Chapter 2

The water heaves and falls, Like breasts with passion's breath. The breeze insistent calls To me, and murmureth:

_"Come to my pearly bed! My ocean arms shall slip About thee: salt shall spread To honey on thy lip!_

_Oh, let the billows link Above us! Thou shalt, warm, From cup of kisses drink Oblivion of the storm!"_

Thus sighs the glance that sweeps From out those sea-blue gates, Till heart down treacherous deeps The hymen consummates.

THE TOREADOR'S SERENADE

RONDALLA

Child with airs imperial, Dove with falcon's eyes for me Whom thou hatest,--come I shall Underneath thy balcony!

There, my foot upon the stone, I shall twang my chords with grace, Till thy window-pane hath shone With thy lamplight and thy face.

Let no lad with his guitar Strum adown the bordering ways. Mine the road to watch and bar, Mine alone to sing thy praise.

Let the first my courage brave. He shall lose his ears, egad! Who shall howl his love and rave In a couplet good or bad.

Restless doth my dagger lie. Come! who'll venture its rebuff? Who would wear for every sigh Blood's red flower upon his ruff?

Blood grows weary of its veins; For it yearns to be displayed. Night is ominous with rains. Haste, ye cowards, back to shade!

On, thou braggart, else aroint! Well thy forearm cover thou. On! and with my dagger's point Let me write upon thy brow.

Let them come, alone, in mass: Firm of foot I bide my place. For thy glory, as they pass, Would I slit each paltry face.

O'er the gutter ere thy clear, Snowy feet shall be defiled, By the Rood! a bridge I'll rear With the bones of gallants wild.

I would slay, thy love to wear, Any foe, yea, even proud Satan's very self to dare, So thy sheets became my shroud.

Sightless window, deafened door! Wilt thou never heed my sounds? Like a wounded bull I roar, Maddening the baying hounds.

Drive at least a poor nail then, Where my heart may hang inert. For I want it not again, With its madness and its hurt!

NOSTALGIA OF THE OBELISKS

THE OBELISK IN PARIS

Distant from my native land, Ever dull with ennui's pain, Lonely monolith I stand, In the snow and frost and rain.

And my shaft, once burnt to red In a flaming heaven's glare, Taketh on a pallor dead In this never azure air.

Oh, to stand again before Luxor's pylons, and the dear, Grim Colossi!--be once more My vermilion brother near!

Oh, to pierce the changeless blue, Where of old my peak upwon, With my shadow sharp and true Trace the footsteps of the sun!

Once, O Rameses! my tall mass Not the ages could destroy. But it fell cut down like grass. Paris took it for a toy.

Now my granite form behold: Sentinel the livelong day Twixt a spurious temple old, And the _Chambre des Députés!_

On the spot where _Louis Seize _ Died, they set me, meaningless, With my secret which outweighs Cycles of forgetfulness.

Sparrows lean defile my head, Where the ibis used to light, And the fierce gypaetus spread Talons gold and plumage white.

And the Seine, the drip of street, Unclean river, crime's abyss, Now befouls mine ancient feet, Which the Nile was wont to kiss:

Hoary Nile that, crowned and stern, To its lotus-laden shores From its ever bended urn Crocodiles for gudgeon pours!

Golden chariots gem-belit Of the Pharaohs' pageanting Grazed my side the cab-wheels hit, Bearing out the last poor king.

By my granite shape of yore Passed the priests, with stately pschent, And the mystic boat upbore, Emblemed and magnificent.

But to-day, profane and wan, Camped between two fountains wide, I behold the courtesan In her carriage lounge with pride.

From the first of year to last I must see the vulgar show-- Solons to the Council passed, Lovers to the woods that go!

Oh, what skeletons abhorred, Hence, an hundred years, this race! Couched, unbandaged, on a board, In a nailed coffin's place.

Never hypogeum kind, Safe from foul corruption's fear; Never hall where century-lined Generations disappear!

Sacred soil of hieroglyph, And of sacerdotal laws, Where the Sphinx is waiting stiff, Sharpening on the stone its claws,--

Soil of crypt where echoes part, Where the vulture swoopeth free, All my being,--all my heart, O mine Egypt, weeps for thee!

THE OBELISK IN LUXOR

Where the wasted columns brood, Lonely sentinel stand I, In eternal solitude Facing all infinity.

Dumb, with beauty unendowed, To the horizon limitless Spreads earth's desert like a shroud Stained by yellow suns that press.

While above it, blue and clean, Is another desert cast-- Sky where cloud is never seen, Pure, implacable, and vast.

And the Nile's great water-course Glazed with leaden pellicle Wrinkled by the river-horse Gleameth dead, unlustreful.

All about the flaming isles, By a turbid water spanned, Hot, rapacious crocodiles Swoon and sob upon the sand.

Perching motionless, alone, Ibis, bird of classic fame, From a carven slab of stone Reads the moon-god's sacred name.

Jackals howl, hyenas grin, Famished hawks descend and cry. Down the heavy air they spin, Commas black against the sky.

These the sounds of solitude, Where the sphinxes yawn and doze, Dull and passionless of mood, Weary of their endless pose.

Child of sand's reflected shine, And of sun-rays fiercely bent, Is there ennui like to thine, Spleen of luminous Orient?

Thou it was cried "Halt!" of yore To satiety of kings. Thou hast crushed me more and more With thine awful weight of wings.

Here no zephyr of the sea Wipes the tears from skies that fill. Time himself leans wearily On the palaces long still.

Naught shall touch the features terse Of this dull, eternal spot. In this changing universe, Only Egypt changeth not!

When the ennui never ends, And I yearn a friend to hold, I've the fellahs, mummies, friends, Of the dynasties of old.

I behold a pillar pale, Or a chipped Colossus note, Watch a distant, gleaming sail Up and down the Nile afloat.

Oh, to seek my brother's side, In a Paris wondrous, grand, With his stately form to bide, In the public place to stand!

For he looks on living men, And they scan his pictures wrought By an hieratic pen, To be read by vision-thought.

Fountains fair as amethyst On his granite lightly pour All their irisated mist. He is growing young once more.

Ah! yet he and I had birth From Syene's veins of red. But I keep my spot of earth. He is living. I am dead.

VETERANS OF THE OLD GUARD

(December 15)

Driven by ennui from my room, I walked along the Boulevard. 'Twas in December's mist and gloom. A bitter wind was blowing hard.

And there I saw--strange thing to see!-- In drizzle and in daylight drear, From out their dark abodes let free, Dim, spectral shadow-shapes appear.

Yet 't is by night's uncanny hours, By pallid German moonbeams cast On old dilapidated towers, That ghosts are wont to wander past.

It is by night's effulgent star In dripping robes that elves intrigue To bear beneath the nenuphar Their dancer dead of his fatigue.

At night's mysterious tide hath been The great review--of ballad writs-- Wherein the Emperor, dimly seen, Numbered the shades of Austerlitz.

But phantoms near the _Gymnase?--_yea, And wet and miry phantoms, too, And close to the _Variétés, _ And not a shroud to trick the view!

With yellow teeth and stained dress, And mossy skull and pierced shoon, Paris--Montmartre--behold it press,-- Death in the very light of noon!

Ah, 't is a picture to be seen! Three veteran ghosts in uniform Of the Old Guard, and, spare and lean, Two ghost-hussars in daylight's storm.

The lithograph, you would surmise, Wherein one ray shines down upon The dead, that Raffet deifies, That pass and shout "Napoleon!"

No dead are these, whom nightly drum May rouse to battle fires that burn, But stragglers of the Old Guard, come To celebrate the grand return!

Since fighting in the fight supreme, One has grown thin, another stout; The coats that fitted once now seem Too small, too loose, or draggled out.

O epic rags! O tatters light, Starred with a cross! Heroic things Of ridicule, ye gleam more bright, More beautiful than robes of kings!

Limp feathers fluttering adorn The tawny colbacks worn and grim. The bullet and the moth have torn And riddled well the dolmans dim.

Their leathern breeches loosely hang In furrows on their lank thigh-bones, Their rusty sabres drag and clang, As heavily they scrape the stones.

Or some round belly firm and fat, Squeezed tight in tether labour-donned, Makes mirth and jest to chuckle at-- Old hero quaint and cheveroned!

But do not mock and jeer, my lad. Salute him, rather, and, believe, Achilles he, of Iliad That Homer's self could not conceive.

Respect these men with battle signs That twenty skies have painted brown; Their scars that lengthen out the lines Of wrinkles age has written down;

Their skin whose colour deep and dun, Bared to the fronts of many foes, Tells us of Egypt's burning sun; Their locks that tell of Russia's snows.

And if they shake, no longer strong? Ah! Beresina's wind was cold. And if they limp? The way was long, From Cairo unto Vilna told.

If they be stiff? They'd but a flag For sheet to hold their bodies warm. And if a sleeve be loose, poor rag? 'T is that a bullet tore an arm.

Mock not these veteran shapes bizarre, At whom the urchin laughs and gapes. They were the day, of which we are The evening, and the night, perhaps,--

Remembering if we forget-- Red lancer, grenadier in blue, With faces to the Column set, As to their only altar true.

There, proud of pain each scar denotes, And of long miseries gone by, They feel beneath their shabby coats The heart of France beat mightily.

And so our smiles are steeped in tears, Seeing this holy carnival, This picture wan that reappears, Like morning after midnight's ball.

And, cleaving heaven its own to claim, Wide the Grand Army's eagle spreads Its golden wings, like glory's flame, Above their dear and hallowed heads.

SEA-GLOOM

The sea-gulls restless gleam and glance, The mad white coursers cleave the length Of ocean as they rear and prance And toss their manes in stormy strength.

The day is ending. Raindrops choke The sunset furnaces. The gloom Brings the great steamboat spitting smoke, And beating down its long black plume.

And I, more wan than heaven wide, For land of soot and fog am bound, For land of smoke and suicide-- And right good weather have I found!

How eagerly I now would pierce The gulf that groweth wild and hoar! The vessel rocks. The waves are fierce. The salt wind freshens more and more.

Ah! bitter is my soul's unrest. The very ocean sighing heaves In pity its unhopeful breast, Like some good friend that knows and grieves.

Let be--lost love's despair supreme! Let be--illusions fair that rose And fell from pedestals of dream! One leap! The dark wet ridges close.

Away! ye sufferings gone by, That evermore returning brood, And press the wounds that sleeping lie, To make them weep afresh their blood.

Away! regret, whose crimson heart Hath seven swords. Yea, One, maybe, Doth know the anguish and the smart-- Mother of Seven Sorrows, She!

Each ghostly grief sinks down the vast, And struggles with the waves that throb To close about it, and at last Drown it forever with a sob.

Soul's ballast, treasures of life's hand, Sink! and we'll wreck together down. Pale on the pillow of the sand I'll rest me well at evening brown.

But, now, a woman, as I gaze, Sits in the bridge's darker nook, A woman, who doth sweetly raise Her eyes to mine in one long look.

'T is Sympathy with outstretched arms, Who smileth to me through the gray Of dusk with all her thousand charms. Hail, azure eyes! Green sea, away!

The sea-gulls restless gleam and glance. The mad white coursers cleave the length Of Ocean as they rear and prance And toss their manes in stormy strength.

TO A ROSE-COLOURED GOWN

How I love you in the robes That disrobe so well your charms! Your dear breasts, twin ivory globes, And your bare sweet pagan arms.

Frail as frailest wing of bee, Fresher than the heart of rose, All the fabric delicate, free, Round your body gleams and glows,

Till from skin to silken thread, Silver shivers lightly win, And the rosy gown have shed Roses on the creamy skin.

Whence have you the mystic thing, Made of very flesh of you, Living mesh to mix and cling With your glorious body's hue?

Did you take it from the rud Of the dawn? From Venus' shell? From a breast-flower nigh to bud? From a rose about to swell?

Doth the texture have its dye From some blushing bashfulness? No--your portraits do not lie-- Beauty beauty's form shall guess!

Down you cast your garment fair, Art-dreamed, sweet Reality, Like Borghese's princess, rare For Canova's mastery!

Ah! the folds are lips of fire Sweeping round your lovely form In a folly of desire, With a weft of kisses warm!

THE WORLD'S MALICIOUS

Ah, little one, the world's malicious! With mocking smiles thy beauty greeting. It says that in thy breast capricious A watch, and not a heart, is beating.

Yet like the sea thy breast is swelling With all the wild, tumultuous power A tide of blood sends pulsing, welling, Beneath thy flesh in life's young hour.

Ah, little one, the world is spiteful! It says thy vivid eyes are fooling, And that they have their charm delightful From faithful, diplomatic schooling.

Yet on thy lashes' shifting curtain An iridescent tear-drop trembles, Like dew unbidden and uncertain, That no well-water's gleam resembles.

Ah, little one, the world reviles thee! It says thou hast no spirit's favour, That verse, which seemingly beguiles thee, Hath unto thee a Sanskrit savour.

Yet to thy crimson lips inviting, Intelligence's bee of laughter, At every flash of wit alighting, Allures and gleams, and lingers after.

Ah, little one, I know the trouble! Thou lovest me. The world, it guesses. Leave me, and hear its praises bubble:-- "_What heart, what spirit, she possesses!"_

INES DE LAS SIERRAS

TO PETRA CAMARA

In Spain, as Nodier's pen has told, Three officers in night's mid hours Came on a castle dark and old, With sunken eaves and mouldering towers,

A true Anne Radcliffe type it was, With ruined halls and crumbling rooms And windows graven by the claws Of Goya's bats that ranged the glooms.

Now while they feasted, gazed upon By ancient portraits standing guard In their ancestral frames, anon A sudden cry rang thitherward.

Forth from a distant corridor That many a moonbeam's pallid hue Fretted fantastically o'er, A wondrous phantom sped in view.

With bodice high and hair comb-tipped, A woman, running, dancing, hied. Adown the dappled gloom she dipped,-- An iridescent form descried.

A languid, dead, voluptuous mood Filled every act's abandon brief, Till at the door she stopped, and stood Sinister, lovely past belief.

Her raiment crumpled in the tomb Showed here and there a spangle's foil. At every start a faded bloom Dropped petals in her hair's black coil.

A dull scar crossed her bloodless throat, As of a knife. Like rattle chill Of teeth, her castanets she smote Full in their faces awed and still.

Ah, poor bacchante, sad of grace! So wild the sweetness of her spell, The curvèd lips in her white face Had lured a saint from heaven to hell!

Like darkling birds her eyelashes Upon her cheek lay fluttering light. Her kirtle's swinging cadences Displayed her limbs of lustrous white.

She bowed amid a mist of gyres, And with her hand, as dancers may, Like flowers she gathered up desires, And grouped them in a bright bouquet.

Was it a wraith or woman seen, A thing of dreams, or blood and flesh, The flame that burst from out the sheen Of beauty's undulating mesh?

It was a phantom of the past, It was the Spain of olden keep, Who, at the sound of cheer at last, Upbounded from her icy sleep,

In one bolero mad, supreme, Rough-resurrected, powerful, Showing beneath her kirtle's gleam The ribbon wrested from the bull.

About her throat the scar of red The deathblow was, dealt silently Unto a generation dead By every new-born century.

I saw this self-same phantom fleet, All Paris ringing with her praise, When soft, diaphanous, mystic, sweet, La Petra Camara held its gaze,--

Closing her eyes with languor rare, Impassive, passionate of art, And, like the murdered Ines fair, Dancing, a dagger in her heart.

ODELET

AFTER ANACREON

Poet of her face divine, Curb this over-zeal of thine! Doves wing frighted from the ground At a step's too sudden sound, And her passion is a dove, Frighted by too bold a love. Mute as marble Hermes wait By the blooming hawthorn-gate. Thou shalt see her wings expand, She shall flutter to thy hand. On thy forehead thou shalt know Something like a breath of snow, Or of pinions pure that beat In a whirl of whiteness sweet. And the dove, grown venturesome, Shall upon thy shoulder come, And its rosy beak shall sip From the nectar of thy lip.

SMOKE

Beneath yon tree sits humble A squalid, hunchbacked house, With roof precipitous, And mossy walls that crumble.

Bolted and barred the shanty. But from its must and mould, Like breath of lips in cold, Comes respiration scanty.

A vapour upward welling, A slender, silver streak, To God bears tidings meek Of the soul in the little dwelling.

APOLLONIA

Fair Apollonia, name august, Greek echo of the sacred vale, Great name whose harmonies robust Thee as Apollo's sister hail!

Struck with the plectrum on the lyre, And in melodious beauty sung, Brighter than love's and glory's fire, It resonant rings upon the tongue.

At such a classic sound as this, The elves plunge down their German lake. Alone the Delphian worthy is So lustreful a name to take,--

Pythia! when in her flowing dress She mounts her place with feet unshod, And, priestess white and prophetess, Wistful awaits the tardy god.

THE BLIND MAN

A blind man walks without the gate, Wild-staring as an owl by day, Fumbling his flute betimes and late, Along the way.

He pipeth, weary wretch and worn, A roundel shrill and obsolete. The spectre of a dog forlorn Attends his feet.

For him the days go lustreless. Invisible life with beat and roar He heareth like a torrent press Around, before.

What strange chimeras haunt his head_ _And on his mind's bedarkened space, What characters unheard, unread, Doth fancy trace?

Thus down Venetian leads of doom, Wan prisoners ensepulchred In palpable, undying gloom Have graven their word.

And yet perchance when life's last spark Death speeds unto eternal night, The tomb-bred soul, within the dark, Shall see the light.

SONG

In April earth is white and rose Like youth and love, now tendering Her smiles, now fearful to disclose Her virgin heart unto the Spring.

In June, a little pale and worn, And full at heart of vague desire, She hideth in the yellow corn, With sunburned Summer to respire.

In August, wild Bacchante, she Her bosom bares to Autumn shapes, And on the tiger-skin flung free, Draws forth the purple blood of grapes.

And in December, shrivelled, old, Bepowdered white from foot to head, In dream she wakens Winter cold, That sleeps beside her in her bed.

WINTER FANTASIES

I

Red of nose and white of face, Bent his desk of ice before, Winter doth his theme retrace In the season's quatuor,--

Beating measure and the ground With a frozen foot for us, Singing with uncertain sound Olden tunes and tremulous.

And as Haendel's wig sublime Trembling shook its powder, oft Flutter as he taps his time Snow-flakes in a flurry soft.

II

In the Tuileries fount the swan Meets the ice, and all the trees, As in land of fairies wan, Arc bedecked with filigrees.

Flowers of frost in vases low Stand unquickened and unstirred, And we trace upon the snow Starred footsteps of a bird.

Where with lightest raiment spanned, Venus was with Phocion met, Now has Winter's hoary hand Clodion's "Chilly Maiden" set.

III

Women pass in ermine dress, Sable, too, and miniver, And the shivering goddesses Haste to don the fashion's fur.

Venus of the Brine comes forth, In her hooded mantle's fluff. Flora, blown by breezes North, Hides her fingers in her muff.

And the shepherdesses round Of Coustou and Coysevox, Finding scarves too light have wound Furs about their throats of snow.

IV

Heavy doth the North bedrape Paris mode from foot to top, As o'er fair Athenian shape Scythian should a bearskin drop.

Over winter's garments meet, Everywhere we see the fur, Flung with Russian pomp, and sweet With the fragrant vetiver.

Pleasure's laughing glances feast Far amid the statues, where From the bristles of a beast Bursts a Venus torso fair!

If you venture hitherward, With a tender veil to cheat Glances over-daring, guard Well your Andalusian feet!

Snow shall fashion like a frame On your foot's impression rare, Signing with each step your name On the carpet soft and vair.

Thus were surly master led To the hidden trysting-place, Where his Psyche, faintly red, Were beheld in Love's embrace.

THE BROOK

Near a great water's waste A brook mid rock and spar Came bubbling up in haste, As though to travel far.

It sang: "What joy to rise! 'T was dismal under ground. I mirror now the skies. My banks with green abound.

"Forget-me-nots--how fair! Beseech me from the grass; Wings frolic in the air, And graze me as they pass.

"I yet shall be--who knows?-- A river winding down, And greeting as it flows Valley and cliff and town.

"I'll broider with my spray Stone bridge and granite quay, And bear great ships away Unto the long wide sea."

So planned it, babbling by, As water boiling fast Within a basin high, To top its brim at last.

Cradle by tomb is crossed. Giants are early dead. Scarce born, the brook was lost Within a lake's deep bed.

TOMBS AND FUNERAL PYRES

No grim cadaver set its flaw In happy days of pagan art, And man, content with what he saw, Stripped not the veil from beauty's heart.

No form once loved that buried lay, A hideous spectre to appal, Dropped bit by bit its flesh away, As one by one our garments fall;

Or, when the days had drifted by And sundered shrank the vaulted stones, Showed naked to the daring eye A motley heap of rattling bones.

But, rescued from the funeral pyre, Life's ashen, light residuum Lay soft, and, spent the cleansing fire, The urn held sweet the body's sum,--

The sum of all that earth may claim Of the soul's butterfly, soul passed,-- All that is left of spended flame Upon the tripod at the last.

Between acanthus leaves and flowers In the white marble gaily went Loves and bacchantes all the hours, Dancing about the monument.

At most, a little Genius wild Trampled a flame out in the gloom, And art's harmonious flowering smiled Upon the sadness of the tomb.

The tomb was then a pleasant place. As bed of child that slumbereth, With many a fair and laughing grace The joy of life surrounded death.

Then death concealed its visage gaunt, Whose sockets deep, and sunken nose, And railing mouth our spirits haunt, Past any dream that horror shows.

The monster in flesh raiment clad Hid deep its spectral form uncouth, And virgin glances, beauty-glad, Sped frankly to the naked youth.

Twas only at Trimalchio's board A little skeleton made sign, An ivory plaything unabhorred, To bid the feasters to the wine.

Gods, whom Art ever must avow, Ruled the marmoreal sky's demesne. Olympus yields to Calvary, now; Jupiter to the Nazarene!

Voices are calling, "Pan is dead!" Dusk deepeneth within, without. On the black sheet of sorrow spread, The whitened skeleton gleams out.

It glideth to the headstone bare, And signs it with a paraph wild, And hangs a wreath of bones to glare Upon the charnel death-defiled.

It lifts the coffin-lid and quaffs The musty air, and peers within, Displays a ring of ribs, and laughs Forever with its awful grin.

It urges unto Death's fleet dance The Emperor, the Pope, the King, And makes the pallid steed to prance, And low the doughty warrior fling;--

Behind the courtesan steals up, And makes wry faces in her glass; Drinks from the sick man's trembling cup; Delves in the miser's golden mass.