WHEN Psyche from the granite brow forlorn
Leapt down she knew not whither, in despair
Under her falling feet she was aware
Of Zephyr: down thro' gulfs of sunlight borne
(An almond-blossom from the orchard torn),
Dropping she heard the eddies of the air
Sigh on her cheek and whisper in her hair.
Great pinions, coloured as the snows at morn,
(Poised on his diving head she dives) to left and right
Arose and fell, arose and floated in the light.

Faint-coloured far below the plain appears
A dawning Paradise undreamed of man;
Softlier past the living plummet ran
The push of ever-yielding atmospheres.
The heaven which the strange sky-vessel nears,
Takes clearer brilliance and a lesser span;
Now smells of Earth, now butterflies began
To meet her, when her sudden Zephyr veers:
She slips her perch, and settles like a flake on deep
Piled meadow-beds of grass, thick furred with flowers, asleep.

My soul had climbed the weary slopes of Thought
To that high edge where Thought no further leads,
And blind with such despair as thinking breeds,
Stared into unattempted seas of Naught;
When Music on her angel-pinions caught
The tearless brain, cold heart, and foot that bleeds:
Easy as rivers lapsing thro' their reeds
I plumb the golden gulf of Truth untaught;
And all the balmy zones of Contemplation past,
Decline on fields of Peace, a dreaming child at last.