| |
| MOON-CURVES of shore, and promontories and isles; | |
| A many-purpled sea flowing in and round; | |
| Wrecks of antiquity and yet elder myth; | |
| A rubbish, half on land and half in sea, | |
| Of Rome’s once sumptuous seaside luxury; | 5 |
| Phlegræan fields, where Titan force still heaves | |
| The uncertain bases of the vernal hills; | |
| Volcanic bowls, smouldering and boiling yet, | |
| Or brimmed with cool oblivion of the wave; | |
| A ghastly tunnel in the sunny cliff | 10 |
| Of one fair lake that bears Avernus’ name; | |
| A narrow chamber of Cimmerian gloom | |
| And Phlegethonic steam (the Sibyl’s grot); | |
| A green hill, crowned with venerable walls | |
| Of an Acropolis, and a lonely shaft | 15 |
| Of fluted Doric, where Apollo’s fane | |
| (The Sibyl’s lover erst and tutelar god) | |
| Was reared by Dædalus, hither voyaging | |
| With wings, as fabled, or invented sails; | |
| And the hill honey-combed with labyrinths | 20 |
| Of caverns, opening on the sunset sea | |
| (The hundred mouths of Sibylline oracles); | |
| The Acherusian lake; the Elysian fields, | |
| Clothed in the delicate atmosphere of spring, | |
| Sprouting with young vines, redolent of the fruit | 25 |
| And flower of orange, true Hesperian gold, | |
| And the wide whisper of the violet; | |
| A round and vaulted ruin, temple or bath | |
| In times imperial, where two women danced | |
| The tarantella to a tambourine, | 30 |
| That echo made orchestral,—one a girl, | |
| Like a Bacchante in abandonment | |
| To her own grace, with pure Hellenic face, | |
| And plash of blue-black hair, and flashing eyes; | |
| And one a weird sexagenarian crone,— | 35 |
| Types of the Sibyl in her youth and age;— | |
| These reminiscences of a long day | |
| By Baiæ’s and more ancient Cumæ’s shore | |
| Set me to dreaming of the mystic maid | |
| That sold the books to Tarquin. Me she led | 40 |
| To no ancestral and prophetic shades, | |
| But through the gates of Sleep, ivory or horn, | |
| She brought me, with the scent of roses dead, | |
| One Sibylline leaf,—a poem of her youth, | |
| Set to love-music by the Lyric god. | 45 |
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