his bosom by the lovely stranger.

Soon the sound smote against a pinnacle
Which someway down the mountain had just caught
The radiance of the morning, and now stood
A ruby palace on a crystal base,
With emrald towers and columns sapphire-hued:
While at the summons, swift was lifted up
A shining net-work from behind the columns,
And out there flew two fair, unearthly sprites,
With wings like birds of Paradise, and bodies
Of shape uncertain; for so swiftly shifted
Their rainbow hues amid enwreathing mists,
That OLIVE likened them to those vagaries
Born to the eyes that gaze upon the spray
Of cataracts dashing in the sun. Their flying
Made music like the flowing on of streams,
They came and hovered in the air before her,
While she regarded them with timid looks
Of fear and pleasure, seeing not their features,
But floating hair of gold, and beamy brightness
As of white foreheads and blue, humid eyes.
Next moment she was lifted from the earth,
Encircled, as it were, by many rainbows,
And rushing, bird-like, through the airy space:
While a monotonous, soft and sleepy humming
Rose all around and filled her drowsy ears.
Brief time it was, 'till, with bewildered eyes,
She saw her fairies vanish in a mist,
Floating away in music, while she stood
Alone, far down the mountain opposite
The side that with such toil she just had climbed.
She stood alone--and where? the roses shrank
From her wan cheeks to view her new distress,--
Before her a dark chasm, and above her
A crowd of close and overhanging rocks,
All dripping, black, and hopelessly down-leant.
A glimmering hope now broke upon her sense--
Seeing an arch, and, far beyond, the gleam
Of lights that from some cavern stole away.
Under the arch she passed and found herself
Walking an ever-widening vista down,
Fading from twilight to auroral glows
And brightening into more than noon-day breadth
And gorgeousness of light, until she paused
Beneath the grand arch of that grand succession,
Standing amazed, one slender hand upheld
Shading her eyes, half blinded by that view
Of Arctic-Nature and of Arctic-Art.
In limitless magnificence the cave
Before her spread, a world within a world.

She entered in, like Eve in Paradise
Searching for Adam; and yet, oft beguiled