Whym Chow: Flame of Love :: :: University of Virginia Library

O wild Bacchic Creature, shall we grieve
That the God of Frenzy did not leave
Thy last days unheightened and forlorn?
Shall we, as the terror-stricken, mourn
That on thee the very God descended,
And with sickness exultation blended?
Rich upon thy fur the richest fire
Glowed as from his mother's heaven-struck pyre:
And the motions of his mighty march
Through the mountain-gorge, the city's arch,
And lion-shaken plain was in the sway,
Royal as a procession, of the way
Thou didst press thy feet. And doom was spun
In the circles, finished one by one,
Of thy patient frenzy, Oh, the swing!—
As when horses, destined to their ring,
Slow and powerful thresh the autumn grain,
Dragging with their feet against the strain,
Bending round the pole, and nobly held
By the weary rhythm, as music-spelled
As are stars, though music be unheard.
Oh, thy revolution never stirred,
Wondrous circles of inveterate woe,
Woven by stars, by heroes long ago,
Drawn through frenzy of a god to song.
Little Chow, this greatness did belong
To thy end that, ivy-leaves among,

Thou didst feel the far cool of delight
On the verges of absorbing madness.
Seized of fate's dire rhythm, yet with no sadness,
Thou among the stems of rose-thorn rushed,
Or the well-loved ivy-leaflets brushed,
Or the air—as if from Temple lifted
In high vale and from its columns drifted—
Came upon thy nostrils, till a sleep
Fell, the last of doom, and on the steep
Of Cithæron thou wert laid in death...
Maiming sleep of frenzy and free breath.