Chapter 5

'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue, Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two. We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore, All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps, That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud, Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes. While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon; And as she rose the nightingales on sprays Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain Wailing far off around a ruined fane. And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing The spirits of the foam came whispering; And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves; Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray, Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play; Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze, Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas. 'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees, We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades; Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn With chilly fingers dewing all the skies, That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes. The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist, Half hidden in a bay of amethyst Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins. And stealing wily from a grove of pines The Oread in cincture of green vines, One twinkling foot half buried in the red Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed-- Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low, Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white, It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light. Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise, And expectation in her bright blue eyes, While slyly from a young oak coppice peers The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears. He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph, Diana sees, and on her wooded hills Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills. Already nearer glow the Oread's charms; To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms-- A senseless statue of white, weeping stone Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone. The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase, While the astonished Faun's bewildered face Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering, He bends above the sculpture of the spring.

We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm, Purpureal, graced us in that season calm; And it was life to thee and me and love With the fair myths below, our God above, To sail in golden sunsets and emerge In golden morns upon a fretless surge. But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too. I knew not how it came, but in a while Myself I found cast on an arid isle Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread, The seas in wrath and thunder overhead, Deep down in coral caverns my pale love, No myths below, no God, it seemed, above.

THE DEAD OREAD.

Her heart is still and leaps no more With holy passion when the breeze, Her whilom playmate, as before, Comes with the language of the bees, Sad songs her mountain ashes sing And hidden fountains' whispering.

Her calm, white feet, erst fleet and fast As Daphne's when a Faun pursued, No more will dance like sunlight past The dim-green vistas of the wood, Where ev'ry quailing floweret Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light Most beautiful and virginal, God-graceful and as godly white, And wild as beautiful withal, And hyacinthine curls that broke In color when a wind awoke.

The wild aromas weird that haunt Moist bloomy dells and solitudes About her presence seemed to pant, The happy life of all her moods; Ambrosial smiles and amorous eyes Whose luster would a god surprise.

Her grave be by a dripping rock, A mossy dingle of the hill, Remote from Bacchanals that mock, Wine-wild, the long, mad nights and still, Where no unhallowed Pan with lust May mar her melancholy dust.

APHRODITE.

Apollo never smote a lovelier strain, When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him, As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze, Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge And branching corals by the changed 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 the conch, Where, breasting with cold 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, Which wove a silver iris 'round her form. Where dolphins tumbling stained the garish arch Nerëides sang, braiding their wet locks, Or flung them streaming on the broken foam, Till evetide showed her loveliest of stars-- Lost passion-flower of the sinking sun-- In the cool sheen of shadowy waters deep, That moaned wild sea-songs at the Sirens' caves; Then in a hollow pearl, o'er moon-white waves, The creatures of the ocean danced their queen, Till Cytherea like a rosy mist Beneath the star rose blushing from the deep. On the pearled sands of a moon-glassing sea Beneath the moon, narcissus-like, 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! He bare her to the horrid gulfs below, And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades, Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms Of grating iron and the clank of chains.

On blossomed plains in far Trinacria A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars, Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon, She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale, 'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake, Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen, E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes. A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds 'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires; Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms, Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel The muscles rigid lay, unto its breast, Such as its arms, it rushed her fragile form As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy With arms of winds drag to their black embrace A fairy mist of white that flecks the summer With shadeless wings of gauze, and 'tis no more Heaved on the rapture of its thundering heart.

The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still With withered faces bowed, and on the stream-- Where all the day it was their wont to stand In silent sisterhood down-gazing at their charms-- Withered and limp and dead laid their fair brows. Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts.

O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus! In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms; Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell, Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea, Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray. But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves, Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands The falseness of the god who grasps the storm!

DEMETER.

Demeter sad! the wells of sorrow lay Eternal gushing in thy lonely path.

Methinks I see her now--an awful shape Tall o'er a dragon team in frenzied search From Argive plains unto the jeweled shores Of the remotest Ind, where Usha's hand Tinged her grief-cloven brow with kindly touch, And Savitar wheeled genial thro' the skies O'er palmy regions of the faneless Brahm.

In melancholy search I see her roam O'er the steep peaks of Himalayas keen With the unmellowed frosts of Boreal storms, Then back again with that wild mother woe Writ in the anguished fire of her eyes,-- Back where old Atlas groans 'neath weight of worlds, And the Cimmerian twilight glooms the soul. Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales, Where many a languid Philomela moaned The bursting sorrow of a bursting soul. I see her nigh Ionia's swelling seas Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell, And hark the mystery of its eery voice Float from the hollow windings of its curl, Then cast it far into the weedy sea To view the salt-spray flash, like one soft plume Dropped from the wings of Eros, 'gainst the flame Of Helios' car down-sloping toward his bath. I see her beg a coral flute of red From a tailed Triton; and on Ithakan rocks High seated at the starry death of day, When Selene rose from off her salty couch To smile a glory on her face of sorrow, Pipe forth sad airs that made the Sirens weep In their green caves beneath the sodden sands, And hoar Poseidon clear his wrinkled front And still his surgy clamors to a sigh.

This do I see, and more; ah! yes, far more: I see her, 'mid the lonely groves of Crete, The wild hinds fright from the o'ervaulted green Of thickest boscage, tangling their close covert, With horror of her torches and her wail, "Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines Of rugged Dicte shuddered thro' their cones, And Echo shrieked down in her deepest chasms A wild reply unto her wild complaint; As wild as when she voiced those maidens' woe, Athenian tribute to stern Minos, king, When coiling grim the Minotaur they saw Far in his endless labyrinth of stone.

DIONYSOS.

"O Dionysos! Dionysos! the ivy-crowned! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!"

Within my sleep a Maenad came to me: A harp of crimson agate strung with gold Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart 'Neath the white gauze, thro' which a moonlight shone, Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song.

"Aegeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps Pale 'neath the tumbling waves that sing his name Eternally at my dew-glist'ning feet. And so he died, O Dionysos! died! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!

"With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang Of silver cymbals clashed by Ethiopes swart, O, pard-drawn youth, thou didst awake the world To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine! Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile Grow purple in the radiance of the wine Cast from the richness of Silenus' cup, Whiles yet the heavens of heat saw dances wild Whirl mid the redness of the Libic sands, Which greedy drank the Bacchanalian draught Spun from the giddy bowl, a rose-tinged mist, O'er the slant edge, red twinkling in the eye Of brazen Ra, fierce turning overhead. What made gold Horus smile with golden lips? Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead To Hell's profoundness, and then stay to sip One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup? What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile, Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's Harsh trebles follow as a roaring bull, Far as the gleaming temples of Indra, And mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests? It was thy joys, sun-nourished fire of wine! The brimming purple of the hollow gold They tasted and they worshiped--gods themselves!

"Wan Echo sat once in a spiral shell; She, from its sea-dyed maziness of pearl, Saw the mixed 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 frore god shook many a billow curl, Serened his face and stretched a welcome hand With civil utt'rance for the Bacchus horn. But now there tarries in her eye-balls' disks That nomad troop, and naught her tongue may say Save jostling words that haunt her muffled ears Like feeble wave-beats in a deep sea-cave.

"Ah! the white stars, O Dionysos! now Have dropped their glittering blossoms slowly down Behind the snowy mountains in the West. Aegeus sleeps, hushed by my murmuring harp, And I have sung thy triumph; let me die!"

HACKELNBERG.

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm He rides beneath the sounding storm With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm Of hound and horn--a wonder, With his hunter black as night, Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light, And a stag as silver white Drives before, like mist, in flight, Glimmering 'neath the bursten thunder.

The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track, Long-howling hid in braken black; Around the forests reel and crack And mountain torrents tumble; And the spirits of the air Whistling whirl with scattered hair, Teeth that flash and eyes that glare, 'Round him as he chases there With a noise of rains that rumble.

From thick Thuringian thickets growl Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul; And close before him a stritch-owl Wails like a ghost unquiet: Then the clouds aside are driven And the moonlight, stormy striven. Falls around the castle riven Of the Dumburg, and the heaven Maddens then with blacker riot.

THE LIMNAD.

I.

The lake she haunts lies dreamily 'Neath sleepy boughs of melody, And far away an olden sea, An olden sea booms mellow; And the sunset's glamours smite Its clean water with strong light Wov'n to wondrous flowers, where fight Breezy blue and winking white, Ruby red and tarnished yellow.

II.

'Mid green rushes there that swing, Flowering flags where voices sing When low winds are murmuring, Murmuring to stars that glitter; Blossom-white with purple locks, 'Neath unfolded starry flocks, In the dusky waves she rocks, Rocks and all the landscape mocks With a song most sweet and bitter.

III.

Low it comes like sighs in dreams; Tears that fall in burning streams; Then a sudden burst of beams, Beams of song that soar and wrangle, Till the woods are taken quite, And red stars are waxen white, Lilies tall, bowed left and right, Gasp and die with very might Of the serpent notes that strangle.

IV.

Dark, dim, and sad on mournful lands White-throated stars heaped in her hands, Like wild-wood buds, the Twilight stands, The Twilight standing lingers, Till the Limnad coming sings Witcheries whose beauty brings A great moon from hidden springs, Mad with amorous quiverings, Feet of fire and silver fingers.

V.

In the vales Auloniads, On the mountains Oreads, On the meads Leimoniads, That in naked beauty glisten; Pan and Satyrs, Dryades, Fountain-lisping Naiades, Foam-lipped Oceanides, Breathless 'mid their seas or trees, Stay mad sports to look and listen.

VI.

Large-limbed, Egypt-eyed she stands-- Night on dim and ghostly lands, And in rapture from her hands Some wild molten stars are shaken. Let her stand and rushes swing; Let lank flags dip murmuring, Low, lost winds come like a wing; _They_ will waken though she sing, But one mortal ne'er will waken.

THE MERMAID.

The moon in the East is glowing; I sit by the moaning sea; The mists down the sea are blowing, Down the sea all dewily.

The sands at my feet are shaking, The stars in the sky are wan; The mists for the shore are making, With a glimmer drifting on.

From the mist comes a song, sweet wailing In the voice of a love-lorn maid, And I hear her gown soft trailing As she doth lightly wade.

The night hangs pale above me Upon her starry throne, And I know the maid doth love me Who maketh such sweet moan.

From out the mist comes tripping A Mermaiden full fair, Across the white sea skipping With locks of tawny hair.

Her locks with sea-ooze dripping She wrings with a snowy hand; Her dress is thinly clipping Two breasts which perfect stand.

Oh, she was fair as the heaven On an autumnal eve, And my love to her was given When I saw how she did grieve.

Amort o'er the sea came speeding This sea sprite samite-clad, And my heart for love was bleeding, But its beating I forbade.

On the strand where the sand was rocking She stood and sang an air, And the winds in her hair kept locking Their fingers cool and bare.

Soft in her arms did she fold me, While sweet and low she moaned; Her love and her grief she told me, And the ocean sighed and groaned.

But I stilled my heart's wild beating, For I knew her love was dim; Full coldly received her greeting, Tho' my life burnt in each limb.

In my ear right sweet she was sighing With the voice of the pink-veined shells; Her arms 'round my neck kept tying, And gazed in mine eyes' deep wells.

With her kisses cold did she woo me, But I dimmed my heart's wild beat; With the stars of her eyes did she sue me, But their passion did mine defeat.

With the cloud of her sea-dipped tresses She veiled her beautiful face;-- And oh! how I longed for her kisses And sighed for her soft embrace!

But out in the mist she went wailing When the dawn besilvered the night, With her robes of samite trailing In the foam-flowers sad and white.

Like a spirit grieved went moaning In a twilight over the sea, And it seemed the night was groaning, And my heart beat wild in me.

But I hushed my heart's fierce beating, For a Mermaid false was she; Yet I sighed at her faintly fleeting Across the dim, dark sea.

The moon all withered is glowing, The mist and she are gone; My heart to ice is growing, And I sob at the coming dawn.

THE PUNISHMENT OF LOKE.

The gods of Asaheim, incensed with Loke, A whirlwind yoked with thunder-footed steeds, And, carried thus, boomed o'er the booming seas, Far as the teeming wastes of Jotunheim, To punish Loke for all his wily crimes.

They found him sitting nigh a mountain-force, Which flashing roared from crags of ribbed snow, Lamenting strange and weird in rushing notes Of the old Strömkarl, who therein smote a harp And sang in mystic syllables of runes. For 'tis the wild man's harp and voice you hear: He sits behind the crackling cataract Within a grotto dim of mist and foam, His long, thin beard, white as the flying spray Flung to the midnight in a sounding cave By the blind fish that leap against the winds; Gemmed with the large dews of the cataract, Swings in the sucking breeze, and swinging beats Time to his harp's strains quav'ring soft and sad Beneath the talons of his pale, lean hand. And all the waters, leaping, tingling shake Like shivering stars within the frozen skies, When as the Giants of Frost rule o'er the deep, And nip their buds with fingers hoar of ice.

Here banished found they mischief-making Loke Beneath the faint arch of young Bifrost sate, His foxy face between large, naked knees; Deep, wily eyes fixed on the darting fish In seeming thought, but aye one corner wan Flashed at the Asas where they clustered fair, Soft on a mountain's aged locks of snow, Their tawny tresses ruddy in the wind.

Then great-limbed Thor sprang wind-like forth:-- Red was his beard forked with the livid light, That clings among the tempest's locks of bale, Or fillets her tumultuous temples black. And drops with wild confusion on the hills; And thro' his beard, like to the storm's strong voice, His sullen words were strained, and when he spake The oldest forests bowed their crowns of leaves, And barmy skulls of mead half-raised were stayed Within Valhalla, and heroes great were dumb.

As when, the horror of the spear-shock o'er, And all the plains and skies of Thule are gorged With gore and screams of those that fight or die, The Valkyries in their far-glimmering helms Flash from the windy sunset's mists of red Unto the chalk-faced dead,--whose beaten casques And sea-swol'n shields, with sapless, red-hewn limbs, Wave 'mid the dead-green billows, stormy-browed, That roar along the Baltic's wintry coast, And wail amid the iron-circled coves,-- To cull dead heroes for the hall of shields,-- Where yells the toast and rings the tournament,-- A dumbness falls upon the shattered field; The clinging billows 'mid the restless dead Moan o'er their wide-stretched eyes and glassy sleep; And all the blood-blurred banners, gustless, dark Hard ashen faces waiting for the choice.

The thunderer did Loke shrewd ensnare, Incensed for pristine evil wrought on him. When erst dark Loke deflowered his spouse, fair Sif The blue eyed, of her golden, baby locks. Him the Asas dragged beneath a burning mount Into a cavern black, by earthquakes rent When Earth was young to heave her spawn of Trolls, The vermin which engendered in the corpse Of Ymer huge, whose flesh did make the world. Here where the stars ne'er shone, nor nature's strains Of legendary woodlands, peaks, and streams Ere came, they pinned him supine to the rocks, Whose frigid touch filed at his brittle bones, And tore a groan from lips of quiv'ring froth, That made the warty reptiles cold and huge Hiss from their midnight lairs and blaze great eyes.

Lone in the night he heard the white bear roar From some green-glancing berge that stemmed dark seas With all its moan of torrents foaming down The ice-crags of its crystal mountain crests. And 'neath the firry steep a wild swine shrieked, And fought the snarling wolf; his midriff ripped With spume-flaked ivories where the moss was brok'n Far down within the horror of a gorge; And once he saw souls of dead mortals whirl With red-strown hair within the Arctic skies, And all his stolid face was eddied o'er By one faint smile, which grimly flash'd and pass'd, And he knew not its stonyness had changed. And all was rock above him, rock beneath: And all the clammy crawling things that spat Black venom at him from deep dens of rock, And that swart boundless flood of flowing death, Which with its sooty spray clung to a cliff And slid beside his marble gaze, to him Were as the rock that curled above and hung; Were as the rock that spread beneath and pierced; For as to the blind to him were lidless eyes.