Ah, did men feign you once, triumphant Sirens,
Omnipotent in your lure
On a far spice-island over legendary surges
Singing, and divine you with the famished eyes of mariners,
Listen in a trance to your voices, but listen
In a dream secure?
Lost amid strange and hungry waters
They fabled the storm-worn sailor stung
By a vision of arms outstretched at the end of the world,—
Eternal woman, wonderful, with a bosom
Heaved as with love, and with warm, white eyelids
Over eyes cruel and young.
From those voluptuous throats, magical throats,
As out of a coral-lipped, an ivory-coloured
Dazzling flower, tormenting sweetness floats,
Sweetness of voices, odour of strange, strange longing
Felt on the flesh like trail of perfumed hair,
In sound that stole like soft arms round the soul
Drawn thither and inescapably aware
Of nothing but the extreme ache to press
Lips on those lips, that thirst to suck the breath,
The heart’s blood, into theirs, till eyes grow dull,
Till lips be lips no longer, and only a skull
Roll from your feast of death,
O sated Sirens!
But what if it be that fond perfidious Voices
With different music lure
Even us who have cast far from us the fables of old?
If the pride of our quest undo us, and they enchant us
Simple as those lost mariners, but no longer
In dream secure?
If not with sorcery of song in a scarlet mouth
And with eyes of desire
You ensnare the easy senses and perishing flesh,
But with spiritual lure you hunger to entice us
Beyond the borders of knowledge, O evilly enamoured,
O terrible choir?
If shadowy at the end of time you wait,
Wooing subtly the while Man’s spirit, tempted
On ever more extravagant quest, and bait
His blood with charm of secrecy and peril,
Ay, and waylay the longings of his mind,
Yielding by dear degrees what he exults to seize,
Until he glows to seem the unconfined
Master of earth, the world’s sole will, but only
That you may taste his glory, spent and shared,
Before you press upon his lips the last
Kiss of annihilation, and he be cast
Into the void prepared,
Malignant Sirens!