Her timorous fondness with rough touch repelled.
Sing, weeping, sing: her bliss is all outworn.
But, as a weak man leans upon a staff,
She trusted in the future. O, as soon
That staff should blossom, as dead love revive!
Ah, child the hopeless, withered years, ungreened
With even one leaf! She could not long have borne
To linger here, where once she yearned to bide.
But since she loved the little prattler well,
Moons filled their horns anew, and new moons waned,
And, — hankering towards the sisters, she endured;
Yet often, holding fast the tender hand,
Would slink away, to loiter on the shore,
Her blue eyes wandering wistful down the bay.
It fell upon a morning, when the boy
Would cling about their knees; and him as well
They hated, for his mother's sake;
Upon a morning, in an angry mood,
As hatred hardens men to evil deed,
One hurled a quoit, and smote him on the crown,
And all his brains lay white about the ground.
Yet no-way sorry, they took up the child,
And laid him at the feet of Psamathe:
And none cared, nor the king. Then she at length
Burst into passionate anger, and her words
Thrilled each to marrow of the bones: some god
Inspired her then, to read the wrath foredoomed.
'O mad!' she cried, 'O fools! whom men think wise!
Whose rule dispenses justice in the land!
Untaught that love is wisdom, and the crown
Of justice pity, and gentleness of man!
And now I see the end, who rue the end;
Being tender, wishing happy days for all!
O pity, for the sons of these thy sons;
Of these, thy sons, so apt at slaying sons;
Ajax, Achilles, noble ones, both slain;
One by the sword which slew his foes, and one
By treacherous bow-shaft on his bridal morn!
And thou, gray king, - yea! upright doom of heaven!
Made king in Hades, where no pity dwells,
Where, found just still, thou shalt be feared and scorned.
O selfish in your love, O race of men!
O hearts, more cruel than the dog-fish tooth!
Words, sweet and false, like easy-falling death!
Now I will go,' — she wept, — 'now I will go,' —
Weeping she sighed, 'who truly much have learned ! '
So she deceived, and undeceived, grown wise,
On instant fixed her sometime wavering will,
And crossed the fear-thrilled halls.
Obstruct the resolute exit, nor desired.
But following thief-like, craftily, afar,
They watched her gain the quiet cove, wherein
The king first drew salt drift-weed from her eyes;
And halting, pensive, where smooth ripples curled,
Unclasp her girdle; round her glittering feet
The fair queen's vesture heedlessly let fall;
About her much-wronged beauty, with a smile,
Unloop the wild profusion of her hair;
And slip beneath green waves, and glide away.
They, wondering, trembled; and still wondering, gazed; Till they could see no more the snowy arm
And pearl-white shoulder glancing mid the foam.
I WILL out-soar these clouds, and shake to nought
The doubts that daunt my spirit: that is free,
Invincible by death or destiny;
Nor need she take of love or friendship thought.
Self-centred, self-sustained, self-guided, fraught
With fervor of the brain enlightening me,
Alone with God upon a shoreless sea,
I'll find what men in crowds have vainly sought.
I am at one with solitude, and loathe
The tumult of those hopes and fears that fret
Weak hearts in throbbing bosoms.
Some Titan vice or virtue shall unclothe
Her mighty limbs for my sole sight, and I,
Sufficing to myself and wisdom, die.
The world of human woe and weal I shun,
Not forasmuch as I despise the joy
That lightens when life wakes in girl or boy,
And glittering sands through passion's hour-glass run;
Of mortal joys there is not any one
But I have made it for myself the toy
Of fancy, nor hath love had power to cloy Him who leaves all the deeds of love undone. Despair of full fruition drives me hence,
Uncomforted to seek repose in God:
Those tyrannous desires that stung my sense
At every turn upon the road I trod,
Seek their assuagement in a sphere where nought
Dares to dispute the sovereignty of thought.
Nay, soul, though near to dying, do not this!
It may be that the world and all its ways
Seem but spent ashes of extinguished days,
And love the phantom of imagined bliss:
Yet what is man among the mysteries
Whereof the young-eyed angels sang their praise?
Thou know'st not. Lone and wildered in the maze,
See that life's crown thou dost not idly miss.
Is friendship fickle? Hast thou found her so?
Is God more near thee on that homeless sea
Than by the hearths where children come and go?
Peechance some rotten root of sin in thee
Hath made thy garden cease to bloom and glow:
Hast thou no need from thine own self to flee?
Couldst thou clasp God apart from man, or dwell
Merged in the ocean of that infinite good
Where truth and beauty are beatitude,
This earth might well appear a living hell,
The prison of damned spirits that rebel,
Matched with thy paradise of solitude:
Nathless it is not clasping God to brood
Upon thine own delusive dreams; the cell
Built by an anchorite that strives with fate
And kindly fellow feeling, may be found
Like to a maniac's chamber, when too late,
Abandoned to his will, without or sound
Or sight of men his brethren, on the ground
He lies, and all his life is desolate.
It is the centre of the soul that ails:
We carry with us our own heart's disease;
And craving the impossible, we freeze
The lively rills of love that never fails.
What faith, what hope will lend the spirit sails
To waft her with a light spray-scattering breeze
From this Calypso isle of phantasies,
Self-sought, self-gendered, where the daylight pales?
Where wandering visions of foregone desires
Pursue her sleepless on a stony strand;
Instead of stars the bleak and baleful fires
Of vexed imagination, quivering spires
That have nor rest nor substance, light the land,
Paced by lean hungry men, a ghostly band!
Oh that the waters of oblivion
Might purge the burdened soul of her life's dross,
Cleansing dark overgrowths that dull the gloss
Wherewith her pristine gold so purely shone!
Oh that some spell might make us dream undone
Those deeds that fret our pillow, when we toss
Racked by the torments of that living cross
Where memory frowns a grim centurion!
Sleep, the kind soother of our bodily smart,
Is bought and sold by scales-weight; quivering nerves Sink into slumber when the hand of art
Hath touched some hidden spring of brain or heart:
But for the tainted will no medicine serves;
The road from sin to suffering never swerves.
What skill shall anodyne the mind diseased?
Did Rome's fell tyrant cure his secret sore
With those famed draughts of cooling hellebore?
What opiates on the fiends of thought have seized?
This fever of the spirit hath been eased
By no grave simples culled on any shore;
No surgeon's knife, no muttered charm, no lore
Of Phoebus Paian have those pangs appeased.
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