Part 16

Out of the past's remote delirious abysses Shine forth once more as then you shone,--beloved head, Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses, Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.

And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it, My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame. And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.

You loved me on that moonlit night long since. You were my queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men. You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then, You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had in store for me, Nor know again the voice upon the stair, The little studio in the candle-glare, And all that makes in word and touch and glance The bliss of the first nights of a romance When will to love and be beloved casts out The want to question or the will to doubt. You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas The pale moon settles and the Pleiades. The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan -- The hour advances, and I sleep alone.*

* <Greek> D|/eduke m|\en |'a sel|/anna ka|\i Plh|/iadec, m|/essai de n|/uktec, p|/ara d' |'/erxet' |'/wra |'/egw de m|/ona kate|/udw. <EndGreek>--Sappho. <See appendix for an ASCII to Greek mapping.>

III

Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing! If I have erred I plead but one excuse -- The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing That cost a lesser agony to lose.

I had not bid for beautifuller hours Had I not found the door so near unsealed, Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.

If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, I felt perhaps more poignantly than some The blank eternity from which we waken And all the blank eternity to come.

And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender (In the regret with which my lip was curled) Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor My transit through the beauty of the world.

The Bayadere

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though above the gates of Paradise Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom, Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom, She floated with delicious arms outspread. There was no pose she took, no move she made, But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled Fierce exhalations of hot human love, -- Around her beauty valuable above The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world; Flowing as ever like a dancing fire Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists, Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists The nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire.

Eudaemon

O happiness, I know not what far seas, Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, That thus in Music's wistful harmonies And concert of sweet sound A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore, Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:

Whether thy beams be pitiful and come, Across the sundering of vanished years, From childhood and the happy fields of home, Like eyes instinct with tears Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;

Or yet if prescience of unrealized love Startle the breast with each melodious air, And gifts that gentle hands are donors of Still wait intact somewhere, Furled up all golden in a perfumed place Within the folded petals of forthcoming days.

Only forever, in the old unrest Of winds and waters and the varying year, A litany from islands of the blessed Answers, Not here . . . not here! And over the wide world that wandering cry Shall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die.

Broceliande

Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade, Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned. Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade Broceliande.

Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband, Vanishing where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade, Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland ----

Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed, Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned, Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed: Broceliande -- Broceliande -- Broceliande. . . .

Lyonesse

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse.

Came a term to that land's old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.

Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day, In Lyonesse.

Tithonus

So when the verdure of his life was shed, With all the grace of ripened manlihead, And on his locks, but now so lovable, Old age like desolating winter fell, Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn: Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less With pious works of pitying tenderness; Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes, And hoary height bent down none otherwise Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, -- So bowed with years--when still he lingered on: Then to the daughter of Hyperion This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar By dove-gray seas under the morning star, Where, on the wide world's uttermost extremes, Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams, High in an orient chamber bade prepare An everlasting couch, and laid him there, And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he, Deathless by Jove's compassionless decree, Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest. There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed, Still in an aural, visionary haze Float round him vanished forms of happier days; Still at his side he fancies to behold The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old; And oft, as over dewy meads at morn, Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea, Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, -- Lisping sweet names of passion overblown, Breaking with dull, persistent undertone The breathless silence that forever broods Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes. Times change. Man's fortune prospers, or it falls. Change harbors not in those eternal halls And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies. But through his window there the eastern skies Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end. There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend, The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er Falter and turn where they can sail no more. There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow -- Cedars and silver poplars, row on row, Through whose black boughs on her appointed night, Flooding his chamber with enchanted light, Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere, Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.