The poem
As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So played, so charmed, so conquered, 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 grieved a 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 kissed, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.