I
Backward she leans, as when the rose unblown Slides white from its warm sheath some morn in May!
Under the sloping waist, aslant, her zone Clings as it slips in tender disarray; One knee, out-thrust a little, keeps it so Lingering ere it fall; her lovely face Gazes as o"er her own Eternity!
Those armless radiant shoulders, long ago Perchance held arms out wide with yearning grace For Adon by the blue Sicilian sea.
II
No; thou eternal fount of these poor gleams, Bright axle-star of the wheeling temporal skies, Daughter of blood and foam and deathless dreams, Mother of flying Love that never dies, To thee, the topmost and consummate flower, The last harmonic height, our dull desires And our tired souls in dreary discord climb; The flesh forgets its pale and wandering fires; We gaze through heaven as from an ivory tower Shining upon the last dark sh.o.r.es of Time.
III
White culmination of the dreams of earth, Thy splendour beacons to a loftier goal, Where, slipping earthward from the great new birth, The shadowy senses leave the essential soul!
Oh, naked loveliness, not yet revealed, A moment hence that falling robe will show No prophecy like this, this great new dawn, The bare bright b.r.e.a.s.t.s, each like a soft white shield, And the firm body like a slope of snow Out of the slipping dream-stuff half withdrawn.
THE NET OF VULCAN
From peaks that clove the heavens asunder The hunchback G.o.d with sooty claws Loomed o"er the night, a cloud of thunder, And hurled the net of mortal laws; It flew, and all the world grew dimmer; Its blackness blotted out the stars, Then fell across the rosy glimmer That told where Venus couched with Mars.
And, when the steeds that draw the morning Spurned from their Orient hooves the spray, All vainly soared the lavrock, warning Those tangled lovers of the day: Still with those twin white waves in blossom, Against the warrior"s rock-broad breast, The netted light of the foam-born bosom Breathed like a sea at rest.
And light was all that followed after, Light the derision of the sky, Light the divine Olympian laughter Of kindlier G.o.ds in days gone by: Low to her lover whispered Venus, "The shameless net be praised for this-- When night herself no more could screen us It snared us one more hour of bliss."
NIOBE
How like the sky she bends above her child, One with the great horizon of her pain!
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild, No weeping cloud, no momentary rain, Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief, That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.
She stoops in pity above the labouring earth, Knowing how fond, how brief Is all its hope, past, present, and to come, She stoops in pity, and yearns to a.s.suage its dearth.
Through that fair face the whole dark universe Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro" one white flower; And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse The G.o.ds, but cannot die before their hour, Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head Bows over all earth"s graves. It was her cry Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways With children"s blood ran red!
Her silence utters all the sea would sigh; And, in her face, the whole earth"s anguish prays.
It is the pity, the pity of human love That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom, And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove Frozen upon its nest, ne"er to resume Its happy breathing o"er the golden brace Whose fostering was her death. Death, death alone Can break the anguished horror of that spell!
The sorrow on her face Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone; She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.
Ah, yet, her woman"s love, so vast, so tender; Her woman"s body, hurt by every dart; Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart.
She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief Infinite pang of such victorious pain That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!
The majesty of grief Is hers, and her dominion must remain Eternal. G.o.d nor man usurps that crown.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
I
Height over height, the purple pine-woods clung to the rich Arcadian mountains, Holy-sweet as a sea of incense, under the low dark crimson skies: Glad were the glens where Eurydice bathed, in the beauty of dawn, at the haunted fountains Deep in the blue hyacinthine hollows, whence all the rivers of Arcady rise.
Long ago, ah, white as the Huntress, cold and sweet as the petals that crowned her, Fair and fleet as the fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day, Wreathed with the clouds of her dusky hair that swept in a sun-bright glory around her, Down to the valley her light feet stole, ah, soft as the budding of flowers in May.
Down to the valley she came, for far and far below in the dreaming meadows Pleaded ever the Voice of voices, calling his love by her golden name; So she arose from her home in the hills, and down through the blossoms that danced with their shadows, Out of the blue of the dreaming distance, down to the heart of her lover she came.
Red were the lips that hovered above her lips in the flowery haze of the June-day: Red as a rose through the perfumed mist of pa.s.sion that reeled before her eyes; Strong the smooth young sunburnt arms that folded her heart to his heart in the noon-day, Strong and supple with throbbing sunshine under the blinding southern skies.
Ah, the kisses, the little murmurs, mad with pain for their phantom fleetness, Mad with pain for the pa.s.sing of love that lives, they dreamed--as we dream--for an hour!
Ah, the sudden tempest of pa.s.sion, mad with pain, for its over-sweetness, As petal by petal and pang by pang their love broke out into perfect flower.
Ah, the wonder as once he wakened, out of a dream of remembered blisses, Couched in the meadows of dreaming blossom to feel, like the touch of a flower on his eyes, Cool and fresh with the fragment dews of dawn the touch of her light swift kisses, Shed from the shadowy rose of her face between his face and the warm blue skies.
II
Lost in his new desire He dreamed away the hours; His lyre Lay buried in the flowers:
To whom the King of Heaven, Apollo, lord of light, Had given Beauty and love and might:
Might, if he would, to slay All evil dreams and pierce The grey Veil of the Universe;
With Love that holds in one Sacred and ancient bond The sun And all the vast beyond,
And Beauty to enthrall The soul of man to heaven: Yea, all These gifts to him were given.
_Yet in his dream"s desire He drowsed away the hours: His lyre Lay buried in the flowers._
Then in his wrath arose Apollo, lord of light, That shows The wrong deed from the right;
And by what radiant laws O"erruling human needs, The cause To consequence proceeds;
How balanced is the sway He gives each mortal doom: How day Demands the atoning gloom:
How all good things await The soul that pays the price To Fate By equal sacrifice;
And how on him that sleeps For less than labour"s sake There creeps Uncharmed, the Pythian snake.
III