Charmides and Other Poems | Page 5

his simple way, or
down the still and silent glade
A little girl ran laughing from the farm,
Not thinking of love's secret mysteries,
And
when she saw the white and gleaming arm
And all his manlihood, with longing eyes

Whose passion mocked her sweet virginity
Watched him awhile, and then stole back
sadly and wearily.
Far off he heard the city's hum and noise,
And now and then the shriller laughter where

The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys
Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful
air,
And now and then a little tinkling bell
As the shorn wether led the sheep down to
the mossy well.
Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,
The grasshopper chirped idly from
the tree,
In sleek and oily coat the water-rat
Breasting the little ripples manfully

Made for the wild-duck's nest, from bough to bough
Hopped the shy finch, and the
huge tortoise crept across the slough.
On the faint wind floated the silky seeds
As the bright scythe swept through the waving
grass,
The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds

And flecked with silver whorls the
forest's glass,
Which scarce had caught again its imagery
Ere from its bed the dusky
tench leapt at the dragon-fly.
But little care had he for any thing
Though up and down the beech the squirrel played,

And from the copse the linnet 'gan to sing
To its brown mate its sweetest serenade;

Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen
The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the
Queen.

But when the herdsman called his straggling goats
With whistling pipe across the rocky
road,
And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes
Boomed through the darkening
woods, and seemed to bode
Of coming storm, and the belated crane
Passed
homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain
Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,
And from the gloomy forest went his way

Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close,
And came at last unto a little quay,

And called his mates aboard, and took his seat
On the high poop, and pushed from land,
and loosed the dripping sheet,
And steered across the bay, and when nine suns
Passed down the long and laddered
way of gold,
And nine pale moons had breathed their orisons
To the chaste stars their
confessors, or told
Their dearest secret to the downy moth
That will not fly at
noonday, through the foam and surging froth
Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes
And lit upon the ship, whose timbers
creaked
As though the lading of three argosies
Were in the hold, and flapped its
wings and shrieked,
And darkness straightway stole across the deep,
Sheathed was
Orion's sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep,
And the moon hid behind a tawny mask
Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean's marge

Rose the red plume, the huge and horned casque,
The seven-cubit spear, the brazen
targe!
And clad in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch of
sick and shivering sea!
To the dull sailors' sight her loosened looks
Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her
feet
Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters
beat
Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried
To the young helmsman at the stern to
luff to windward side
But he, the overbold adulterer,
A dear profaner of great mysteries,
An ardent amorous
idolater,
When he beheld those grand relentless eyes
Laughed loud for joy, and crying
out 'I come'
Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam.
Then fell from the high heaven one bright star,
One dancer left the circling galaxy,

And back to Athens on her clattering car

In all the pride of venged divinity
Pale
Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank,
And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her
boy lover sank.
And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew
With mocking hoots after the wrathful
Queen,
And the old pilot bade the trembling crew
Hoist the big sail, and told how he
had seen
Close to the stern a dim and giant form,
And like a dipping swallow the
stout ship dashed through the storm.

And no man dared to speak of Charmides
Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought,

And when they reached the strait Symplegades
They beached their galley on the
shore, and sought
The toll-gate of the city hastily,
And in the market showed their
brown and pictured pottery.
II.
But some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare
The boy's drowned body back to Grecian
land,
And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair
And smoothed his brow, and
loosed his clenching hand;
Some brought sweet spices from far Araby,
And others
bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby.
And when he neared his old Athenian home,
A mighty billow rose up suddenly
Upon
whose oily back the clotted foam
Lay diapered in some strange fantasy,
And clasping
him unto its glassy breast
Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous
quest!
Now where Colonos leans unto the sea
There lies a long and level stretch of lawn;

The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee
For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun
Is
not afraid, for never through the day
Comes a cry ruder than