XII

     They caught her up, twirling:  they leapt between-whiles: 
     The fiddler flickered with laughter: 
     Profanely they flew down the awful aisles,
     Where I went sliding after.

     XIII

     Down the awful aisles, by the fretted walls,
     Beneath the Gothic arches:-
     King Skull in the black confessionals
     Sat rub-a-dub-dubbing his marches.

     XIV

     Then the silent cold stone warriors frowned,
     The pictured saints strode forward: 
     A whirlwind swept them from holy ground;
     A tempest puffed them nor’ward.

     XV

     They shot through the great cathedral door;
     Like mallards they traversed ocean: 
     And gazing below, on its boiling floor,
     I marked a horrid commotion.

     XVI

     Down a forest’s long alleys they spun like tops: 
     It seemed that for ages and ages,
     Thro’ the Book of Life bereft of stops,
     They waltzed continuous pages.

     XVII

     And ages after, scarce awake,
     And my blood with the fever fretting,
     I stood alone by a forest-lake,
     Whose shadows the moon were netting.

     XVIII

     Lilies, golden and white, by the curls
     Of their broad flat leaves hung swaying. 
     A wreath of languid twining girls
     Streamed upward, long locks disarraying.

     XIX

     Their cheeks had the satin frost-glow of the moon;
     Their eyes the fire of Sirius. 
     They circled, and droned a monotonous tune,
     Abandoned to love delirious.

     XX

     Like lengths of convolvulus torn from the hedge,
     And trailing the highway over,
     The dreamy-eyed mistresses circled the sedge,
     And called for a lover, a lover!

     XXI

     I sank, I rose through seas of eyes,
     In odorous swathes delicious: 
     They fanned me with impetuous sighs,
     They hit me with kisses vicious.

     XXII

     My ears were spelled, my neck was coiled,
     And I with their fury was glowing,
     When the marbly waters bubbled and boiled
     At a watery noise of crowing.

     XXIII

     They dragged me low and low to the lake: 
     Their kisses more stormily showered;
     On the emerald brink, in the white moon’s wake,
     An earthly damsel cowered.

     XXIV

     Fresh heart-sobs shook her knitted hands
     Beneath a tiny suckling,
     As one by one of the doleful bands
     Dived like a fairy duckling.

     XXV

     And now my turn had come—­O me! 
     What wisdom was mine that second! 
     I dropped on the adorer’s knee;
     To that sweet figure I beckoned.