Upon the opposite shore there dwelt a youth,
  Whose nature’s woof was woven of good and ill—­
Whose stream of life flowed to the sea of truth,
  But in a devious course, round many a hill—­
Now lingering through a valley of delight,
  Where sweet flowers bloomed, and summer songbirds sung,
Now hurled along the dark, tempestuous night,
  With gloomy, treeless mountains overhung.

He sought the soul of Beauty throughout space,
  Knowledge he tracked through many a vanished age: 
For one he scanned fair Nature’s radiant face,
  And for the other, Learning’s shrivelled page. 
If Beauty sent some fair apostle down,
  Or Knowledge some great teacher of her lore,
Bearing the wreath of rapture and the crown,
  He knelt to love, to learn, and to adore.

Full many a time he spread his little sail,
  How rough the river, or how dark the skies,
Gave his light corrach to the angry gale,
  And crossed the stream to gaze on Ethna’s eyes. 
As yet ’twas worship, more than human love,
  That hopeless adoration that we pay
Unto some glorious planet throned above,
  Through severed from its crystal sphere for aye.

But warmer love an easy conquest won,
  The more he came to green Moyarta’s bowers;
Even as the earth, by gazing on the sun,
  In summer-time puts forth her myriad flowers. 
The yearnings of his heart—­vague, undefined—­
  Wakened and solaced by ideal gleams,
Took everlasting shape, and intertwined
  Around this incarnation of his dreams.

Some strange fatality restrained his tongue—­
  He spoke not of the love that filled his breast;
The thread of hope, on which his whole life hung,
  Was far too weak to bear so strong a test. 
He trusted to the future—­time, or chance—­
  His constant homage and assiduous care;
Preferred to dream, and lengthen out his trance,
  Rather than wake to knowledge and despair.

And thus she knew not, when the youth would look
  Upon some pictured chronicle of eld,
In every blazoned letter of the book
  One fairest face was all that he beheld: 
And where the limner, with consummate art,
  Drew flowing lines and quaint devices rare,
The wildered youth, by looking from the heart,
  Saw nought but lustrous eyes and waving hair.

He soon was startled from his dreams, for now—­
  ’Twas said, obedient to a heavenly call—­
His life of life would take the vestal vow,
  In one short month, within a convent’s wall. 
He heard the tidings with a sickening fear,
  But quickly had the sudden faintness flown,
And vowed, though heaven or hell should interfere,
  Ethna—­his Ethna—­should be his alone!

He sought his boat, and snatched the feathery oar—­
  It was the first and brightest morn of May: 
The white-winged clouds, that sought the northern shore,
  Seemed but Love’s guides, to point him out the way. 
The great old river heaved its mighty heart,
  And, with a solemn sigh, went calmly on;
As if of all his griefs it felt a part,
  But know they should be borne, and so had gone.