Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Night is the shadow of that Ethiop queen,
In rapturous witchery of beatitude;
Who drank a hundred pearls, immaculate
In their white gloom of glory, and of rare
And fabulous richness. Lo! the haughty queen
Heaped the all-immeasurable wealth
Of treasures rare within a vessel, where,
Breathing a mist of filmy radiance—
A seeming vapor woven of gemmy rays,
That lurked in nebulous folds about the latent,
Limpid, and viewless confines of the vessel—
The copious fund, the teeming store of treasure

Was straight dissolved and lost in the crisp bubbling
And all-devouring properties of acids.

Then, after this accomplished, did she mingle
With added juices, spice, and redolence
Of various tinctures, a most savory draught.
Her folded fingers held the jeweled verge
Of the clear goblet, from pure ether hewn,
Or some most lucent crystal, delicate,
And laid the gleaming halo of the goblet
Against the amorous volume of her lips,
Where broke the violent fever of her love
In turgid crimsoning, deepening the ripe tint
O' the silky curtains hung about the proud,
Voluptuous tower of her enticing feature.
So, staying the hot current of her blood
In the drowsy syrup, clotted here and there,
And crusted in pearl-ices, glittering pastes,
And frosty miracles of rich congealment
About the invisible limits of the vessel;
Drank she the all incalculable value
Of crystalizing dregs, and hurled the cup
At a dumb serving slave, a fawning eunuch,
Black as hell's border, crouching close along,
The swelling curvature of her fair barge

Heading the vast armada, as it lay
Becalmed among the silver of the Cyndus.
The dense aroma of their several freights
Had quite embalmed the zephyr, and they lay
Beating the silver bosom of the Cyndus,—
Like prisoned birds, with fretful throb of wings,
Beating the bosom of the silver Cyndus,
Close upon Tarsus, where reveled Anthony.