A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems | Page 7

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Fair Filamelle.
Fair Filamelle is my distress?With all her cruel backwardness.?She will not listen to my pain,?But turneth from me in disdain.?That fair Filamelle,?Her disdain is now my hell.?She hath bewitched me with her eyes,?As Circe did the sailor wise,?Or Egypt did the Roman Prince,?Two thousand years agone.?I've little else but weeping since,?My heart is like a stone.
If you like laughter's silver sound?Why have you dealt me such a wound,?If youth and beauty look askance?At glum and heavy countenance,?Why is it coy and cruel,?Adding to my fire more fuel??Alas! Alas! it has no care,?Free as the birds which flit in air,?Nor heedfulness has any,?Else were its kindness not so rare,?Its victims then so many.
Ah! fair Filamelle, have pity on my moan,?Else must I die alone,?My heart is like a stone.
The Song of Kisses.
I have no skill in Love's soft war,?Nor am I bold to woo?In the same sort that conquerors are?When they are lovers too.?Tho' passion thunders in my brain?Like ocean on a beach,?My tongue is bounden with a chain?And manacled my speech.?Yet, could I let one word go free?To touch your chords with fire,?Become the wind upon the sea?The plectrum of the lyre,?Then, my Althea, should we be?Two lovers without shame,?All things in their epitome,?The Universe our name.?Then should we bow to Love's command?As the waves kiss the shore?And the rain falls upon the land?That it may thirst no more.?Then should we kiss, with time at bay?As in the Ajalon valley,?A score--two score--two hundred--nay?We would not keep the tally--?A hundred thousand in one bout,?Ten myriads ere we slumbered,?And the stars winked and all went out?To find themselves out-numbered.
The Song of Odysseus.
Out of the dark I return--?The abode of the shades;?The words which they said?Were the strengthless words of the Dead,?Meaningless, nothing importing.
Out of the dark I return?And the House of the Dead;?The endless regions of gloom?Deep sepulchred in the womb?Of Earth, the mother of all things.
Out of the dark I return,?From the stream of the Dead;?I slew a goat on the brink?And they pressed around me to drink?Their shadowy twittering legions.
Out of the dark I return,?From the speech of the Dead;?I asked them for counsel and word,?They twittered like bats when they heard?And wailed for the warm blood flowing.
Out of the dark I return;?(Ye are baffled, Oh! Dead);?Lost hopes, lost hearts, lost loves,?Hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked are your droves,?I drew my sword and ye vanished.
Out of the dark I return?And the dust of desire;?My ears are still filled with the shrieks?Of the pitiful Dead and my cheeks?Still pale with the paleness of Hades.
Out of the dark I return?For the day, for the deed;?And now to Apollo, the slayer,?I stand and utter a prayer?Humbly, first making obeisance.
STORIES IN VERSE.
Adeimantus.
The dream of Adeimantus?Who carved for a Grecian Prince?Statues of perfect marble,?Fairer than all things since,?Wonderful, white, and gracious?Like lotus flowers on a mere,?Or phantoms born of the moonbeam,?Beyond all praise but a tear.?The dream of Adeimantus?(As he lay upon his bed),?Wonderful, white, and gracious,?And this was the word it said.?"Arise! oh! Adeimantus,?The breath of the dawn blows chill,?The stars begin to fade?Ere the first ray strikes the sill.?Arise! oh! Adeimantus?For here is work to your hand,?If the fingers fashion the dream?As the soul can understand."?He rose from his troubled bed?Ere the dream had faded away,?And he said, "I will fashion the dream?As the potter fashions the clay."?He said in his great heart's vanity,?"I will fashion a wondrous thing?To stand in a palace of onyx?And blind the eyes of a king."?He said in the pride of his soul?As the birds began to sing,?"I will surely take no rest?Till I fashion this wondrous thing.?I will swear an oath to eschew?The white wine and the red,?To eat no delicate meats?Nor break the fair, white bread.?I will not walk in the city?But labour here alone?In the dew and the dusk and the flush?Till the vision smiles from the stone."?Six days he wrought at the marble,?But cunning had left his hand,?And his fingers would not fashion?What his soul could understand.?Six days he fasted and travailed,?Hard was the watch to keep,?So the chisel fell from his fingers?And he sank with a sob to sleep.?But a vision came to his slumber?Beautiful as before,?Floating in with the moonbeam?Gliding over the floor.?It floated in with the moonbeam?And stood beside his bed,?Wonderful, white, and gracious,?And this was the word it said.?"Courage, oh! Adeimantus,?I am the perfect thing?To stand in a shrine of jasper?And blind the eyes of a king.?I am the strange desire,?The glory beyond the dream,?The passion above the song,?The spirit-light of the gleam.?I come to my best beloved,?Not actual, from afar,?Fairer than hope or thought,?More beautiful than a star.?Courage, oh! Adeimantus,?Lay strength and strength to your soul.?You shall fashion surely a part?Tho' you may not grasp the whole."
Pygmalion.
Once ... I seem to remember....?Crept in the noonday heat?A boy with a crooked shadow?Which