Endymion sleeps along the distant hills,
Calm in the cool clear kissing of the moon,
That all the far deep night with one long loving fills
And crystal light,
And silver shakes and spills,
Where down the smooth sward-slopes a runnel trills
Like green bemolten jewels; and the squills,
A starting here and there in slender height,
Tremble like twinkling stars with dew-drop light
Along his neck, where, lost in slumbering,
His sleep-slack finger ever curbs the string,
And bends his shepherd-had enclosing tight
His comely head; while in the silent night,
There at his fair foot white
Just slipt unheeding from his sandal-shoon,
Two blooms on one tall straight narcissus bend to left and right,
White in the silver moon,
And whisper a love-tune.
Under thy window in the dank grass deep
I've laid me down a-thinking, love, of thee;
The slim bell flowers and bending blades around me creep,
And overhead,
You lie, my love, asleep!
To sleep have I come hither, but to sleep
Unknown to thee or any; for in trill and cheep
The nightingales shall sweeter sing instead,
And calm the moonbeams creep along thy bed,
Till at the window thou shalt take thy stand,
Thy fair face slumbering, leaning on thy hand,
And all in the calm moon besilvered;
And gazing in the night, my love, thou'lt shed
Thy beauty in the world's deep drowsihed,
Flooding the distant hills, the full-leaved tree,
The stream, the wood, the world, the deep sky overhead,
Till all shall bend and murmur, love, with thee,
I' the full light, as they sleep,
Of that calm orb, thy beauty, that can sweep
Thro' the most secret cells of all deep things, and steep
Them through and through with love most tranquilly,
And love, asleep, as yet I sleep,
In me
Shall creep
That sweet strange wondrous consciousness of thee.
