And first the chillness of the mountain stream
Smote on my brow, and then I seem'd to hear
Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears,
Who with his head below the surface dropt,
Listens the dreadful murmur indistinct
Of the confused seas, and knoweth not
Beyond the sound he lists: and then came in
O'erhead the white light of the weary moon,
Diffused and molten into flaky cloud.
Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to me
Him who should own that name? or had my fancy
So lethargised discernment in the sense,
That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes,
Warping their nature, till they minister'd
Unto her swift conceits? 'Twere better thus
If so be that the memory of that sound
With mighty evocation, had updrawn
The fashion and the phantasm of the form
It should attach to. There was no such thing.--
It was the man she loved, even Lionel,
The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel,
All joy; who drew the happy atmosphere
Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears,
To him the honey dews of orient hope.
Oh! rather had some loathly ghastful brow,
Half-bursten from the shroud, in cere cloth bound,
The dead skin withering on the fretted bone,
The very spirit of Paleness made still paler
By the shuddering moonlight, fix'd his eyes on mine
Horrible with the anger and the heat