Tell me the witching tale again,

  For never has my heart or ear

Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,

  So pure to feel, so sweet to hear.

Say, Love, in all thy prime of fame,

  When the high heaven itself was thine;

When piety confest the flame,

  And even thy errors were divine;

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,

  A glory round thy temple spread?

Did ever lip's ambrosial air

  Such fragrance o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre

  The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed;—

But all her sighs were sighs of fire,

  The myrtle withered as she breathed.

Oh! you that love's celestial dream,

  In all its purity, would know,

Let not the senses' ardent beam

  Too strongly through the vision glow.

Love safest lies, concealed in night,

  The night where heaven has bid him lie;

Oh! shed not there unhallowed light,

  Or, Psyche knows, the boy will fly.

Sweet Psyche, many a charmed hour,

  Through many a wild and magic waste,

To the fair fount and blissful bower

  Have I, in dreams, thy light foot traced!

Where'er thy joys are numbered now,

  Beneath whatever shades of rest,

The Genius of the starry brow

  Hath bound thee to thy Cupid's breast;

Whether above the horizon dim,

  Along whose verge our spirits stray,—

Half sunk beneath the shadowy rim,

  Half brightened by the upper ray,[1]—

Thou dwellest in a world, all light,

  Or, lingering here, doth love to be,

To other souls, the guardian bright

  That Love was, through this gloom, to thee;

Still be the song to Psyche dear,

  The song, whose gentle voice was given

To be, on earth, to mortal ear,

  An echo of her own, in heaven.

[1] By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the soul between sensible and intellectual existence.