, The quickening glory of the haunted hill, The Hamadryad beckoning from the tree. The Naiad from the stream; While from her long dark dream Earth woke, trembling with life, light, beauty, through and through.
And the everlasting miracle of things Flowed round thee, and this dark earth opposed no bar, And radiant faces from the flowers and springs Dawned on thee, whispering, _Knowest thou whence_ we _are_? Faintly thou heardst us calling thee afar As Hylas heard, swooning beneath the wave, Girdled with glowing arms, while wood and glen Echoed his name beneath that rosy star; And thy farewell came faint as from the grave For very bliss; but we Could neither hear nor see; And all the hill with _Hylas! Hylas!_ rang again.
But there were deeper love-tales for thine ears Than mellow-tongued Theocritus could tell: Over him like a sea two thousand years Had swept. They solemnized his music well! Farewell! What word could answer but farewell, From thee, O happy spirit, that couldst steal So quietly from this world at break of day? What voice of ours could break the silent spell Beauty had cast upon thee, or reveal The gates of sun and dew Which oped and let thee through And led thee heavenward by that deep enchanted way?
Yet here thou mad'st thy choice: Love, Wisdom, Power, As once before young Paris, they stood here! Beneath them Ida, like one full-blown flower, Shed her bloom earthward thro' the radiant air Leaving her rounded fruit, their beauty, bare To the everlasting dawn; and, in thy palm The golden apple of the Hesperian isle Which thou must only yield to the Most Fair; But not to Juno's great luxurious calm, Nor Dian's curved white moon, Gav'st thou the sunset's boon, Nor to foam-bosomed Aphrodite's rose-lipped smile.
Here didst thou make the eternal choice aright, Here, in this hallowed haunt of nymph and faun, They stood before thee in that great new light, The three great splendours of the immortal dawn, With all the cloudy veils of Time withdrawn Or only glistening round the firm white snows Of their pure beauty like the golden dew Brushed from the feathery ferns below the lawn; But not to cold Diana's morning rose, Nor to great Juno's frown Cast thou the apple down, And, when the Paphian raised her lustrous eyes anew,