Some, with languors of waved arms, Fluctuous oared their flexile way;Some were borne half resupine On the aerial hyaline, Their fluid limbs and rare array Flickering on the wind, as quivers Trailing weed in running rivers;And others, in far prospect seen, Newly loosed on this terrene, Shot in piercing swiftness came, With hair a-stream like pale and goblin flame.
As crystelline ice in water, Lay in air each faint daughter;Inseparate (or but separate dim)
Circumfused wind from wind-like vest, Wind-like vest from wind-like limb.
But outward from each lucid breast, When some passion left its haunt, Radiate surge of colour came, Diffusing blush-wise, palpitant, Dying all the filmy frame.
With some sweet tenderness they would Turn to an amber-clear and glossy gold;Or a fine sorrow, lovely to behold, Would sweep them as the sun and wind's joined flood Sweeps a greening-sapphire sea;Or they would glow enamouredly Illustrious sanguine, like a grape of blood;Or with mantling poetry Curd to the tincture which the opal hath, Like rainbows thawing in a moonbeam bath.
So paled they, flushed they, swam they, sang melodiously.
Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways;Weave with suave float their waved way, And colours take of holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia;And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with me this burthen, For singing to Sylvia.
5.
Then, through those translucencies, As grew my senses clearer clear, Did I see, and did I hear, How under an elm's canopy Wheeled a flight of Dryades Murmuring measured melody.
Gyre in gyre their treading was, Wheeling with an adverse flight, In twi-circle o'er the grass, These to left, and those to right;All the band Linked by each other's hand;Decked in raiment stained as The blue-helmed aconite.