On a Dream

As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes; And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day; But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.