And where the little flowers of her breast
Just brake into their milky blossoming,
This
murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,
Pierced and struck deep in
horrid chambering,
And ploughed a
bloodyfurrow with its dart,
And dug a long red road, and cleft with
winged death her heart.
Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry
On the boy's body fell the Dryad maid,
Sobbing for
incomplete virginity,
And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,
And all the pain of things unsatisfied,
And the bright drops of
crimson youth crept down her throbbing
side.
Ah!
pitiful it was to hear her moan,
And very
pitiful to see her die
Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
The joy of
passion, that dread mystery
Which not to know is not to live at all,
And yet to know is to be held in death's most
deadly thrall.
But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
Who with Adonis all night long had lain
Within some
shepherd's hut in Arcady,
On team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
From
mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,
And when low down she spied the
hapless pair,
And heard the Oread's faint
despairing cry,
Whose
cadence seemed to play upon the air
As though it were a viol, hastily
She bade her
pigeons fold each straining plume,
And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous
doom.
For as a
gardener turning back his head
To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows
With
carelessscythe too near some flower bed,
And cuts the
thornypillar of the rose,
And with the flower's loosened loneliness
Strews the brown mould; or as some
shepherd lad in wantonness
Driving his little flock along the mead
Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide
Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede
And made the gaudy moth forget its pride,
Treads down their brimming golden chalices
Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages;
Or as a schoolboy tired of his book
Flings himself down upon the reedy grass
And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,
And for a time forgets the hour glass,
Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way,
And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay.
And Venus cried, 'It is dread Artemis
Whose bitter hand hath
wrought this cruelty,
Or else that mightier maid whose care it is
To guard her strong and stainless majesty
Upon the hill Athenian, - alas!
That they who loved so well unloved into Death's house should
pass.'
So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl
In the great golden
waggon tenderly
(Her white
throat whiter than a moony pearl
Just threaded with a blue vein's tapestry
Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast
Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)
And then each
pigeon spread its milky van,
The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
And like a cloud the
aerial caravan
Passed over the AEgean silently,
Till the faint air was troubled with the song
From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.
But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
Where the wide stair of orbed
marble dips
Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
And passed into the void, and Venus knew
That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue,
And bade her servants carve a cedar chest
With all the wonder of this history,
Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest
Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky
On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun
Pipes in the
noonday, and the
nightingale sings on till dawn.
Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere
The morning bee had stung the daffodil
With tiny
fretful spear, or from its lair
The waking stag had leapt across the rill
And roused the ouzel, or the
lizard crept
Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.
And when day brake, within that silver shrine
Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,
Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
That she whose beauty made Death amorous
Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,
And let Desire pass across dread Charon's icy ford.
III
In
melancholy moonless Acheron,
Farm for the
goodly earth and
joyous day
Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun
Weighs down the apple trees, nor
flowery May
Chequers with
chestnut blooms the
grassy floor,
Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more,
There by a dim and dark Lethaean well
Young Charmides was lying; wearily
He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,
And with its little rifled treasury
Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream,
And watched the white stars
founder, and the land was like a dream,
When as he gazed into the
watery glass
And through his brown hair's curly tangles scanned
His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass
Across the mirror, and a little hand
Stole into his, and warm lips timidly
Brushed his pale cheeks, and
breathed their secret forth into a
sigh.
Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw,
And ever nigher still their faces came,
And nigher ever did their young mouths draw
Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame,
And
longing arms around her neck he cast,
And felt her throbbing bosom, and his
breath came hot and fast,
And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss,
And all her maidenhood was his to slay,
And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss
Their
passion waxed and waned, - O why essay
To pipe again of love, too venturous reed!
Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead.
Too venturous poesy, O why essay
To pipe again of
passion! fold thy wings
O'er
daring Icarus and bid thy lay
Sleep
hidden in the lyre's silent strings
Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill,
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho's golden quid!
Enough, enough that he whose life had been
A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,
Could in the loveless land of Hades glean
One scorching
harvest from those fields of flame
Where
passion walks with naked unshod feet
And is not wounded, - ah! enough that once their lips could meet
In that wild throb when all existences
Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy
Which dies through its own
sweetness and the stress
Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone
Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne
Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone.
Poem: Les Silhouettes
The sea is flecked with bars of grey,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.
Etched clear upon the pallid sand
Lies the black boat: a sailor boy
Clambers
aboard in
careless joy
With laughing face and gleaming hand.
And
overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky
upland grass
The young brown-
throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.
Poem: La Fuite De La Lune
To outer senses there is peace,
A
dreamy peace on either hand
Deep silence in the
shadowy land,
Deep silence where the shadows cease.
Save for a cry that echoes shrill
From some lone bird disconsolate;
A corncrake
calling to its mate;
The answer from the misty hill.
And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her
sickle from the lightening skies,
And to her sombre
cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
Poem: The Grave Of Keats
Rid of the world's
injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No
cypress shades his grave, no
funeral yew,
But gentle violets
weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water - it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.
ROME.
Poem: Theocritus - A Villanelle
O
singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state;
O Singer of Persephone!
Simaetha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?
Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;
O Singer of Persephone!
And still in
boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?