To dwell with shadows of whilom romances;
To make one hour of a year of woes
And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances,
With love's lost face fair as a moon-white rose.
To shape from music and the scent of buds
Love's spirit and its presence of sweet fire,
Between the heart's wild burning and the blood's,
Is part of life and of the soul's desire.
III
There is a song to silence and the stars,
Between the forest and the temple's arches;
And down the stream of night, like nenuphars,
The tossing fires of the Mænads' torches.--
Here all my life waits lonely as the stars.--
Shall not one hour of all those hours suffice
For resignation God hath given as dower?
Between the summons and the sacrifice
One hour of love, th' eternity of an hour?
IV
The shrine is shattered and the bird is gone;
Dark is the house of music and of bridal:
The stars are stricken and the storm comes on;
Beneath a wreck of roses lies the idol,
Sad as the memory of a joy that's gone.--
To dream of perished gladness and a kiss,
Waking the last chord of Love's broken lyre,
Between remembering and forgetting, this
Is part of life and of the soul's desire.
THE NAIAD
She sits among the iris stalks
Of bubbling brooks; and leans for hours
Among the river's lily-flowers,
Or on their whiteness walks:
Above dark forest pools, gray rocks
Wall in, she leans with dripping locks,
And listening to the echo, talks
With her own face--Iothera.
There is no forest of the hills,
No valley of the solitude,
Nor fern nor moss, that may elude
Her searching step that stills:
She dreams among the wild-rose brakes
Of fountains that the ripple shakes,
And, dreaming of herself, she fills
The silence with "Iothera."
And every wind that haunts the ways
Of leaf and bough, once having kissed
Her virgin nudity, goes whist
With wonder and amaze.
There blows no breeze which hath not learned
Her name's sweet melody, and yearned
To kiss her mouth that laughs and says,
"Iothera, Iothera."
No wild thing of the wood, no bird,
Or brown or blue, or gold or gray,
Beneath the sun's or moon's pale ray,
That hath not loved and heard;
They are her pupils; she can say
No new thing but, within a day,
They have its music, word for word,
Harmonious as Iothera.
No man who lives and is not wise
With love for common flowers and trees,
Bee, bird, and beast, and brook, and breeze,
And rocks, and hills, and skies,--
Search where he will,--shall ever see
One flutter of her drapery,
One glimpse of limbs, or hair, or eyes
Of beautiful Iothera.
THE LIMNAD
I
The lake she haunts gleams mistily
Through sleepy boughs of melody,--
Lost 'mid lone hills beside the sea,
In tangled bush and brier:--
Where reflected sunsets write
Ghostly things in golden light;
Where, along the pine-crowned height,
Clouds of twilight, rosy white,
Build far towers of fire.
II
'Mid the rushes there that swing,
Flowering flags where voices sing
When night-winds are murmuring,
And the stars of midnight glitter;
Blossom-white, with purple locks,
Underneath the stars' still flocks,
In the dusky waves she rocks,
Rocks, and all the landscape mocks
With a song both sweet and bitter.
III
Soft it sounds, at first, as dreams
Filled with tears that fall in streams;
Then it soars, until it seems
Beauty's very self hath spoken;
And the woods grow silent quite,
Stars wax faint and flowers wane white;
And the nightingales that light
Near, or hear her through the night,
Die, their hearts with longing broken.
IV
Dark, dim, and sad o'er mournful lands,
White-throated stars heaped in her hands,
Like wildwood buds, the Twilight stands,
The Twilight, dreaming, lingers;
Listening where the Limnad sings
Witcheries, whose magic brings
A great moon from hidden springs,
Pale with amorous quiverings
Feet of fire and silvery fingers.
V
In the vales Auloniads,
On the mountains Oreads,
On the leas Leimoniads,
Whiter than the stars that glisten,
Pan, the Satyrs, Dryades,
Fountain-lovely Naiades,
Foam-lipped Oceanides,
Breathless 'mid their seas and trees,
Stay and look and lean and listen.
VI
Large-eyed, Siren-like she stands,
In the lake or on its sands,
And with rapture from the hands
Of the Night some stars are shaken;
To her song the rushes swing,
Lilies nod and ripples ring,
Lost in helpless listening--
These will wake who hear her sing,
But one mortal will not waken.
BEFORE THE TEMPLE
I
All desolate she sate her down
Upon the marble of the temple's stair.
You would have thought her, with her eyes of brown,
Flushed cheeks and hazel hair,
A Dryad dreaming there.
II
A priest of Bacchus passed, nor stopped
To chide her; deeming her--whose chiton hid
But half her bosom, and whose girdle dropped--
Some grief-drowned Bassarid,
The god of wine had chid.
III
With wreaths of woodland cyclamen
For Dian's shrine, a shepherdess drew near,
All her young thoughts on vestal beauty, when--
She dare not look for fear--
Behold the goddess here!
[Illustration:
That reed-slender girl whom Pan pursued Page 242
_Anemone_]
IV
Fierce lights on shields of bossy brass
And helms of bronze, next from the hills deploy
Tall youths of Argos. And she sees him pass,
Flushed with heroic joy,
On towards the siege of Troy.
THE RUE-ANEMONE
Under an oak-tree in a woodland, where
The dreaming Spring had dropped it from her hair,
I found a flower, through which I seemed to gaze
Beyond the world and see what no man dare
Behold and live--the myths of bygone days--
Diana and Endymion; and the bare,
Slim beauty of the boy whom Echo wooed;
And Hyacinthus, whom Apollo dewed
With love and death; and Daphne, ever fair;
And that reed-slender girl whom Pan pursued.
I stood and gazed and through it seemed to see
The Dryad dancing by the forest tree,
Her hair wild blown: the Faun, with listening ear,
Deep in the boscage, kneeling on one knee,
Watching the wandered Oread draw near,
Her wild heart beating like a honey-bee
Within a rose.--All, all the myths of old,
All, all the bright shapes of the Age of Gold,
Peopling the wonder-worlds of Poetry,
Through it I seemed in fancy to behold.
What other flower, that, fashioned like a star,
Draws its frail life from earth and braves the war
Of all the heavens, can suggest the dreams
That this suggests? in which no trace of mar
Or soil exists: where stainless innocence seems
Enshrined; and where, beyond our vision far,
That inaccessible beauty, which the heart
Worships as truth and holiness and art,
Is symbolized; wherein embodied are
The things that make the soul's immortal part.
ARTEMIS
Oft of the hiding Oread wast thou seen
At earliest morn, a tall, imperial shape,
High-buskined, dew-dripped, and on close, young curls,
Bright blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops
Caught from the dripping sprays of under-bosks,--
Kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed,--
Thy rosy cheek as far Aurora's fair,
Thy snowy shoulder Hebe-beautiful.
Oft did the shaggy hills and solitudes
Of Arethusa shout and ring and reel,
Reverberate and echo merrily,
Leap into sound with singing of thy hounds,
With the deep belling of thy noble hounds,
Big-mouthed and musical, that on the stag
Or bristling wild-boar furious grew in quest:
And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed,
Inviolable, with thy quivered crew,
Rushed, swinging on the wind free limbs and lithe,
And locks, all radiance, flung back to blow
And balm with spice the wine-sharp air of morn.
Ai me! their throats! their clarion-crystal throats,
That made the hills sing and the wood-ways dance,
As if to orphic strains, and gave them life.
Ai me! their bosoms' deepness and the firm,
Pure, happy beauty of their naked limbs,
That stormed the forest vacancies with light,
Swift daylight of their splendor, and made blow,
Within the glad sonorous solitudes,
Old germs of flowerets a century cold.
The woodland Naiad whispered by her rock;
The Hamadryad, limpid-eyed and wild,
Expectant rustled by her usual oak
And laughed in wonder; and mad Pan himself
Reeled piping fiercely down the dingled deeps,
With rollicking eye that rolled a brutish joy.
And did some unwed maiden, musing where
Her father's well, among the god-graced hills;
Bubbled and babbled, hear thy bugled cry,
O Huntress, she, while deep her dripping jar
Unheeded brimmed, vowed her virginity
To thee--her shorn hair at thy vestal feet.
But, ah! not when the garish daylight fills
The forests with far-swimming gold and green
Let me behold thee, goddess! but when dim
The slow night settles on the haunted wood
And walks in mystery; and the myriad stars
Maze heaven with fire; and the echoy waste,
Far off, far off, in murmurs palpitates
Unto the Limnad's voice, unmerciful,--
Or is 't some night-bird breaking with song its heart?--
Unmerciful and sad and bitter-sweet?--
Then come in all thy godhead, beautiful!
All beautiful and gentle, as thou cam'st
To lorn Endymion, who, in Lemnos once,
Lone in the wizard magic of the wood,
Wandered, a dreaming boy, unfriended, sad.--
It grew far off among the easy trees,
Thy pensive beauty, blossoming flower-like
Between the tree-trunks and the lacing limbs;
Bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy
And drunkenness of glory thus revealed.
He saw it all, from glorious face to feet--
The naked pearl of all thy loveliness,
Thy body's beauty, blended lily and rose,
Alone, uncompanied of handmaidens.
Like some rare, radiant fruit Hesperian,
Not to be plucked of gods or men, thou hung'st
Upon the boughs of heaven. Thy moonéd voice
Came silvering on his wistful ear, and sighed
With light like leaves that kiss and cling again.
And on such perilous beauty that must slay,--
The poisonous favor of thy godliness,--
Feasting his every sense through eyes and ears,
His soul exalted waxed and amorous,--
Like some young god who, draining Olympian bowls,
Grows drunk with nectar,--with immortal love;
And what remained, ah, what remained but death!
APHRODITE
Apollo never smote as lovely a strain,
When swan-necked Hebe stayed her nectared bowl
Among the circled and reclining gods,
To lend a listening ear and smile on him,
As that the Tritons blew on wreathéd horns
When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam,
In lovely labor, from its singing snow
Upheaved her dazzling form, like some white pearl,
Naked and fresh within its ocean shell,
Borne shoreward from its bed of golden sponge
And crimson coral by the mad monsoon.
Wind-rocked she swung, her white feet on the sea;
And music raved down the slant western winds:
With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed their conchs,
Where, breasting with white bosoms the green waves,
That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet,
Oceanids with dimple-dented palms
Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam,
Weaving a silver rainbow round her form.
Around her dolphins sparkled in the spray,
And Nereids sang, braiding their streaming locks,
Or flung them backward shimm'ring with bells of foam,
Till evening lit her loneliest, loveliest star,--
That passion-flower of the fields of heaven,--
Pale mirrored in the sheen of shadowy seas,--
That, like arrested music, o'er the caves
The Sirens haunt, hung deep on silent deep,--
When, in a hollow pearl, down moon-white waves,
The creatures of the ocean danced their queen
Unto an island, like a rosy mist
That glimmering dreamed upon the glimmering blue.
There on the silvery sands beside the sea,
Beneath the moon,--narcissus-white,--they met,
She naked as a star and crowned with stars,
Child of the airy foam and Queen of Love.
PERSEPHONE
O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge!
Thou bor'st her to the dreadful gulfs below,
And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades,
Queen of the fiery flood and iron realms,
Eternal torture and eternal pain.
On blossomed plains in Far Trinacria
A maiden,--the dark cascade of whose hair
Was deep as midnight circled and crowned with stars,--
Hair dark as rays that brighten with the moon,--
Went gathering flowers with the Oceanids,
Lily and rose and pale Narcissus,--who
Was Echo's passion once, a flower now
That stares forever in the lake's still glass,
Whose ripple breaks its image, flickering seen,--
As once with tears it broke beneath his eyes,--
With the fast-falling dew that fills its heart:
When suddenly there rose with iron wain,
With iron wain and steeds, a shape like death,
'Mid sallow smoke and sulphur and pale fires,
Its countenance ghastly, and its hair and eyes
Like the blue flame of sulphur: in its arms,
Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel
The mighty muscles lay, unto its breast,
Such as its arms, it drew her fragile form
As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy
With arms of winds drag to their black embrace
A fairy mist that flecks with white the summer,
With wings of shadeless white, and 'tis no more
Heaved on the rapture of the thunder's heart.
The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still;
With withered heads they bowed, and on the stream--
Where all the day it was their wont to stand
In silence gazing at their loveliness--
Laid their fair faces limp and shriveled white.
Flames whipped the air like fiery scorpions,
Blasting and burning all the fragrant myths
That haunt the dew and lair in bloom and breeze.
O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus!
In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers
For hiding her beneath their palms of snow:
Ask of that shell, that conch of twisted pearl,
Which, like a spirit of the singing sea,
Moans at your pallid feet made wet with spray:
Then, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves,
Mourn to the waters and the ribbéd sands,
The falseness of the god who grasps the storm.
DEMETER
Eternal pouring in her lonely path
The wells of sorrow lay. I see her now,--
Methinks I see her now,--an awful shape
Guiding her dragon-team in frenzied search
From Argive lands unto the jeweled shores
Of the remotest Ind where Usha's hand
Soothed her grief-shadowed brow with kindly touch,
And Savitar breathed sympathy from the skies
O'er uttermost regions of the faneless Brahm.
In melancholy search I see her roam
The Himalayas,--world-dividing,--pale
'Mid ice and snow, through mists and night and storm;
Then back again with that wild mother woe
Fueling the anguished fire of her eyes,--
Back where old Atlas groans beneath the world,
And the Cimmerian twilight weighs the soul.
Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales,
Where many a languid Philomela moaned
Her heart to rest with heartbreak melody.
I see her near Ionia's swelling seas
Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell,
Hollowing its spiral murmur to her ear,--
A pearly mouth against an ear of pearl,--
In hope some message of Persephone
It might impart; then finding all in vain,
In anguish and despair, cast it afar,
To watch the salt-spray flash, like some soft plume
Dropped from the wings of Eros, where it fell.
I see her take a flute of coral from
A listening Triton; and on Ithakan rocks
High seated at the starry close of day,--
When sad the moon rose from her salty couch,
Gazing with sorrow on her face of sorrow,--
Pipe pensive airs,--plaintive as Sirens sing
In streaming caves beneath the ocean wall,--
Till hoar Poseidon cleared his wrinkled front
And stilled his surgy clamors to a sigh.
This do I see, and more: Behold, with fear!
I see her 'mid the lonely groves of Crete,
Frighten the dun deer from th' o'ervaulted green
Of thickest boscage, searching every covert
With terror of her torches and her wail,
"Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines
Of mist-swathed Dicte shuddered through their miles,
The panther roared down in the stream-mad gorge,
And Echo shrieked from chasm to answering chasm,
"Persephone!" bewildered with her woe:
As wild as when she echoed the despair,
Dishevel-haired, of maidens, wailing borne,--
Athenian tribute,--to that King of Crete,
Great Minos, when the Minotaur they saw
Grim, crouching in his labyrinth of stone.
DIONYSOS
"Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io!
O Dionysos! Dionysos! ivy-crowned!
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!"
I slept; and dreamed a Mænad came to me:
A harp of hollow agate strung with gold
Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart
Under its gauze, through which the moonlight shone,
Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song.
"Ægeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps
Beneath the restless waves that sigh his name
Eternally at my dew-glistening feet.
Here 'twas he died, O Dionysos! here
The great king died for whom is named this sea.--
O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!
"With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang
Of silver cymbals, and the sound of flutes,
O pard-drawn youth, thou dist awake the world
To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine!
Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile
Grow purple with the murex of the wine
Cast from the fullness of Silenus' cup,
While yet the heavens of heat saw sarabands
Whirl 'mid the redness of the Libyan sands,
That drank the spilth of Bacchus, sparkling-spun
From the Bacchante bowl, a beaded red
O'er the slant edge, that twinkled in the sun,
The tiger sun fierce-glaring overhead.
"What made gold Horus smile with golden lips?
Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead
To Hell's profoundness?--He, who stayed to sip
One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup,
And, captive ever after, joined thy train?--
What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile,
Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's
Wild trebles follow as a roaring bull,
Far as the fanes of Indra; he who long
Was mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests?--
Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io!
The brimming purple of thy hollow gold
They tasted and, 'though gods, they worship'd too!
"Sad Echo sat once in a spiral cave;
She, from its sea-dyed labyrinth of rock,
Saw the long pageant dancing on the strand,
Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags,
And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head
The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried,
Till the gray god awoke, at first in rage;
Serened his face then; stretched a welcoming hand
With civil utterance for the Bacchus horn.
But Echo followed not; instead, she sits
Among her crags remembering that wild cry,
That nomad sound still haunting all her dreams,
Confusing all her speech, that naught can say
Save warring words bewildering her ears
Like waves reverberant in a deep sea-cave.
"Io! Bacchus! Bacchus! Io! Io!
See, the white stars, O Dionysos! see,
Have spilled their glittering globules, one by one,--
Like bubbles winking in the cup of night,--
Down the dark west behind the mountain chain.
Ægeus sleeps, lulled by my murmuring harp;
And I have sung thy triumph. Let me die!"
THE PAPHIAN VENUS
With anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips,
Within the sculptured stoa by the sea,
All day she waited while, like ghostly ships,
Long clouds rolled over Paphos: the wild bee
Hung in the sultry poppy, half asleep,
Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep.
White-robed she waited day by day; alone
With the white temple's shrined concupiscence,
The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne,
Binding all chastity to violence,
All innocent to lust that feels no shame--
Venus Mylitta born of filth and flame.
So must they haunt her marble portico,
The devotees of passion, passion-pale
As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow;
Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail,--
The gods shall bring across the Cyprian Sea,
And him elected to their mastery.
A priestess of the temple came, when eve
Blazed, like a satrap's triumph, in the west;
And watched her listening to the ocean's heave,
Dusk's golden glory on her face and breast,
And in her hair the rosy wind's caress,--
Pitying her dedicated tenderness.
When out of darkness night persuades the stars,
A dream shall bend above her saying, "Soon
A barque shall come with purple sails and spars,
Sailing from Tarsus 'neath a low white moon;
And thou shalt see one in a robe of Tyre
Facing toward thee like the god Desire.
"Rise then! as, clad in starlight, riseth night--
Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness!
So shalt thou see him, like the god Delight,
Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to press
Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before
Love's awful presence where ye shall adore."
Thus at her heart the vision entered in,
With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed,
And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin,
A starry splendor robed in amethyst,
Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam--
Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam.
So shall she dream until, near middle night,--
When on the blackness of the ocean's rim
The moon, like some war-galleon all alight
With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim,--
A shadow, with inviolate lips and eyes,
Shall rise before her speaking in this wise:
"So hast thou heard the promises of one,--
Of her, with whom the God of gods is wroth,--
For whom was prophesied at Babylon
The second death--Chaldæan Mylidoth!
Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair,
Hissing destruction in her heart and hair!
"Wouldst thou behold the vessel she would bring?--
A wreck! ten hundred years have smeared with slime:
A hulk! where all abominations cling,
The spawn and vermin of the seas of time:
Wild waves have rotted it, fierce suns have scorched,
Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have torched.
"Can lust give birth to love! The vile and foul
Be mother to beauty? Lo! can this thing be?--
A monster like a man shall rise and howl
Upon the wreck across the crawling sea,
Then plunge; and swim unto thee; like an ape,
A beast all belly.--Thou canst not escape!"
Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow;
And in the temple's porch she lay and wept,
Alone with night, the ocean, and her vow.
Then up the east the moon's full splendor swept,
And, dark between it--wreck or argosy?--
A sudden vessel far away at sea.
GARGAPHIE
"_Succinctæ sacra Dianæ._"--Ovid.
I
There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.
II
There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy utterance broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.
III
Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
Down its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale:
And the haunting nightingale
Sang unseen--the olden tale
All its hurt heart breaking.
IV
There the hazy serpolet,
Dewy cistus, blooming wet,
Blushed on bank and boulder:
There the cyclamen, as wan
As faint footsteps of the Dawn,
Carpeted the spotted lawn:
Where the nude nymph, dripping drawn,
Sloped a flower-white shoulder.
V
In the citrine shadow there
What tall presences and fair,
Godlike, lingered!--gracious
As the rock-rose there that grew:--
Delicate and dim as dew
Stepped from out the oaks, and drew
Faun-like forms to follow, who
Filled the forest spacious!
VI
Guarded that Bœotian
Valley so no foot of man
Soiled its silence holy
With profaning tread--save one,
The Hyantian: Actæon,
Who beheld but was undone
By Diana's wrath, that none--
'Though with magic moly,--
VII
Might escape.--That valley sleeps
Lost to us: enchantment keeps
Sacred still its banished
Bowers that no man may see,
Fountains that her deity
Haunts, and every rock and tree
Where her hunt goes swinging free
As in ages vanished.
THE FAUN
The joys that touched thee once, be mine!
The sympathies of sky and sea,
The friendship of each rock and pine,
That made thy lonely life, ah me!
In Tempe or in Gargaphie.
Such joy as thou didst feel when first,
On some wild crag, thou stood'st alone
And watched the mountain tempest burst,
With streaming thunder, lightning sown,
On Latmos or on Pelion.
Thy awe! when crowned with vastness, Night
And Silence ruled the deep's abyss;
And through dark leaves thou saw'st the white
Breasts of the starry maids who kiss
Pale feet of moony Artemis.
Thy dreams! when, breasting matted weeds
Of Arethusa, thou didst hear
The music of the wind-swept reeds;
And down dim forest-ways drew near
Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer.
Thy wisdom! that knew naught but love
And beauty, with which love is fraught;
The wisdom of the heart--whereof
All noblest passions spring--that thought
As Nature thinks, "All else is naught."
Thy hope! wherein To-morrow set
No shadow; hope that, lacking care
And retrospect, held no regret,
But bloomed in rainbows everywhere
Filling with gladness all the air.