Gebir | Page 7

abodes,
And
murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
And I have others given me by
the nymphs,
Of sweeter sound than any pipe you have.
But we, by
Neptune, for no pipe contend -
This time a sheep I win, a pipe the
next.'

Now came she forward eager to engage,
But first her dress,
her bosom then surveyed,
And heaved it, doubting if she could
deceive.
Her bosom seemed, enclosed in haze like heaven,
To
baffle touch, and rose forth undefined:
Above her knees she drew the
robe succinct,
Above her breast, and just below her arms.
'This will
preserve my breath when tightly bound,
If struggle and equal strength
should so constrain.'
Thus, pulling hard to fasten it, she spake,
And,
rushing at me, closed: I thrilled throughout
And seemed to lessen and

shrink up with cold.
Again with violent impulse gushed my blood,

And hearing nought external, thus absorbed,
I heard it, rushing
through each turbid vein,
Shake my unsteady swimming sight in air.

Yet with unyielding though uncertain arms
I clung around her neck;
the vest beneath
Rustled against our slippery limbs entwined:
Often
mine springing with eluded force
Started aside, and trembled till
replaced:
And when I most succeeded, as I thought,
My bosom and
my throat felt so compressed
That life was almost quivering on my
lips,
Yet nothing was there painful! these are signs
Of secret arts
and not of human might--
What arts I cannot tell--I only know
My
eyes grew dizzy, and my strength decayed.
I was indeed o'ercome!
with what regret,
And more, with what confusion, when I reached

The fold, and yielding up the sheep, she cried:
'This pays a shepherd
to a conquering maid.'
She smiled, and more of pleasure than disdain

Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip,
And eyes that languished,
lengthening, just like love.
She went away; I on the wicker gate

Leant, and could follow with my eyes alone.
The sheep she carried
easy as a cloak;
But when I heard its bleating, as I did,
And saw,
she hastening on, its hinder feet
Struggle and from her snowy
shoulder slip -
One shoulder its poor efforts had unveiled -
Then all
my passions mingling fell in tears;
Restless then ran I to the highest
ground
To watch her--she was gone--gone down the tide -
And the
long moonbeam on the hard wet sand
Lay like a jasper column
half-upreared."
"But, Tamar! tell me, will she not return?
"She will return, yet not
before the moon
Again is at the full; she promised this,
Though
when she promised I could not reply."
"By all the gods I pity thee! go on -
Fear not my anger, look not on
my shame;
For when a lover only hears of love
He finds his folly
out, and is ashamed.
Away with watchful nights and lonely days,

Contempt of earth and aspect up to heaven,
Within contemplation,

with humility,
A tattered cloak that pride wears when deformed,

Away with all that hides me from myself,
Parts me from others,
whispers I am wise--
From our own wisdom less is to be reaped

Than from the barest folly of our friend.
Tamar! thy pastures, large
and rich, afford
Flowers to thy bees and herbage to thy sheep,
But,
battened on too much, the poorest croft
Of thy poor neighbour yields
what thine denies."
They hastened to the camp, and Gebir there
Resolved his native
country to forego,
And ordered, from those ruins to the right
They
forthwith raise a city: Tamar heard
With wonder, though in passing
'twas half-told,
His brother's love, and sighed upon his own.
SECOND BOOK.
The Gadite men the royal charge obey.
Now fragments weighed up
from th' uneven streets
Leave the ground black beneath; again the sun

Shines into what were porches, and on steps
Once warm with
frequentation--clients, friends,
All morning, satchelled idlers all
mid-day,
Lying half-up and languid though at games.
Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels
Draw slow its
laminous length, some intersperse
Salt waters through the sordid
heaps, and seize
The flowers and figures starting fresh to view.

Others rub hard large masses, and essay
To polish into white what
they misdeem
The growing green of many trackless years.
Far off
at intervals the axe resounds
With regular strong stroke, and nearer
home
Dull falls the mallet with long labour fringed.
Here arches are
discovered, there huge beams
Resist the hatchet, but in fresher air

Soon drop away: there spreads a marble squared
And smoothened;
some high pillar for its base
Chose it, which now lies ruined in the
dust.
Clearing the soil at bottom, they espy
A crevice: they, intent
on treasure, strive
Strenuous, and groan, to move it: one exclaims,

"I hear the rusty metal grate; it moves!"

Now, overturning it,

backward they start,
And stop again, and see a serpent pant,
See his
throat thicken, and the crisped scales
Rise ruffled, while upon the
middle fold
He keeps his wary head and blinking eye,
Curling more
close and crouching ere he strike.
Go mighty men, invade far cities,
go -
And be such treasure portions to your heirs.
Six days they laboured: on the seventh day
Returning, all their
labours were destroyed.
'Twas not by mortal hand, or from their tents

'Twere visible; for these were now removed
Above, here neither
noxious mist ascends
Nor the way wearies ere the work begin.

There Gebir, pierced with sorrow, spake these