Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Asia: Vols. XXI–XXIII. 1876–79.

Asia Minor: Miletus

Catullian Hendecasyllables

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

HEAR, my beloved, an old Milesian story!—

High, and embosomed in congregated laurels,

Glimmered a temple upon a breezy headland;

In the dim distance amid the skyey billows

Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had placed it.

From the far shores of the bleak resounding island

Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,

Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,

Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes

Up to the groves of the high embosomed temple.

There in a thicket of dedicated roses,

Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,

Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,

Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,

And with invisible pilotage to guide it

Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor

Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.