Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

At last, in a grove of ilexes
Off Epirus, in the sea,
She built a Grecian pleasure-house
Altar'd to poetry
And Heine. (May the clan that own
The palace now adore his stone
As piously as she!)

“Here, an old woman, I will rest,”
She said: and from the north
Sent for a girl's toys, jewelries.
But lo! when they come forth
In that clear Adriatic morn,

On the cold imperial bed
The coil of pearls, so long unworn,
Lay lustreless and dead.

“Tell me now, Monks of the sea-crag,
Men wise in country lore,
Whose bee-hive cluster of white cells
Juts on the Corfiote shore,
Where shall I sain them back to white
And how sick pearls restore?” . . .
And one looked up from his lentil pan,
Like an olive, silvery-hoar,
This Monk they sent her for a guide
To row her out at the ebb-tide.

He rowed her in a little boat
That secret place to learn,
His wrinkled hands pulled on the loom,
His eye serene and stern,
A Charon in the boat of doom,
Unblinking, taciturn.

There was gold broom on the sun-bright hills,
The plash of oars in chime,
And came a smell from the rocky bays
Of lentisk-bush and thyme.

They rowed along the rosy crags
Sea-gnawn, with bouldered base,
“O can you see yon headland high
With the slant cave in its face?

Deep down within it runs the pool
Where your sick pearls must lie;
At its mouth is the sea-otter's hole
And a slant slit is the sky.
The walls aloft are green with slime,
And the sea-birds' dung is soft with time
Along the ledges high.”

And by that cranny darkly down
They went the sea-birds' way
Into the cavern's foul descent;
Above, the roofs of mountain leant
That plunge down to the spray.
At last they heard a black wave wash,
The subterranean channel plash,
That never sees the day.

She took the pearls from her sere breast,
Felt them all, long unworn,
And in the gloom, swift and unseen,
She kissed those pearls as they had been
The love-babe never born;
And dropt them in the salt, salt wave
With tears of the forlorn.

A voice cried: “Long, O long lie there,
Beneath the break of foam!
Far have ye wandered, suffered much;
To that ye wandered from
We give you back, thrice-noble pearls,

Until ye shall become
Perfect again and pure again
In that which is your home!”

And swift came rushings through the air
Of cold and wingèd things
Alarmed escaping from their lair,
Blasts and torch-flickerings.

“Who art thou, visionary Monk,
That speak'st this requiem?”
“One that sees peak'd and stormy towers
Steep as Jerusalem,
Battlements grey, and over all
One window like a gem,
And a young girl, weeping on the wall,
That wears a diadem!”