mazes

James Thomson
MELENCOLIA

Of forehead charged with baleful thoughts

and dreams, PROM "THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT The household bunch of keys, the house

wife's

gown ANEAR the centre of that northern crest Voluminous, indented, and yet rigid Stands out a level upland bleak and As if a shell of burnish'd metal frigid, bare,

The feet thick-shod to tread all weakFrom which the city east and south and ness down ;

west Sinks gently in long waves ; and throned The comet hanging o'er the waste dark seas, there

The
massy

rainbow cury'd in front of it An Image sits, stupendous, superhuman, Beyond the village with the masts and The bronze colossus of a winged Woman,

trees ; Upon a graded granite base foursquare. The snaky imp, dog-headed, from the

Pit, Low-seated she leans forward massively, Bearing upon its batlike leathern pinions With cheek on clench'd left hand, the Her name unfolded in the sun's dominions, forearm's might

The “MELENCOLIA” that transcends Erect, its elbow on her rounded knee ;

all wit. Across a clasp'd book in her lap the right Upholds a pair of compasses ; she gazes Thus has the artist copied her, and thus With full set eyes, but wandering in thick Surrounded to expound her form sublime,

Her fate heroic and calamitous ; Of sombre thought beholds no outward Fronting the dreadful mysteries of Time, sight.

Unvanquish'd in defeat and desolation,

Undaunted in the hopeless conflagration Words cannot picture her ; but all men Of the day setting on her baffled prime.

know That solemn sketch the pure sad artist Baffled and beaten back she works on still, wrought

Weary and sick of soul she works the Three centuries and three score years ago,

more, With fantasies of his peculiar thought : Sustain'd by her indomitable will : The instruments of carpentry and science The hands shall fashion and the brain Scatter'd about her feet, in strange alliance With the keen wolf-hound sleeping un- And all her sorrow shall be turn'd to distraught;

labor,

Till Death the friend-foe piercing with his Scales, hour-glass, bell, and magic-squa

sabre above ;

That mighty heart of hearts ends bitter The grave and solid infant perch'd be

side, With open winglets that might bear a dove, Bat as if blacker night could dawn on Intent upon its tablets, heavy-eyed ;

night, Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle With tenfold gloom on moonless night But all too impotent to lift the regal

unstarr'd, Robustness of her earth-born strength A sense more tragic than defeat and blight, and pride ;

More desperate than strife with hope

debarr'd, And with those wings, and that light More fatal than the adamantine Never wreath which seems

Encompassing her passionate endeavor, To mock her grand head and the knotted Dawns glooming in her tenebrous frown

regard :

shall pore,

war.

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FROM “HE HEARD HER SING”

Pathetic and tremulous, no! but firm as a

column it rose, And thus all-expectant abiding I waited not Rising solemn and slow with a full rich long, for soon

swell to the close, A boat came gliding and gliding out in the Firm as a marble column soaring with light of the moon,

noble pride Gliding with muffled oars, slowly, a thin In a triumph of rapture solemn to some dark line,

Hero deified ; Round from the shadowing shores into the In a rapture of exultation made calm by its silver shine

stress intense, Of the clear moon westering now, and In a triumph of consecration and a jubilastill drew on and on,

tion immense. While the water before its prow breaking And the Voice flow'd on and on, and ever and glistering shone,

it swell’d as it pour'd, Slowly in silence strange ; and the rower Till the stars that throbb’d as they shone row'd till it lay

seem'd throbbing with it in acAfloat within easy range deep in the curve

cord; of the bay ;

Till the moon herself in my dream, still And besides the rower were two : a Wo

Empress of all the night, man, who sat in the stern,

Was only that voice supreme translated into And Her by her fame I knew, one of those

pure light : fames that burn,

And I lost all sense of the earth though I Startling and kindling the world, one whose still had sense of the sea ; likeness we everywhere see;

And I saw the stupendous girth of a tree And a man reclining half-curl'd with an in

like the Norse World-Tree ; dolent grace at her knee,

And its branches fill'd all the sky, and the The Signor, lord of her choice ; and he deep sea water'd its root, lightly touch'd a guitar;

And the clouds were its leaves on high and A guitar for that glorious voice ! Illumine the stars were its silver fruit; the sun with a star!

Yet the stars were the notes of the singing She sat superb and erect, stately, all-happy,

and the moon was the voice of the serene,

song, Her right hand toying uncheck'd with the Through the vault of the firmament ringhair of that page of a Queen ;

ing and swelling resistlessly strong ; With her head and her throat and her bust And the whole vast night was a shell for like the bust and the throat and the

that music of manifold might, head

And was strain’d by the stress of the swell Of Her who has long been dust, of her who of the music yet vaster than night. shall never be dead,

And I saw as a crystal fountain whose shaft Preserv'd by the potent art made trebly was a column of light potent by love,

More high than the loftiest mountain ascend While the transient ages depart from under the abyss of the night ; the heavens above,

And its spray fill’d all the sky, and the Preserv'd in the color and line on the can

clouds were the clouds of its spray, vas fulgently flung

Which glitter'd in star-points on high and By Him the Artist divine who triumph'd fill'd with pure silver the bay ; and vanish'd so young :

And ever in rising and falling it sang as it Surely there rarely hath been a lot more to rose and it fell, be envied in life

And the heavens with their pure azure Than thy lot, O Fornarina, whom Raphael's walling all puls'd with the pulse of heart took to wife.

its swell,

For the stars were the notes of the singing There was silence yet for a time save the

and the moon was the voice of the tinkling capricious and quaint,

song Then She lifted her voice sublime, no Through the vault of the firmament ringing longer tender and faint,

and swelling ineffably strong;

And the whole vast night was a shell for

that music of manifold might, And was strain'd by the stress of the

swell of the music yet vaster than

night : And the fountain in swelling and soaring

and filling beneath and above, Grew flush'd with red fire in outpour

ing, transmuting great power into

love, Great power with a greater love flush

ing, immense and intense and su

preme,
As if all the World's heart-blood outgush-

ing ensanguin'd the trance of my
dream ;

And the waves of its blood seem'd to dash

on the shore of the sky to the cope With the stress of the fire of a passion and

yearning of limitless scope, Vast fire of a passion and yearning, keen

torture of rapture intense, A most unendurable burning consuming the

soul with the sense : “ Love, love only, forever love with its

torture of bliss ; All the world's glories can never equal two

souls in one kiss : Love, and ever love wholly ; love in all

time and all space ; Life is consummate then solely in the death

of a burning embrace."

was hid

bells ;

Harriet Eleanor Hamilton king
PALERMO

From the green sheath, till all the green
FROM "THE DISCIPLES

By the white spread of giant-blowing wings.

In the cool shadow heaps of tuberose

Whosoe'er Lay by the fountains in the market-place, Had look'd upon the glory of that day Among the purple fruit. The jalousies In Sicily beneath the summer sun,

Of the tall houses shut against the sun Would not have dream'd that Death was Were wreath'd with trails of velvet-glossy

reigning there In shape so terrible ; for all the road And here and there one had not been unWas like an avenue of Paradise,

clos'd Life, and full flame of loveliness of life. Yesterday, and the vivid shoots had run The red geraniums blaz’d in banks breast- Over it in a night, and seal'd it fast high,

With tendril, and bright leaf, and drops of And from the open doors in the white walls

flower. Scents of magnolia and of heliotrope And in and out the balconies thin stems Came to the street ; filmy aurora-flowers Went twisting, and the chains of passionOpen'd and died in the hour, and fell away flowers, In many-color'd showers upon the ground; | Bud, blossom, and phantasmal orb of fruit Nebulous masses of the pale blue stars Alternate, swung, and lengthen'd every Made light upon the darkness of the green,

hour. Through openings in the thickets over- And fine-leav'd greenery crept from bower arch'd ;

to bower Where roses, white and yellow and full- With thick white star-flakes scatter'd; and rose,

the bloom Weigh'd down their branches, till the Of orient lilies, and the rainbow-blue ground was swept

Of iris shot up stately from the grass ; By roses, and strewn with them, as the air

And through the wavering shadows crimShook the thick clusters, and the Indian

son sparks reeds

Pois'd upon brittle stalks, glanced up and Bow'd to its passing with their feathery heads;

And shining darkness of the cypress clos'd And trumpet-blossoms push'd out great The deep withdrawing glades of evergreen, white horns

Lit up far off with oleander pyres.

down ;

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Out of the rocky dust of the wayside

THE CROCUS The lamps of the aloes burn'd themselves aloft,

Out of the frozen earth below, Immortal ; and the prickly cactus-knots Out of the melting of the snow, In the hot sunshine overleant the walls, No flower, but a film, I push to light; The lizards darting in and out of them; No stem, no bud, - yet I have burst But in the shadier

side the maidenhair The bars of winter, I am the first, Sprung thick from every crevice. Passing O Sun, to greet thee out of the night!

these, He issued on to the Piazza, where

Bare are the branches, cold is the air, The wonder of the world, the Fountain Yet it is fire at the heart I bear, streams

I come, a flame that is fed by none : From height to height of marble, dashing The summer hath blossoms for her delight, down

Thick and dewy and waxen-white, White waves forever over whitest limbs, Thou seest me golden, O golden Sun ! That shine in multitudes amid the spray And sound of silver waters without end, Deep in the warm sleep underground Rolling and rising and showering sud- Life is still, and the peace profound : denly

Yet a beam that pierced, and a thrill There standing where the fig-trees made

that smote a shade

Call'd me and drew me from far away ;Close in the angle, he beheld the streets I

rose,

I came, to the open day Stretch fourways to the beautiful great I have won, unshelter'd, alone, remote.

gates ; With all their burnish'd domes and carven No bee strays out to greet me at morn, stones

I shall die ere the butterfly is born, In wavering color'd lines of light and I shall hear no note of the nightingale ; shade.

The swallow will come at the break of And downwards, from the greatest of the

green, gates,

He will never know that I have been Porta Felice, swept the orange-groves ;

Before him here when the world was And avenues of coral-trees led down

pale. In all their hanging splendors to the shore ;

They will follow, the rose with the thorny And out beyond them, sleeping in the light,

stem, The islands, and the azure of the sea. The hyacinth stalk, - soft airs for them ; And upwards, through a labyrinth of They shall have strength, I have but spires,

love : And turrets, and steep alabaster walls, They shall not be tender as I, The city rose, and broke itself away Yet I fought here first, to bloom, to die, Amidst the forests of the hills, and reach'd To shine in his face who shines above. The heights of Monreale, crown'd with all Its pinnacles and all its jewell’d fronts O Glory of heaven, O Ruler of morn, Shining to seaward ; - but the tolling bells O Dream that shap'd me, and I was born Out of the gilded minarets smote the In thy likeness, starry, and flower of

flame; Until at last, through miles of shadowy air, | I lie on the earth, and to thee look up, The blue and violet mountains shut the Into thy image will grow my cup, sky.

Till a sunbeam dissolve it into the same.

ear:

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