Back to Part 2. Forward to Part 4.
I
- First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
- Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
- But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
- That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
- Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
- When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
- Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
- You have the means to conquer and the ways,
- And coming where the crossroads separate
- And down each vista glories and wonders wait,
- Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
- You know not which to choose, and hesitate -- -
- Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
- Of some old quarter take a little room
- That looks off over Paris and its towers
- From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, -- -
- So high that you can hear a mating dove
- Croon down the chimney from the roof above,
- See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is
- To wake between Our Lady and our love.
- And have a little balcony to bring
- Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,
- That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,
- And swallows circle over in the Spring.
- There of an evening you shall sit at ease
- In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,
- There with your little darling in your arms,
- Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.
- And looking out over the domes and towers
- That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,
- While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them
- Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,
- You cannot fail to think, as I have done,
- Some of life's ends attained, so you be one
- Who measures life's attainment by the hours
- That Joy has rescued from oblivion.
II
- Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.
- The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
- The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves:
- Come out under the lights and leaves to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .
- Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.
- Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."
- Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,
- The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.
- And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine
- On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .
- But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along
- And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.
- Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:
- Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;
- Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, and courtezans like powdered moths,
- And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;
- And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes
- In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;
- And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press,
- And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:
- All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what
- Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.
- "Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" Friends greet and banter as they pass.
- 'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,
- A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood
- Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .
- The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer,
- And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.
- And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls,
- And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.
- But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet,
- Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.
- Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere
- So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.
- Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls,
- Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.
- From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there
- Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,
- That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue
- The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .
- Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance,
- And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.
- Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim,
- Docked, in the model's present whim, frise and banged above the brows.
- Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays,
- In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,
- As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them
- In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.
- Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete,
- Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,
- And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist,
- She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .
- But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins
- As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.
- Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield
- The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,
- Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath
- To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.
- Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see
- The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.
- Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem
- To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,
- Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued,
- In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.
- And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance
- They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .
- Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair,
- And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.
- Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile
- In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:
- The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees,
- Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their brune and blonde. . . .
- Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- - not as many do,
- Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show -- -
- But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day
- Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.
- And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- -
- That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife -- -
- Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key,
- And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.
- And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory,
- Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:
- When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood,
- And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,
- At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled,
- The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.
III Choral Song
- Have ye gazed on its grandeur
- Or stood where it stands
- With opal and amber
- Adorning the lands,
- And orcharded domes
- Of the hue of all flowers?
- Sweet melody roams
- Through its blossoming bowers,
- Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.
- A city resplendent,
- Fulfilled of good things,
- On its ramparts are pendent
- The bucklers of kings.
- Broad banners unfurled
- Are afloat in its air.
- The lords of the world
- Look for harborage there.
- None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.
- 'Tis the city of Lovers,
- There many paths meet.
- Blessed he above others,
- With faltering feet,
- Who past its proud spires
- Intends not nor hears
- The noise of its lyres
- Grow faint in his ears!
- Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.
- It was thither, ambitious,
- We came for Youth's right,
- When our lips yearned for kisses
- As moths for the light,
- When our souls cried for Love
- As for life-giving rain
- Wan leaves of the grove,
- Withered grass of the plain,
- And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.
- Under arbor and trellis,
- Full of flutes, full of flowers,
- What mad fortunes befell us,
- What glad orgies were ours!
- In the days of our youth,
- In our festal attire,
- When the sweet flesh was smooth,
- When the swift blood was fire,
- And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
- My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
- As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
- As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
- To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.
- I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow
- Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set;
- Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow
- The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.
- Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound,
- To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er,
- The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around
- With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.
- The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands,
- The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine,
- Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strands
- A radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine.
- A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees,
- A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell,
- Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee's
- When from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell.
- I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writ
- In tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay,
- The names of caliphs were who once held court in it,
- Their baths and bowers were mine to dwell in for a day.
- Their robes and rings were mine to draw from shimmering trays -- -
- Brocades and broidered silks, topaz and tourmaline -- -
- Their turban-cloths to wind in proud capricious ways,
- And fasten plumes and pearls and pendent sapphires in.
- I rose; far music drew my steps in fond pursuit
- Down tessellated floors and towering peristyles:
- Through groves of colonnades fair lamps were blushing fruit,
- On seas of green mosaic soft rugs were flowery isles.
- And there were verdurous courts that scalloped arches wreathed,
- Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli.
- Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed,
- And having Youth I had their Open Sesame.
- I paused where shadowy walls were hung with cloths of gold,
- And tinted twilight streamed through storied panes above.
- In lamplit alcoves deep as flowers when they unfold
- Soft cushions called to rest and fragrant fumes to love.
- I hungered; at my hand delicious dainties teemed -- -
- Fair pyramids of fruit; pastry in sugared piles.
- I thirsted; in cool cups inviting vintage beamed -- -
- Sweet syrups from the South; brown muscat from the isles.
- I yearned for passionate Love; faint gauzes fell away.
- Pillowed in rosy light I found my heart's desire.
- Over the silks and down her florid beauty lay,
- As over orient clouds the sunset's coral fire.
- Joys that had smiled afar, a visionary form,
- Behind the ranges hid, remote and rainbow-dyed,
- Drew near unto my heart, a wonder soft and warm,
- To touch, to stroke, to clasp, to sleep and wake beside.
- Joy, that where summer seas and hot horizons shone
- Had been the outspread arms I gave my youth to seek,
- Drew near; awhile its pulse strove sweetly with my own,
- Awhile I felt its breath astir upon my cheek.
- I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay, -- -
- What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine,
- I only lived to search and sample them the day
- When between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine!
- Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be,
- As though in any fond imaginary sphere
- Lay more to tempt man's soul to immortality
- Than ripens for his bliss abundant now and here!
- Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth.
- Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them,
- I want no better joys than those that from green Earth
- My spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem.
- I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor.
- I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell
- Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more
- Into the dearly loved eternal spectacle.
- Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fair
- I yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine,
- Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there,
- And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine.
- Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men,
- You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know,
- Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even then
- Of lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so.
- Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commend
- This immaterial self and flamelike part of me, -- -
- Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end,
- The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea, -- -
- Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of those
- Who love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may be
- The elemental cells and nervules that compose
- Its divine consciousness and joy and harmony.
I
- In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned
- Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules,
- I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes
- Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms
- My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced
- In yielding to all amorous influence
- And multiple impulsion of the flesh,
- To feel within my being surge and sway
- The force that all the stars acknowledge too.
- Amid the nebulous humanity
- Where I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered,
- I saw a million motions, but one law;
- And from the city's splendor to my eyes
- The vapors passed and there was nought but Love,
- A ferment turbulent, intensely fair,
- Where Beauty beckoned and where Strength pursued.
II
- There was a time when I thought much of Fame,
- And laid the golden edifice to be
- That in the clear light of eternity
- Should fitly house the glory of my name.
- But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan,
- Over the fair foundation scarce begun,
- While I with lovers dallied in the sun,
- The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran.
- And now, too late to see my vision, rise,
- In place of golden pinnacles and towers,
- Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers,
- Only beloved of birds and butterflies.
- My friends were duped, my favorers deceived;
- But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there,
- That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fair
- I scarce regret the temple unachieved.
III
- For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow
- Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those,
- Home turning as a conqueror turns home,
- What time green dawn down every street uprears
- Arches of triumph! He has drained as well
- Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried:
- Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by.
- This only matters: from some flowery bed,
- Laden with sweetness like a homing bee,
- If one have known what bliss it is to come,
- Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lips
- The fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To him
- The hills have bared their treasure, the far clouds
- Unveiled the vision that o'er summer seas
- Drew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known,
- He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds,
- And, pillowed on a memory so sweet,
- Unto oblivious eternity
- Without regret yield his victorious soul,
- The blessed pilgrim of a vow fulfilled.
IV
- What is Success? Out of the endless ore
- Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold
- Of passionate memory; to have lived so well
- That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more
- Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build
- And apple flowers unfold,
- Find not of that dear need that all things tell
- The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled.
- O Love, whereof my boyhood was the dream,
- My youth the beautiful novitiate,
- Life was so slight a thing and thou so great,
- How could I make thee less than all-supreme!
- In thy sweet transports not alone I thought
- Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast.
- The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caught
- Into the pulse of Nature and possessed
- By the same light that consecrates it so.
- Love! -- - 'tis the payment of the debt we owe
- The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er
- In silks and perfume and unloosened hair
- The loveliness of lovers, face to face,
- Lies folded in the adorable embrace,
- Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice
- That soul partakes whose inspiration fills
- The springtime and the depth of summer skies,
- The rainbow and the clouds behind the hills,
- That excellence in earth and air and sea
- That makes things as they are the real divinity.
- Down the strait vistas where a city street
- Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances,
- Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less
- And the sky reddens round the day's retreat.
- Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet,
- Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down.
- Now the lamps brighten and the quickening town
- Rings with the trample of returning feet.
- And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mould
- Sunk all the drowsy and unloved daylight
- In layers of odorous softness, Paphian girls
- Cover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls,
- Crown, and about her spangly vestments fold
- The ermine of the empire of the Night.
- Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,
- Between the rivers and the illumined sky
- Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high
- Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.
- They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face
- Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare
- Beyond the hilltops in the evening air
- How bright the cressets at her portals blaze.
- On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day
- Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow;
- There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams.
- Her paths are disillusion and decay,
- With ruins piled and unapparent woe,
- The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.
- There was a youth around whose early way
- White angels hung in converse and sweet choir,
- Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, -- -
- In cloud and far horizon to desire.
- His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream
- Born of clear showers and the mountain dew,
- Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam
- Forever pure against heaven's orient blue.
- Within the city's shades he walked at last.
- Faint and more faint in sad recessional
- Down the dim corridors of Time outworn,
- A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past,
- A hymn of glories fled beyond recall
- With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn.
- Up at his attic sill the South wind came
- And days of sun and storm but never peace.
- Along the town's tumultuous arteries
- He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame:
- Each night the whistles in the bay, the same
- Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars:
- For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars
- Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame.
- Up to his attic came the city cries -- -
- The throes with which her iron sinews heave -- -
- And yet forever behind prison doors
- Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes
- The light that hangs on desert hills at eve
- And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . .
- A tide of beauty with returning May
- Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume
- Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom
- The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay.
- Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe;
- The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound;
- And through the streets, like veins when they abound,
- The lust for pleasure throbs itself away.
- Here let me live, here let me still pursue
- Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -- -
- Thy strange allurements, City that I love,
- Maze of romance, where I have followed too
- The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need
- And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.
- Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs,
- The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram,
- A garret and a glimpse across the roofs
- Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame,
- The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings
- Where I drank deep the bliss of being young,
- The strife and sweet potential flux of things
- I sought Youth's dream of happiness among!
- It walks here aureoled with the city-light,
- Forever through the myriad-featured mass
- Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, -- -
- Heard sometimes in a song across the night,
- Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pass,
- And when love yields to love seen face to face.
- To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound
- Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are,
- As of a silken city famed afar
- Over the sands for wealth and holy ground,
- Came the report of one -- - a woman crowned
- With all perfection, blemishless and high,
- As the full moon amid the moonlit sky,
- With the world's praise and wonder clad around.
- And I who held this notion of success:
- To leave no form of Nature's loveliness
- Unworshipped, if glad eyes have access there, -- -
- Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goal
- To find where that sweet shrine is and extol
- The hand that triumphed in a work so fair.
- Oft as by chance, a little while apart
- The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
- Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
- Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn:
- Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe
- Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus,
- Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw
- Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous;
- But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes,
- The fair world glistens, and in after days
- The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes
- Lives in my step and lightens all my face, -- -
- So they who found the Earthly Paradise
- Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.
- Amid the florid multitude her face
- Was like the full moon seen behind the lace
- Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part
- When Spring shines in the world and in the heart.
- As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor
- Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour,
- So to my being's innermost recess
- Flooded the light of so much loveliness;
- She held as in a vase of priceless ware
- The wine that over arid ways and bare
- My youth was the pathetic thirsting for,
- And where she moved the veil of Nature grew
- Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through
- Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.
- A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued,
- With palms extent for amorous charity
- And eyes incensed with love for all they see,
- A wonder more to be adored than wooed,
- On whom the grace of conscious womanhood
- Adorning every little thing she does
- Sits like enchantment, making glorious
- A careless pose, a casual attitude;
- Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise
- Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens
- Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage,
- To keep alive in this our latter age
- That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means
- Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise.
A paraphrase of Petrarca, Quando fra l'altre donne . . .
- When among creatures fair of countenance
- Love comes enformed in such proud character,
- So far as other beauty yields to her,
- So far the breast with fiercer longing pants;
- I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance,
- That wed desire to a thing so high,
- And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and I
- Of bliss unpaired are made participants;
- Hence have come ardent thoughts and waking dreams
- That, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup,
- Leave it no lust for gross imaginings.
- Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleams
- That while it gazes lifts the spirit up
- To that high source from which all beauty springs.
- Like as a dryad, from her native bole
- Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge,
- To a slow river at whose silent verge
- Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll,
- Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal
- Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup,
- Bend till thine image from the pool beam up
- Arched with blue heaven like an aureole.
- See how adorable in fancy then
- Lives the fair face it mirrors even so,
- O thou whose beauty moving among men
- Is like the wind's way on the woods below,
- Filling all nature where its pathway lies
- With arms that supplicate and trembling sighs.
- I fancied, while you stood conversing there,
- Superb, in every attitude a queen,
- Her ermine thus Boadicea bare,
- So moved amid the multitude Faustine.
- My life, whose whole religion Beauty is,
- Be charged with sin if ever before yours
- A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his
- Who owning grandeur marvels and adores.
- Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower
- I made your image the high pearly sill,
- And mounting there in many a wistful hour,
- Burdened with love, I trembled and was still,
- Seeing discovered from that azure height
- Remote, untrod horizons of delight.
- It may be for the world of weeds and tares
- And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose
- That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows
- One from the train of Love's true courtiers
- Straightway on him who gazes, unawares,
- Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,
- Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,
- Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.
- Then on the soul from some ancestral place
- Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,
- When, in the light of that serener sphere,
- It saw ideal beauty face to face
- That through the forms of this our meaner Earth
- Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.
- Above the ruin of God's holy place,
- Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood,
- Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food,
- Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace,
- I saw exalted in the latter days
- Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed,
- Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude,
- Standing with arms out-stretched and flower-like face.
- And, sick with all those centuries of tears
- Shed in the penance for factitious woe,
- Once more I saw the nations at her feet,
- For Love shone in their eyes, and in their ears
- Come unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo!
- The breast your lips abjured is still as sweet.
- Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest,
- With single rites the common debt to pay?
- On some green headland fronting to the East
- Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day.
- Naked, uplifting in a laden tray
- New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine,
- Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray
- To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine.
- The morning planet poised above the sea
- Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid;
- Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity
- Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid,
- That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes,
- Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.
- Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down
- In grove and garden to the sapphire sea;
- Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown;
- Let music reach and fair heads circle me,
- Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer
- Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news
- Of merchant cities seek our harbors here,
- Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse;
- But here, with love and sleep in her caress,
- Warm night shall sink and utterly persuade
- The gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, -- -
- Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness,
- In a flowered balcony beside me laid,
- Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair.
- Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest,
- Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees,
- With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed,
- Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides.
- Single he couched there, to his circling flocks
- Piping at times some happy shepherd's tune,
- Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks,
- And arched with the blue Asian afternoon.
- Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coast
- Rolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town,
- There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay.
- Beyond, on fields of azure light embossed
- He watched from noon till dewy eve came down
- The summer clouds pile up and fade away.
Back to Part 2. Forward to Part 4.