V

     Now the youth was not ware of the beams
     With the grasses intertwined,
     For each thing seen, as in dreams,
     Came stepping to rear through his mind,
     Till it struck his remembered prayer
     To be witness of this which had flown
     Like a smoke melted thinner than air,
     That the vacancy doth disown. 
     And viewing a maiden, he thought
     It might now be morn, and afar
     Within him the memory wrought
     Of a something that slipped from the car
     When those, the august, moved by: 
     Perchance a scarf, and perchance
     This maiden.  She did not fly,
     Nor started at his advance: 
     She looked, as when infinite thirst
     Pants pausing to bless the springs,
     Refreshed, unsated.  Then first
     He trembled with awe of the things
     He had seen; and he did transfer,
     Divining and doubting in turn,
     His reverence unto her;
     Nor asked what he crouched to learn: 
     The whence of her, whither, and why
     Her presence there, and her name,
     Her parentage:  under which sky
     Her birth, and how hither she came,
     So young, a virgin, alone,
     Unfriended, having no fear,
     As Oreads have; no moan,
     Like the lost upon earth; no tear;
     Not a sign of the torch in the blood,
     Though her stature had reached the height
     When mantles a tender rud
     In maids that of youths have sight,
     If maids of our seed they be: 
     For he said:  A glad vision art thou! 
     And she answered him:  Thou to me! 
     As men utter a vow.

     VI

     Then said she, quick as the cries
     Of the rainy cranes:  Light! light! 
     And Helios rose in her eyes,
     That were full as the dew-balls bright,
     Relucent to him as dews
     Unshaded.  Breathing, she sent
     Her voice to the God of the Muse,
     And along the vale it went,
     Strange to hear:  not thin, not shrill: 
     Sweet, but no young maid’s throat: 
     The echo beyond the hill
     Ran falling on half the note: 
     And under the shaken ground
     Where the Hundred-headed groans
     By the roots of great AEtna bound,
     As of him were hollow tones
     Of wondering roared:  a tale
     Repeated to sunless halls. 
     But now off the face of the vale
     Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls
     Of the lake’s rock-head were gold,
     And the breast of the lake, that swell
     Of the crestless long wave rolled
     To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. 
     A morning of radiant lids
     O’er the dance of the earth opened wide: 
     The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids
     Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,
     Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: 
     There was milk, honey,