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ered him to walk on empty air. Then he was dazzled by a sudden blaze, In vast palace filled with reveling folk. Cunningly pictured on the ivory walls Were rolling hills, cool lakes, and boscage green, And all the summer landscape's various pomp. The precious canopy aloft was carved In semblance of the pleached forest trees, Enameled with the liveliest green, wherethrough A light pierced, more resplendent than the day. O'er the pale, polished jasper of the floor Of burnished metal, fretted and embossed With all the marvelous story of her birth Painted in prodigal splendor of rich tincts, And carved by heavenly artists,--crystal seas, And long-haired Nereids in their pearly shells, And all the wonder of her lucent limbs Sphered in a vermeil mist. Upon the throne She took her seat, the knight beside her still, Singing on couches of fresh asphodel, And the dance ceased, and the flushed revelers came In glittering phalanx to adore their queen. Beautiful girls, with shining delicate heads, Crested with living jewels, fanned the air With flickering wings from naked shoulders soft. Then with preluding low, a thousand harps, And citherns, and strange nameless instruments, Sent through the fragrant air sweet symphonies, And the winged dancers waved in mazy rounds, With changing lustres like a summer sea. Fair boys, with charming yellow hair crisp-curled, And frail, effeminate beauty, the knight saw, But of strong, stalwart men like him were none. He gazed thereon bewitched, until the hand Of Venus, erst withdrawn, now fell again Upon his own, and roused him from his trance. He looked on her, and as he looked, a cloud Auroral, flaming as at sunrising, Arose from nothing, floating over them In luminous folds, like that vermilion mist Penciled upon the throne, and as it waxed In density and brightness, all the throng Of festal dancers, less and less distinct, Grew like pale spirits in a vague, dim dream, And vanished altogether; and these twain, Shut from the world in that ambrosial cloud, Now with a glory inconceivable, Vivid and conflagrant, looked each on each. All hours came laden with their own delights In that enchanted place, wherein Time Knew no divisions hars
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