 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
Loathing the fiend they folded to their hearts,
The madness and the malady of life,
The languor and the listlessness, that spring
From the exhaustion of a maniac lust,
The masters of the throng, in marble baths
And Araby's perfumes and cordial cups,
Sought renovation for renewed delights.
Odours and thermal waters may subdue
The maddening fever of the flesh, but Time
Never can hush the muttering lips of guilt,
Nor quell Death's agonies which guilt inflicts.
The Sybarite from Salmacis arose
His orgies to renew with Sin's worst zeal,
But Lethe had no power o'er memories
Of broken vows and imprecating oaths
Made by the River of the Dead, what time
Cocytus moaned and Phlegethon upcast
Its lurid gleams o'er torrent chasms of gloom,
Bidding the banished reveller, who dared
To mock the Styx, roam by its blackened shores
Through the dark endlessness of shame and woe!
The madness and the malady of life,
The languor and the listlessness, that spring
From the exhaustion of a maniac lust,
The masters of the throng, in marble baths
And Araby's perfumes and cordial cups,
Sought renovation for renewed delights.
Odours and thermal waters may subdue
The maddening fever of the flesh, but Time
Never can hush the muttering lips of guilt,
Nor quell Death's agonies which guilt inflicts.
The Sybarite from Salmacis arose
His orgies to renew with Sin's worst zeal,
But Lethe had no power o'er memories
Of broken vows and imprecating oaths
Made by the River of the Dead, what time
Cocytus moaned and Phlegethon upcast
Its lurid gleams o'er torrent chasms of gloom,
Bidding the banished reveller, who dared
To mock the Styx, roam by its blackened shores
Through the dark endlessness of shame and woe!
Even in the age proverbial for its effeminacy and vice, the Sybarites were quoted as the acme of examples; and the waters of Salmacis, by some mysterious properties, were considered capable of restoring the frame, exhausted by profligacy, to its original vigour.
No one who had broken an oath made by the Styx (which not even the gods dared to infringe) could be permitted to drink of Lethe or oblivion of the evils and sufferings which he had been doomed to bear for his crimes.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |