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LXIV

She ended; and above, as from a cloud,
The eternal sun broke forth:—no shape was there,
No voice, but soft winds all the branches bowed,
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And wide illuminations filled the air,
And beauty looked so lovely that despair
Fled, and innocuous warmth and cheering light
Fell on the mournful girl like some late lost delight.

LXV

No tear now stained her cheek; no failing tones
Telling of anguish hid, or dull with pain;
But grief is given to the wind that moans
Amongst the forest boughs, and to the main
And to the rivers all who must complain
Yet feel no sorrow to the end of time—
As years all filled with blood are freed of crime.

LXVI

But when the twilight fell, that gentle child
Felt a strange terror, till a voice she knew
(It was Apollo's) spoke, but oh! so mild,
So like familiar tones we know are true!
And his too fiery glance was quenched in dew:
“Eva, my mortal love, the day has burned
To its decline, and lo! I have returned.”
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LXVII

So spake he, and the maid with downcast eyes,
And flushing forehead which had lost its snow,
Him answered, (while her breast like summer-skies
Spread out its breathing paradise below,
And rose and fell as billows swell and flow)—
“My master! art thou here?”—and with a sigh
Raising her eyes, she saw him smiling nigh.

LXVIII

Oh! never was a smile so full of scorn
As that which glanced along his curved lip;
And his eyes sparkled like the approach of morn;
Yet sweeter were his words than winds that sip
The dew from hyacinths:—Oh! canst thou strip
Thy bird of plumage, and her sweet despair,
Which flowed in music to thee, never spare?—

LXIX

“Apollo! king Apollo!”—That wild cry
Was heard in Ilium when its end was near,
From Priam's Sybil daughter, who with an eye
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Made bright by prophet dreams and wise by fear,
Saw the red ruin and the flashing spear
Through all the darkness of the untold to-morrow,
And heard the Spartan's cry, the Trojan's sorrow:

LXX

Apollo! king Apollo!—Is thy scorn
Not dead,—and were Cassandra's tears in vain?
Her words (an oracle)—her life forlorn,
Stung through by unbelief and fierce disdain?—
Her crowned exile and her death of pain?—
Still dost thou ask new love and fresh despair,
And hopes born but to perish?—Spare! O spare!

LXXI

I speak in vain:—The chariot of the hour
Is rolling onwards,—over kings and slaves,
Passionate spirits, and the crimson flower
Of love, which Hermes' magic never saves,—
Over rebellions and the gloom of graves,—
Through light and darkness, and the eternal woe
Of life,—to regions which no thought may know.
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LXXII

Older than ruin, or the dust that hides
Persepolis or Balbec, and yet fair
Like early manhood, the great Phantom rides
(Time or the Hour) above us:—Where, O where?—
Through Hell, and Heaven, in Earth, and the wide Air;
Invisibly he goes, and without sound,
Like Death, a tyrant,—shapeless but uncrowned.

LXXIII

He passes:—Oh! not all the suns that shine,
Not all the Autumn floods nor Winter's rain,
Nor all that poets tell of, though divine,
Shall clear thy annals of so foul a stain:—
He passes, and is gone;—and I complain
Unto the silence; and return dismayed
To tell thy latest grief, sad Provence maid!—

LXXIV

The hour has passed;—and Night, who laughs at time,
Shakes out her spangled hair in loose array,
And, clasped with coronets of gems sublime,
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Sits like a queen, to whom, at death of Day,
(She bright successor) a whole world must pay
Low adoration,—while the sleepless care
Must watch her glittering vigils shining fair.

LXXV

That night—Oh! never shall its silent hours,
Its love—its darkness be profaned by me:
If I must tell, be it of vine-leaf bowers
Where Bacchanal delight is loud and free,
Or Aphrodite's home hung round with flowers,
Or coral branches from her native sea;
For love is her wide boast: but clouds should hide
The young hot blushes of a human bride.

LXXVI

And yet night came (voluptuous night!) and sleep
Weighed down the eye-lids of Apollo's bride,
Who sank into a tremulous slumber deep,
Believing now his falling locks she spied,
Or heard him breathing odours by her side,
Or felt his burning kisses on her lips,
Or saw his eyes bent o'er her, in eclipse.
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LXXVII

And once she dreamed he said “Awake! arise,
Daughter of clay: Behold! the truth is plain:
Thou hast looked love on me with impious eyes,
On me—a God, and with enchantments vain
Bound me, and thou must die.” A thrilling pain
Traversed her heart, while thus the Pythian spoke,
And sleep was scared by terror, and she woke.

LXXVIII

She rose, and saw him in his beauty laid
Beside her: O'er his limbs a tender light
Hung floating, and his head looked all arrayed
With a halo, as the glow-worm looks by night,
Or like a lunar rainbow pale and bright,—
Encompassed and enshrined by the clear breath
Of Heaven, which saves immortal frames from death:

LXXIX

And on his lips there lay a rose-red leaf
Courting the kiss she gave, and did not fade—
(How could it feel a touch so soft and brief?)
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And then she pressed the violet veins that strayed
Over his throat, and then shrank back afraid
Gazing upon the God—who calmly slept,
While to her couch the trembling creature crept.

LXXX

This past she slept, and of sky-piercing towers
She dreamed, and banquets held beneath the moon,
And trod on stars, and through illumin'd bowers
Paced like a dancer, whom some eager tune
Leads on to pleasure which must perish soon:
Yet still by her white side Apollo lay,
(She dreamed) 'till darkness faded into day.

LXXXI

The morning broke, and she was Phœbus' bride:
And evening fell:—But did the God return?—
He came not,—he came never to her side;
But her bright Dream (for 'twas a dream) did burn
Madness upon her, and the world did spurn
Her story for a folly:—yet she believed;
And o'er her widow'd passion meekly grieved.
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LXXXII

Like Ariadne, when in pale despair
The Athenian left her,—so sad Eva pined,
And so she went complaining to the air,
And gave her tresses to the careless wind:—
The colour of her fate was on her mind,
Dark, death-like, and despairing;—and her eye
Shone lustrous like the light of prophecy.

LXXXIII

Over the grassy meads,—beside lone streams,
To perilous heights which no weak step could reach
She wandered, feeding her unearthly dreams
With musing, and would move the tremulous beech
And shuddering aspen with imploring speech;
For nothing that did live, save they (who sighed)
Pitied the downfall of her amorous pride.—
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LXXXIV

—There is a story:—that some lady came
To Paris; and while she—('tis years ago!)
Was gazing at the marbles, and the fame
Of colour which threw out a sunset glow,
A tall girl entered, with staid steps and slow,
The immortal hall where Phœbus stood arrayed
In stone,—and started back, trembling, dismayed.

LXXXV

Yet still she looked, tho' mute, and her clear eye
Fed on the image till a rapture grew,
Chasing the cloudy fear that hovered nigh,
And filling with soft light her glances blue;
And still she trembled, for a pleasure new
Thrilled her young veins, and stammering accents ran
Over her tongue, as thus her speech began:—
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LXXXVI

“Apollo! king Apollo!—art thou here?
Art thou indeed returned?”—and then her eyes
Outwept her joy, and hope and passionate fear
Seized on her heart, as tow'rds the dazzling prize
She moved, like one who sees a shape that flies,
And stood entranced before the marble dream,
Which made the Greek immortal, like his theme.

LXXXVII

Life in each limb is seen, and on the brow
Absolute God;—no stone nor mockery shape
But the resistless Sun,—the rage and glow
Of Phœbus as he tried in vain to rape
Evergreen Daphne, or when his rays escape
Scorching the Lybian desart or gaunt side
Of Atlas, withering the great giant's pride.

LXXXVIII

And round his head and round his limbs have clung
Life and the flush of Heaven, and youth divine,
And in the breathed nostril backwards flung,
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And in the terrors of his face, that shine
Right through the marble, which will never pine
To paleness though a thousand years have fled,
But looks above all fate, and mocks the dead.

LXXXIX

Yet stands he not as when blithely he guides
Tameless Eoüs from the golden shores
Of morning, nor when in calm strength he rides
Over the scorpion, while the lion roars
Seared by his burning chariot which out-pours
Floods of eternal light o'er hill and plain,
But, like a triumph, o'er the Python slain:

XC

He stands with serene brow and lip upcurl'd
By scorn, such as Gods felt, when on the head
Of beast or monster or vain man they hurled
Thunder, and loosed the lightning from its bed,
Where it lies chained, by blood and torment fed;
His fine arm is outstretched,—his arrow flown,
And the wrath flashes from his eyes of stone,
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XCI

Like Day—or liker the fierce morn, (so young)—
Like the sea-tempest which against the wind
Comes dumb, while all its terrible joints are strung
To death and rapine:—Ah! if he unbind
His marble fillet now and strike her blind—
Away, away!—vain fear! unharmed she stands,
With fastened eyes and white beseeching hands.

XCII

—Alas! that madness, like the worm that stings,
Should dart its venom through the tender brain!
Alas! that to all ills which darkness brings
Fierce day should send abroad its phantoms plain,
Shook from their natural hell, (a hideous train)
To wander through the world, and vex it sore,
Which might be happy else for ever-more.

XCIII

Lust, and the dread of death, and white Despair,
(A wreck, from changed friends and hopes all fled),
Ambition which is sleepless, and dull care
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Which wrinkles the young brow, and sorrows bred
From love which strikes the heart and sears the head,
The lightning of the passions,—in whose ray
Eva's bright spirit wasted, day by day.

XCIV

She was Apollo's votary, (so she deemed)
His bride, and met him in his radiant bowers,
And sometimes, as his priestess pale beseemed,
She strewed before his image, like the Hours,
Delicate blooms, spring buds and summer flowers,
Faint violets, dainty lilies, the red rose,—
What time his splendour in the Eastern glows.

XCV

And these she took and strewed before his feet,
And tore the laurel (his own leaf) to pay
Homage unto its God, and the plant sweet
That turns its bosom to the sunny ray,
And all which open at the break of day,
And all which worthy are to pay him due
Honour,—pink, saffron, crimson, pied, or blue.
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XCVI

And ever, when was done her flowery toil,
She stood (idolatress!) and languished there,
She and the God, alone;—nor would she spoil
The silence with her voice, but with mute care
Over his carved limbs a garment fair
She threw, still worshipping with amorous pain,
Still watching ever his divine disdain.

XCVII

—Time past:—and when that German lady came
Again to Paris, where the image stands,
(It was in August, and the hot sun-flame
Shot thro' the windows)—midst the gazing bands
She sought for her whose white-beseeching hands
Spoke so imploringly before the stone,
(The Provence girl)—she asked; but she was gone.

XCVIII

Whither none knew;—Some said that she would come
Always at morning with her blooming store,
And gaze upon the marble, pale and dumb,
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But that, they thought, the tender worship wore
The girl to death; for o'er her eyes and o'er
Her paling cheek hues like the grave were spread:
And one at last knew further;—She was dead.

XCIX

She died, mad as the winds,—mad as the sea
Which rages for the beauty of the moon,
Mad as the poet is whose fancies flee
Up to the stars to claim some boundless boon,
Mad as the forest when the tempests tune
Their breath to song and shake its leafy pride,
Yet trembling like its shadows:—So she died.

C

She died at morning when the gentle streams
Of day came peering thro' the far east sky,
And that same light which wrought her maddening dreams,
Brought back her mind. She awoke with gentle cry,
And in the light she loved she wished to die:—
She perished, when no more she could endure,
Hallowed before it, like a martyr pure.
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