Chapter 3

Above the team it whirls the thong, With bone for goad to hurry it, Follows the plowman's way along, And guides the furrows to a pit.

It comes, the uninvited guest, And lurks beneath the banquet chair, Unseen from the pale bride to wrest Her little silken garter fair.

The number swells: the young give hand Unto the old, and none may flee. The irresistible saraband Compelleth all humanity.

Forth speeds the tall, ungainly fright, Playing the rebeck, dancing mad, Against the dark a frame of white, As Holbein drew it--horror-sad;--

Or if the times be frivolous, Trusses the shroud about its hips: Then like a Cupid mischievous, Across the ballet-room it skips,

And unto carven tombs it flies, Where marchionesses rest demure, Weary of love, in exquisite guise, In chapels dim and pompadour.

But hide thy hideous form at last, Worm-eaten actor! Long enough In death's wan melodrama cast, Thou'st played thy part without rebuff.

Come back, come back, O ancient Art! And cover with thy marble's gleam This Gothic skeleton! Each part Consume, ye flames of fire supreme!

If man be then a creature made In God's own image, to aspire, When shattered must the image fade, Let the lone fragments feed the fire!

Immortal form! Rise thou in flame Again to beauty's fount of bloom Let not thy clay endure the shame, The degradation of the tomb!

BJORN'S BANQUET

Bjorn, odd and lonely cenobite, High on a barren rock's plateau, Far out of time's and the world's sight, Dwells in a castle none may know.

No modern thought may violate His darkened and secluded hall. Bjorn bolts with care his postern-gate, And barricades his castle wall.

When others wait the rising sun, He from his mouldering parapet Still contemplates the valley dun, Where he beheld the red sun set.

Securely doth the past enlock His retrospective spirit lone. The pendulum within his clock Was broken centuries agone.

Waking the echoes wanders he Beneath his feudal arches drear, His ringing footsteps seemingly Followed by other footsteps clear.

Nor priests nor friends with him make bold, Nor burghers plain nor gentlemen; But his ancestral portraits hold A parley with him now and then.

And of a midnight, sparing him The ennui of a lonely cup, Bjorn, harbouring a gloomy whim, Invites his ancestors to sup.

Forth stepping at the hour's grim stroke, Come phantoms armed from foot to head. Bjorn, quaking, to the solemn folk Proffers with state the goblet red.

To seat itself each panoply With joints that grumble in revolt Maketh an angle with its knee, That creaketh like a rusty bolt;

Till all at once the suit of mail, Rude coffin of an absent bulk, Cleaving the silence with a wail, Falls in its chair, a clanking hulk.

Landgraves and burgraves, spare and stout, Come down from heaven or up from hell, The iron guests of many a bout, Arc bound within the midnight spell.

Their blow-indented helmets bear Heraldic beasts that bay and grin, Athwart the shades the red lights glare On crest and ancient lambrequin.

Each empty, open casque now seems Like to the helms of heraldries, Save for two strange and livid gleams That issue forth in threatening wise.

Seated is each old combatant In the vast hall, at Bjorn's behest, And the uncertain shadows grant A swarthy page to every guest.

The liquors in the candle-shine Take on suspicious purples. All The viands in their gravy's wine Grow lurid and fantastical.

Sometimes a breastplate glitters bright, A morion speeds its flashes wroth, A rondelle from a hand of might Drops heavily upon the cloth.

Heard are the softly flapping wings Of unseen bats. The shimmer flicks Upon the carven panellings The banners of the heretics.

The stiffly bended gauntlets play In the dull glow incarnadine, And, creaking, to the helmets gray Pour bumpers full of Rhenish wine;

Or with their daggers keen of blade Carve boars upon the plates of gold. The corridor's uncanny shade Hath clamours vague and manifold.

The orgy waxes riotsome-- One could not hear God's voice for it-- For when a phantom sups from home, What wrong if he carouse a bit?

Now every ghostly care they drown With jokes and jeers and loud guffaws. A wine-cascade is running down Each rusty helmet's iron jaws.

The full and rounded hauberks bulge, And to the neck the river mounts. Their eyes with liquid fire effulge. They're howling drunk, these valiant counts!

One through the salad idly wields A foot; another scolds the sick. Some like the lions on their shields With gaping mouths the fancy trick.

In voice still hoarse from silence long In the tomb's dampness and restraint, Max playfully intones a song Of thirteen hundred, crude and quaint.

Albrecht, of quarrelsome repute, Stirs right and left a war intense, And drubs about with fist and foot, As once he drubbed the Saracens.

And heated Fritz his helmet doffs, Not deeming he's a headless trunk. Then down pell-mell mid roars and scoffs Together roll the phantoms drunk.

Ah! 'T is a hideous battle-ground, Where pots and weapons bang and scud, Where every dead man through some wound Doth vomit victuals up for blood.

And Bjorn observes them, sad of eye, And haggard, while athwart the panes The dawn comes creeping stealthily, With blue, thin lights, and darkness wanes.

The prostrate mass of rusty brown Pales like a torch in daylight's room, Until the drunkest pours him down At last the stirrup-cup of doom.

The cock crows loud. And with the day Once more with haughty mien and bold, Their revel-weary heads they lay Upon their marble pillows cold.

THE WATCH

Now twice my watch have I taken, And twice as I've gazing sat, The hand has pointed unshaken To one--and it's long past that!

The clock's light cadences linger. The sun-dial laughs from the lawn, And points with a long, gaunt finger The path that its shade has drawn.

A steeple ironically Calls the true time to me. The belfry bell makes tally And taunts me with accents free.

Ah, dead is the wretch! I sought not, Last night, to my reverie sold, Its ruby circle! I thought not Of glimmering key of gold!

No longer I see with pleasure The spring of the balance-wheel Flit hither and there at measure, Like a butterfly form of steel.

When Hippogriff bears me, yearning, Through skies of another sphere, My soul-reft body goes turning Wherever the steed may veer.

Eternity still is giving Its gaze to the lifeless face. Time seeketh the heart once living, His ear at the old watch-case,--

That heart whose regular motion Was followed within my breast By wave-beats of life's full ocean! Ah well! the watch is at rest.

But its brother is beating ever, Steadfast and sturdy kept By One Who forgetteth never,-- Who wound it the while I slept.

THE MERMAIDS

There's a sketch you may discover By an artist of degree Rime and metre quarrel over-- Théophile Kniatowski.

On the snowy foam that fringes All the mantle of the brine, Radiant with the sunlight's tinges, Three mermaidens softly shine.

Like the drownèd lilies dancing Turn they, as the spiral wave Buoys their bodies hiding, glancing, As they sink and rise and lave.

In their golden hair for dowers They have twined with beauteous hands Shells for diadems, and flowers From the deep wild under sands.

Oysters pour a pearly hoarding Their enrapturing throats to gem, And the wave, its wealth according, Tosses other pearls to them.

Borne above the crest of ocean By a Triton hand and strong, Twine they, beautiful of motion, Under gleaming tresses long.

And the crystal water under, Down the blue the glories pale Of each lovely form of wonder, Tapered to a shimmering tail.

Ah! But who the scaly swimmers Would behold in modern day-- When a bust of ivory glimmers, Cool from kisses of the spray?

Look! Oh, mingled truth and fable! O'er the horizon steady plied, Comes a vessel proud and stable, Toward the mermaids terrified!

Tricoloured its flag is flaunted, And it vomits vapour red, And it beats the billows daunted, Till the nymphs dive low for dread.

Fearlessly they did beleaguer Triremes immemorial, And the dolphins arched and eager Waited for Arion's call.

This of old. But now the steamer-- Vulcan hurtling Venus' charms,-- Would destroy the siren gleamer, With her fair, nude tail and arms.

Farewell myth! The boat that passes Thinks to see on silver bar, Where the widening billow glasses, Porpoises that plunge afar.

TWO LOVE-LOCKS

Reviving languorous dreaming Of conquered, conquering eye, Upon thy forehead gleaming, Two fairest love-locks lie.

I see them softly nesting, Of wondrous, golden sheen, Like little wheels come resting From car of Mab the Queen;

Or bows of Cupid ready To let the arrows fly, Bent circlewise and steady For archer's mastery.

One heart have I of passion. Yet two love-locks are thine! O brow of fickle fashion! Whose heart is caught with mine?

THE TEA-ROSE

Most beautiful of all the roses Is this half-open bud, whose bare, Unpetalled heart a dream discloses Of carmine very faint and fair.

I wonder, was it once a white rose, Till butterfly too ardent spoke A language soft, and in the light rose A shyer, warmer tint awoke?

Its delicate fabric hath the colour Of lovely and velutinous skin. Its perfect freshness maketh duller Environing hues incarnadine.

For as some rare patrician features Eclipse the brows of ruddier gleam, So masquerade as rustic creatures Gay sisters of this rose supreme.

But, dear one, if your hand caress it, And raise it for its sweet perfume, Ere yet your velvet cheek shall press it, 'T will fade before a fairer bloom.

No rose in all the world so tender, That gloweth in the springtime fleet, But shall its every charm surrender Unto your seventeen years, my sweet.

A face hath more than petal's power: A pure heart's blood that blushing flows O'er youth's nobility, is flower High sovereign over every rose.

CARMEN

Slender is Carmen, of lissome guise, Her hair is black as the midnight's heart; Dark circles are under her gypsy eyes, Her swarthy skin is the devil's art.

The women will mock at her form and face; But the men will follow her all the day. Toledo's Archbishop (now save His Grace!) Tones his mass at her knees, they say.

Nestled in warmth of her amber neck Lies a massive coil, till she fling it down To be a raiment to frame and deck Her delicate body from foot to crown.

Then out from her pallid face with power Her witching, terrible smiles compel. Her mouth is a mystical poison-flower That hath drawn its crimson from hearts in hell.

The haughtiest beauty must yield her fame, When this strange vision shall dusk her sky. For Carmen rules, and her glance's flame Shall set the torch to satiety.

Wild, graceless Carmen!--Though yet this be, Savour she hath of a world undreamt, Of a world of wonder, whose salt young sea Provoked a Venus to rise and tempt.

WHAT THE SWALLOWS SAY

AN AUTUMN SONG

The dry, brown leaves have dropped forlorn, And lie amid the golden grass. The wind is fresh both eve and morn. But where are summer days, alas!

The tardy flowers the autumn stayed For latter treasures now unfold. The dahlia dons its gay cockade, Its flaming cap the marigold.

Rain stirs the pool with pelt and shock. The swallows to the roof repair, Confabulating as they flock And feel the winter in the air.

By hundreds gather they to vow Their little yearnings and intents. Saith one: "'T is fair in Athens now, Upon the sun-warm battlements!

"Thither I go to take my nap Upon the Parthenon high and free. My cornice nest is in the gap A cannon-ball made there for me."

And one: "A ceiling meets my needs Within a Smyrna coffee-house, Where Hadjis tell their amber beads Upon the threshold luminous.

"I go and come above the folk, While their chibouques their clouds upfling. I skim along through silver smoke, And graze the turbans with my wing."

Another: "There's a triglyph gray On one of Baalbec's temples high. 'T is there I go to brood all day Above my little family."

Another calleth, "My address Is settled: 'At the Knights of Rhodes.' In a dark colonnade's recess I'll make the snuggest of abodes."

"Old age hath made me slow for flight," Declares a fifth; "I'll rest at even On Malta's terraces of white, Where blue sea melts to blue of heaven."

A sixth: "In Cairo is my home, Up in a minaret's retreat: A twig or two, a bit of loam-- My winter lodgings are complete."

A last: "The Second Cataract Shall mark my place--the nest of brown A granite king doth hold intact Within the circle of his crown."

And all together sing: "What miles To-morrow shall have stretched beneath Our fleeing swarm:--remembered isles, Snow peaks, vast waters, lands of heath!"

With calls and cries and beat of wings, Grown eager now and venturesome, The swallows hold their twitterings, To see the blight of winter come.

And I--I understand them all, Because the poet is a bird,-- Oh! but a sorry bird, and thrall To a great lack, pressed heavenward.

It's Oh for wings! to seek the star, To count the seas when day is done, To breast the air with swallows far, To verdant spring, to golden sun!

CHRISTMAS

Black is the sky and white the ground. O ring, ye bells, your carol's grace! The Child is born! A love profound Beams o'er Him from His Mother's face.

No silken woof of costly show Keeps off the bitter cold from Him. But spider-webs have drooped them low, To be His curtain soft and dim.

Now trembles on the straw downspread The Little Child, the Star beneath. To warm Him in His holy bed, Upon Him ox and ass do breathe.

Snow hangs its fringes on the byre. The roof stands open to the tryst Of aureoled saints, that sweetly choir To shepherds, "Come, behold the Christ!"

THE DEAD CHILD'S PLAYTHINGS

Marie comes no more at call. She has wandered from her play. Ah, how pitifully small Was the coffin borne away!

See--about the nursery floor All her little heritage: Rubber ball and battledore, Tattered book and coloured page.

Poor forsaken doll! in vain Stretch your arms. She will not come. Stopped forever is the train, And the music-box is dumb.

Some one touched it soft, apart, Where the silence is her name. And what sinking of the heart At the plaintive note that came!

Ah, the anguish! when the tomb Robs the cradle; when bereft We discover in the gloom Child toys that an angel left.

AFTER WRITING MY DRAMATIC REVIEW

My columns are ranged and steady, Upbearing, though sad forespent, The newspaper pediment, And my review is ready.

Now for a week, poetaster, My door is bolted. Away, Thou still-born masterpiece,--aye, Till Monday I am my master.

No melodrama shall whiten My labour with threadbare leaves. The warp that my fancy weaves With silken flowers shall brighten.

Brief moment my spirit's warder, Ye voices of soul that float, I'll hearken your sorrow's note, Nor verses evoke to order.

Then deep in my glass regaining The health of a day gone by,-- Old visions for company-- The bloom of my vintage draining,

The wine of my thought I'll measure, Wine virgin of alien glow, Grapes trodden by life, that flow From my heart at my heart's own pleasure!

THE CASTLE OF REMEMBRANCE

Before my hearth with head low-bowed I dream, and strive to reach again, Across the misty past's gray cloud, Unto Remembrance's domain,

Where tree and house and upland way Are blurred and blue like passing ghosts, And the eye, ponder though it may, Consults in vain the guiding-posts.

Now gropingly to gain a sight Of all the buried world, I press Through mystic marge of shade and light And limbo of forgetfulness.

But white, diaphanous Memory stands, Where many roadways meet and spread, Like Ariadne, in my hands Thrusting her little ball of thread.

Henceforth the way is all secure. The shrouded sun hath reappeared, And o'er the trees with vision sure I see the castle tower upreared.

Beneath the boughs where day grows dark With shower on shower of leaves down-poured The dear old path through moss and bark Still lengthens far its narrow cord.

But creeping-plant and bramble-spray Have wrought a net to daunt me now. The stubborn branch I force away Swings fiercely back to lash my brow.

I come upon the house at last. No window lit with lamp or face, No breath of smoke from gables vast, To touch with life the mouldering place!

Bridges are crumbling. Moats are still, And slimed with rank, green refuse-flowers, And tortuous waves of ivy fill The crevices and choke the towers.

The portico in moonlight wanes. Time sculptures it to suit his whim. And with the wash of many rains My coloured coat of arms is dim.

The door I open eagerly. The ancient hinges creak and halt. A breath of dampness wafts to me The musty odour of the vault.

The hairy nettle sharp of sting, The coarse and broad-leafed burdock weed In court-yard nooks are prospering, By spreading hemlocks canopied.

Upon two marble monsters near, That guard the mossy steps of stone, The shadow of a tree falls clear, That in my absence has upgrown.

Sudden the lion sentinels raise Their paws, aggressive and malign, And challenge me with their white gaze; But soft I breathe the countersign.

I pass. The old dog menaceth, But falls back hushed, the shades amid. My resonant footstep wakeneth Crouched echoes in their corners hid.

Through yellow panes of glass a ray Of dubious light creeps down the hall Where ancient tapestries display Apollo's fortunes from the wall.

Fair tree-bound Daphne still with grace Stretches her tufted fingers green. But in the amorous god's embrace She fades, a formless phantom seen.

I watch divine Apollo stand, Herdsman to acarus-riddled sheep, The Muses Nine, a haggard band, Upon a faded Pindus weep;

While Solitude in scanty gown Traces "Desertion" in the dust That through the air she sifteth down Upon a marble stand august.

And now, among forgotten things, I find, like sleepers manifold, Pastels bedimmed, dark picturings, Young beauties, and the friends of old.

My faltering fingers lift a crape,-- And lo, my love with look and lure! With puffing skirts and prisoned shape! Cidalise _à la_ Pompadour!

A tender, blossoming rose she feels Against her ribboned bodice pressed, Whose lace half hides and half reveals A snowy, azure-veinèd breast.

Within her eyes gleam sparkles lush, As on the rime-kissed, deadened leaves. Upon her cheek a purple flush-- Death's own cosmetic hue!--deceives.

She startles as I come before, And fixeth soft on me her eyes, Reproachfully forevermore, Yet with a charm and witching wise.

Life bore me from thee at its will, Yet on my heart thy name is laid, Thou dead delight, that lingereth still, Bedizened for the masquerade!

Envious of Art, fair Nature wrought To overpass Murillo's fame,-- From Andalusia here she brought The face that lights the second frame.

By some poetical caprice, Our atmosphere of mist and cloud, With rare exotic charm's increase This other Petra Camara dowed.

Warm orange tones are gilding yet Her lovely skin of roseate hue. Her eyelids fair have lashes jet That beams of sunshine filter through.

There shimmers fine a pearly gleam Between her scarlet lips elate; Her beauty flashes forth supreme-- A bright south summer pomegranate.

Long to the sound of Spain's guitar, I told her praise 'mid song and glass. She came alone one evenstar, And all my room Alhambra was.

Farther I see a robust Fair, With strong and gem-beladen arms. In pearls of price and velvet rare Are set her ivory bosom's charms.

Her ennui is a weary queen's, An adulating court amid. Superb, aloof, her hand she leans Upon a casket's jewelled lid.

Her sensuous lips their crimes confess, As crimson with the blood of hearts. With brutal, mad voluptuousness Her conquering eye a challenge darts.

Here dwells, in lieu of tender grace, Vertiginous allure, whereof A cruel Venus ruled a race, Presiding o'er malignant love.

Unnatural mother to her child, This Venus all imperative! O thou, my bitter joy and wild,-- Farewell forever! I forgive!

Within its frame in shadow fine, The misty glass that still endures Reveals another face than mine,-- The earliest of my portraitures.

A retrospective ghost, with face Of vanished type, steps from the vast Dim mirror of his biding-place In tenebrous, forgotten past.

Gay in his doublet satin-rose, Coloured in bold and vivid way, He seems as if about to pose For Deveria or Boulanger.

Terror of glabrous commoner, His flowing locks in royal guise, Like mane of lion, or sinister King's hair, fall heavy to his thighs.

Romanticist of bold conceit, Knight of an art which strives anew, He hurled himself at Drama's feet, When erst Hernani's trumpet blew.

Night falls. The corners are astir With many shapes and shadows tall. The Unknown--grim stage-carpenter-- Sets up its darksome frights o'er all.

A sudden burst of candles, weird With aureoles, like lamps of death! The room is populous, and bleared With folk brought hither by a breath!

Down step the portraits from the wall,-- A ruddy-litten company! Circling the fireplace in the hall, Where the wood blazes suddenly.

The figures wrested from the tombs Have lost their rigid, frozen mien, The gradual glow of life illumes The Past with flush incarnadine.

A colour lights the faces pale, As in the days of old delight. Friends whom my thought shall never fail, I thank ye, that ye came to-night!

Now eighteen-thirty shows to me Its great and valiant-hearted men. (Ah, like Otranto's pirates, we Who were an hundred, are but ten!)

And one his reddish beard spreads out, Like Barbarossa in his cave. Another his mustachio stout Curls at the ends in fashion suave.

Under the ample fold that cloaks An ever unrevealèd ill, Petrus a cigarette now smokes, Naming it "papelito" still.

Another cometh, fain to tell His visions and his hopes supreme. Like Icarus on the sands he fell, Where lie all broken shafts of dream.

And one a drama hath begot, Planned after some new model's freak, Which, merging all things in its plot, Makes Calderon with Molière speak.

Tom, late forsaken by his Dear, Love's Labour's Lost must low recite; And Fritz to Cidalise makes clear Faust's vision of Walpurgis Night.

But dawn comes through the window free. Diaphanous the phantoms grow. The objects of reality Strike through their shapes that merge and go.

The candles are consumed away. The ember-lights no longer gleam Upon the hearth. No thing shall stay. Farewell, O castle of my dream!

December gray shall turn once more The glass of Time, for all we fret! The present enters at my door, And vainly bids me to forget.

CAMELLIA AND MEADOW-DAISY

We praise the hot-house flowers that loom Far from their native sun and shade, The flaring forms that flaunt their bloom, Like jewels under glass displayed.

With never breeze to kiss their heads, They have their birth and live and die On costly, artificial beds, Beneath an ever-crystal sky.

For whomsoever idly scans, Baring their treasures to entice, Like fair and sumptuous courtesans, They stand for sale at golden price.

Fine porcelain holds their gathered groups, Or glove-clad fingers fondle them Between the dances, till each droops Upon a limp or broken stem.

But down amid the grass unreaped, Shunning the curious, in repose And silence all the long day steeped, A little woodland daisy blows.

A butterfly upon the wing To point the place, a casual look, And you surprise the sweet, shy thing, Within its calm, sequestered nook.

Beneath the blue it openeth, Rising on slender, vernal rod, Spreading its soul in fragrant breath For solitude and for its God.

And proud camellias tall and white, Red tulips in a flaming mass, Are all at once forgotten quite, For the small flower amid the grass.

THE FELLAH

_On seeing a Water-Colour by Princess Mathilde_

Caprice of brush fantastical, And of imperial idleness, Your fellah-sphinx presents us all With an enigma worth the guess.

A rigid fashion, verily, This mask, this garment, seem to us, Intriguing with its mystery The ball-room's every Oedipus.