Such was the rise of the beast in his pain,
Such was his falling to earth again;

Upward he shot, but he saw not his path,

Blinded with pepper, and blinded with wrath;

One struggle-one vain one-of pain and emotion ! And he shot back again, ‘like a bird of the ocean!' Long he lay in a trance that day,

And alas! he did not wake before

The cruel knight, with skill and might,
Had lopped and flayed the tail he wore.

Twelve hours by the chime he lay in his slime,

More utterly blind, I trow,

Than a Polypheme in the olden time,

Or a politician now.

He sped, as soon as he could see,

To the Paynim bowers of Rosalie ;

For there the dragon had hope to cure,
By the tinkling rivulets, ever pure,
By the glowing sun, and fragrant gale,
His wounded honour, and wounded tail!
He hied him away to the perfumed spot:

The little dwarfs clung-where the tail was not!

The damsel gazed on that young knight,

With something of terror, but more of delight;
Much she admired the gauntlets he wore,

Much the device that his buckler bore,

Much the feathers that danced on his crest,

But most the baldrick that shone on his breast.

She thought the dragon's pilfered scale

Was fairer far than the warrior's mail,

And she lifted it up with her weak white arm,
Unconscious of its hidden charm,

And round her throbbing bosom tied,

In mimicry of warlike pride.

Gone is the spell that bound her!

The talisman hath touched her heart,

And she leaps with a fearful and fawn-like start

As the shades of glamory depart―

Strange thoughts are glimmering round her;

Deeper and deeper her cheek is glowing,

Quicker and quicker her breath is flowing,

And her eye gleams out from its long dark lashes,

Fast and full, unnatural flashes;

For hurriedly and wild

Doth Reason pour her hidden treasures,

Of human griefs, and human pleasures,
Upon her new-found child.

And "oh!" she saith, "my spirit doth seem
To have risen to-day from a pleasant dream;
A long, long dream-but I feel it breaking!
Painfully sweet is the throb of waking;"
And then she laughed, and wept again:
While, gazing on her heart's first rain,
Bound in its turn by a magic chain,

The silent youth stood there : Never had either been so blest;

You that are young may picture the rest,

You that are young and fair.

Never before, on this warm land,

Came Love and Reason hand in hand.

When you are blest, in childhood's years,

With the brightest hopes and the lightest fears, Have you not wandered, in your dream,

Where a greener glow was on the ground,

And a clearer breath in the air around,

And a purer life in the gay sunbeam,
And a tremulous murmur in every tree,

And a motionless sleep on the quiet sea ?

And have you not lingered, lingered still,

All unfettered in thought and will,

A fair and cherished boy;

Until you felt it pain to part

From the wild creations of your art,

Until your young and innocent heart
Seemed bursting with its joy?

And then, oh then, hath your waking eye
Opened in all its ecstasy,

And seen your mother leaning o'er you,
The loved and loving one that bore you,

Giving her own, her fond caress,

And looking her eloquent tenderness?

Was it not heaven to fly from the scene

Where the heart in the vision of night had been,

And drink, in one o'erflowing kiss,

Your deep reality of bliss ?

Such was LILLIA's passionate madness,

Such the calm of her waking gladness.

Enough! my tale is all too long:
Fair children, if the trifling song,

That flows for you to-night,

Hath stolen from you one gay laugh,

Or given your quiet hearts to quaff

One cup of young delight,

Pay ye the rhymer for his toils

In the coinage of your golden smiles,

And treasure up his idle verse,

With the stories ye loved from the lips of your nurse.