Part 8

Or, haply 'tis a Naiad now who slips, Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass, While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips The moisture rains cool music on the grass. Her have I heard and followed, yet, alas! Have seen no more than the wet ray that dips The shivered waters, wrinkling where I pass; But in the liquid light, where she doth hide, I have beheld the azure of her gaze Smiling; and, where the orbing ripple plays, Among her minnows I have heard her lips, Bubbling, make merry by the waterside.

III

Or now it is an Oread--whose eyes Are constellated dusk--who stands confessed, As naked as a flow'r; her heart's surprise, Like morning's rose, mantling her brow and breast: She, shrinking from my presence, all distressed Stands for a startled moment ere she flies, Her deep hair blowing, up the mountain crest, Wild as a mist that trails along the dawn. And is 't her footfalls lure me? or the sound Of airs that stir the crisp leaf on the ground? And is 't her body glimmers on yon rise? Or dogwood blossoms snowing on the lawn?

IV

Now 'tis a Satyr piping serenades On a slim reed. Now Pan and Faun advance Beneath green-hollowed roofs of forest glades, Their feet gone mad with music: now, perchance, Sylvanus sleeping, on whose leafy trance The Nymphs stand gazing in dim ambuscades Of sun-embodied perfume.--Myth, Romance, Where'er I turn, reach out bewildering arms, Compelling me to follow. Day and night I hear their voices and behold the light Of their divinity that still evades, And still allures me in a thousand forms.

REVERIE

What ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought, What walls of Parian, whiter than a rose, What towers of crystal, for the eyes of thought, Hast builded on dim Islands of Repose? Thy cloudy columns, vast, Corinthian, Or huge, Ionic, colonnade the heights Of Dreamland, looming o'er the soul's deep seas; Piled melodies of marble, that no man Has ever reached, except in fancy's flights, Templing the presence of perpetual ease.

Oft, where o'er plastic frieze and plinths of spar,-- In glimmering solitudes of pillared stone,-- The twilight blossoms with one violet star, With thee, O Reverie, I have stood alone, And there beheld, from out the Mythic Age, The rosy breasts of Cytherea--fair, Full-cestused, and suggestive of what loves Immortal!--rise; and heard the lyric rage Of sunburnt Poesy, whose throat breathes bare O'er leopard skins, fluting among his groves.

Oft, where thy castled peaks and templed vales Cloud--like convulsive sunsets--shores that dream, Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas whose sails Gleam white as lilies on a lilied stream, My soul has stood. Or by thy sapphire sea, In thy arcaded gardens, in the shade Of breathing sculpture, oft has walked with thought, And bent, in shadowy attitude, its knee Before the shrine of Beauty that must fade And leave no memory of the mind that wrought.

Who hath beheld thy caverns where, in heaps, The wine of Lethe and Love's witchery, In sealéd amphoræ a sibyl keeps? World-old, a grape filled with the soul of thee. No wine of Xeres or of Syracuse! No fine Falernian and no vile Sabine! The stolen fire of a demigod, Whose bubbled purple heavenly feet did bruise In crusted vats of vintage, when the green Flamed into autumn, on the Samian sod.

Oh, for the deep enchantment of one draught! The reckless ecstasy of classic earth!-- To make me godlike as the gods that laughed In eyes of mortal brown, a mighty mirth Of deity delirious with desire! To make me one with roses of the shrines, The splashing wine-libation or the blood, And all the young priest's dreaming! To inspire My very soul with beauty till it shines Star-like amid life's starry brotherhood!

Would I might slumber in the old-world shades, Where poesy could touch me, as some bold Wild-bee a pulpy lily of the glades, Barbaric-covered with the kerneled gold; And feel the glory of the Golden Age Less godly than my purpose, strong to dare Death with the young immortal lips of Love: Less lovely than my soul's ideal rage To mate itself with Music and declare Itself part meaning of the stars above.

LETHE

I

There is a scent of roses and spilt wine Between the moonlight and the laurel-coppice; The marble idol glimmers on its shrine, White as a star, among a heaven of poppies. Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine. There is a mouth of music like a lute, A nightingale that singeth to one flower; Between the falling flower and the fruit, Where love hath died, the music of an hour.

II

To sit alone with memory and a rose; 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!

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.