Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse | Page 2

quicker
breath,
Comes she to the funeral marriage,
The betrothal of black
death.
Rosy hands, and hennaed fingers,
Nails whereon the onyx lingers,

Clasped, as at a lover's tale,
In the bosom's marble vale.
IV
Silvery scarf, her waist enwreathing,
Wafts a soft Sabaean balm;


Like a cloud of incense, breathing
Round the column of a palm:
Snood of lilies interweaveth
(Giving less than it receiveth)
Beauty
of her clustered brow,
Calmly bent upon us now.
Through her dark hair, spread before
See the western glory wane,

As in groves of dim Cytorus,
Or the bowers of Taprobane!
V
See, the large eyes, lit by heaven,
Brighter than the Sisters Seven,

(Like a star the storm hath cowed)
Sink their flash in sorrow's cloud.
There the crystal tear refraineth,
And the founts of grief are dry;

"Father, Mother--none remaineth;
All are dead; and why not I?"
Yet, by God's will, heavenly beauty
Owes to Heaven alone its duty;

Off ye priests, who dare adjudge
Bride, like this, to slime and
sludge!
VI
When they tread the river's margent,
All their mitred heads are
bowed--
What hath browned the ripples argent,
Like the plume of
thunder-cloud?
Where yestreen the water slumbered,
With a sickly crust encumbered,

Leapeth now a roaring flood,
Wild as war, and red as blood.
Every billow hurries quicker,
Every surge runs up the strand;
While
the brindled eddies flicker,
Scourged as with a levin brand.
VII
Every bulrush, parched and welted,
Lifts his long joints yellow-belted;

Every lotus, faint and sick,
Hangs her fragrant tongue to lick.

Countless creatures, lone unthought of,
Swarm from every hole and
nook;
What is man, that he make nought of
Other entries in God's
book?
Scorpions, rats, and lizards flabby,
Centipedes, and hydras scabby,

Asp, and slug, and toad, whose gem
Outlasts human diadem.
VIII
Therefore hath the priest-procession
Causeway clean of sandal-wood;

That no foul thing make transgression
On the votive maiden's
blood.
Pure of blood and soul, she standeth
Where the marble gauge
demandeth,
Marble pillar, with black style,
Record of the rising
Nile,
White-robed priests around her kneeling,
Ibis-banner floating high,

Conchs, and drums, and sistrals pealing,
And Sesostris standing nigh.
IX
He, whose kingdom-city stretches
Further than our eyesight fetches;

Every street it wanders down
Larger than a regal town;
Built, when each man was a giant,
When the rocks were mason's
stones,
When the oaks were osiers pliant,
And the mountains
scarcely thrones;
City, whose Titanic portals
Scorn the puny modern mortals,
In thy
desert winding-sheet,
Sacred from our insect feet.
X
Thebes No-Amon, hundred-gated,
Every gate could then unfold

Cavalry ten thousand, plated,
Man and horse, in solid gold.

Glancing back through serried ranges,
Vivid as his own phalanges,

Every captain might espy
Equal host in sculpture vie;
Down Piromid vista gazing,
Ten miles back from every gate,
He
can see that temple blazing,
Which the world shall never mate.
XI
But the Nile-flood, when it swelleth,
Recks not man, nor where he
dwelleth;
And--e'en while Sesostris reigns--
Scarce five cubits man
attains.
Lo, the darkening river quaileth,
Like a swamp by giant trod,
And
the broad commotion waileth,
Stricken with the hand of God I
When the rushing deluge raging
Flung its flanks, and shook the
staging,
Priesthood, cowering from the brim,
Chanted thus its
faltering hymn.
XII
"Ocean sire, the earth enclasping,
Like a babe upon thy knee,
In thy
cosmic cycle grasping
All that hath been, or shall be;
"Thou, that art around and over
All we labour to discover;
Thou, to
whom our world no more
Than a shell is on thy shore;
"God, that wast Supreme, or ever
Orus, or Osiris, saw;
God, with
whom is no endeavour,
But thy will eternal law:
XIII
"We, who keep thy feasts and fastings,
We, who live on thy
off-castings,
Here in low obeisance crave
Rich abundance of thy
wave.

"Seven years now, for some transgression,
Some neglect, or outrage
vile,
Vainly hath our poor procession
Offered life, and soul to Nile.
"Seven years now of promise fickle,
Niggard ooze, and paltry trickle,

Freshet sprinkling scanty dole,
Where the roaring flood should roll.
XIV
"Therefore are thy children dwindled,
Therefore is thine altar bare;

Wheat, and rye, and millet spindled,
And the fruits of earth despair.
"Men with haggard bellies languish,
Bridal beds are strewn with
anguish,
Mothers sell their babes for bread,
Half the holy kine are
dead.
"Is thy wrath at last relaxing?
Art thou merciful, once more?
Yea,
behold the torrent waxing!
Yea, behold the flooded shore!
XV
"Nile, that now with life-blood tidest,
And in gorgeous cold subsidest,

Richer than our victor tread
Stirred in far Hydaspes' bed;
"When thy swelling crest o'er-waveth
Yonder twenty cubit mark,

And thy tongue of white foam laveth
Borders of the desert dark,
"This, the fairest Theban maiden,
Shall be thine, with jewels laden;

Lift thy furrowed brow, and see
_Lita_, dedicate to thee!"
[Illustration: 032.]
XVI
Thus he spake, and lowly stooping
O'er the Calasiris hem,
Took the
holy water, scooping
With a bowl of lucid gem;

Chanting from the Bybline psalter
Touched he then her forehead altar;

Sleeking back the trickled jet,
There the marriage-seal he set.
"None of mortals dare pursue thee,
None come near thy hallowed
side:
Nile's thou art, and he shall woo thee,--
Nile, who swalloweth
his bride."
XVII
With despair's mute self-reliance,
She accepted death's affiance;

She, who hath no home or rest,
Shrank not from the river's breast.
Haply there she shall discover
Father, lost in wilds unknown,

Mother slain, and youthful lover,
Seen as yet in