A Dream, After Reading Dante’s Episode of “Paolo and Francesca”

As Hermes once rook 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 in 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 grieved a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where ’mid 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.