 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
Ah me! I dote.
I ask to feel once more that agony
Of gradual despair the shrouding years
Have softened. Rather let me beg of thee
A fitter boon, — that thou wilt lay thy hand
Upon my mouth and smoothe the torrid trace
Of thy hot passion from my pallid lips
With its cool flower-touch. For I yearn to slake
My thirst with long draughts of the poppied flood.
I ask to feel once more that agony
Of gradual despair the shrouding years
Have softened. Rather let me beg of thee
A fitter boon, — that thou wilt lay thy hand
Upon my mouth and smoothe the torrid trace
Of thy hot passion from my pallid lips
With its cool flower-touch. For I yearn to slake
My thirst with long draughts of the poppied flood.
I weary after death and cannot die.
The haunting memory of thy breathless love
Holds back my spirit from the slopes of death;
Thy hot kiss burns upon my weary lips
And will not let me pass. Not all the streams
Of Lethe could do out that ardent stain,
Whose spell thou only, that didst lay it on,
Canst bid release its hold upon my soul.
What should I do among the mail-clad ghosts
That crowd the courts of the Elysian fields,—
Shades that have never known a heavenly love,
Whose windy babble is of battled fields,—
With that hot seal of immortality
Upon my lips? To all eternity
I should relive, in those eternal shades,
The ghost of that irrevocable past,
Whose sorcery thou only canst uncharm.
Oh, rather let me brook the pangs of hell
And feel Tisiphone's unresting lash,
Far rather all the torments of the damned,
Whose spirit does not prey upon itself,
Than that eternal awful life in death,
That endless immortality of pain!
The haunting memory of thy breathless love
Holds back my spirit from the slopes of death;
Thy hot kiss burns upon my weary lips
And will not let me pass. Not all the streams
Of Lethe could do out that ardent stain,
Whose spell thou only, that didst lay it on,
398
What should I do among the mail-clad ghosts
That crowd the courts of the Elysian fields,—
Shades that have never known a heavenly love,
Whose windy babble is of battled fields,—
With that hot seal of immortality
Upon my lips? To all eternity
I should relive, in those eternal shades,
The ghost of that irrevocable past,
Whose sorcery thou only canst uncharm.
Oh, rather let me brook the pangs of hell
And feel Tisiphone's unresting lash,
Far rather all the torments of the damned,
Whose spirit does not prey upon itself,
Than that eternal awful life in death,
That endless immortality of pain!
I do not yearn, as others might have yearned,
To climb with thee those star-crowned steeps of heaven
Or win a place in those supernal spheres
Wherein thy beauty burns eternally,
Among the Gods divinest, as thy star
Shines in the meaner circle of its mates;
Nor do I thirst to breathe the ambient fire
That is the air of those celestial plains.
Too well I know, my world-worn soul might not
Endure the intolerable ecstasy
Of that fierce ichor coursing through my veins:
The fragile texture of this cunning clay
Would shrink and shrivel into nothingness
In the hot flame of an immortal love.
I do but ask of thee forgetfulness
And the blank calm of unremembering night.
Ah me!
To climb with thee those star-crowned steeps of heaven
Or win a place in those supernal spheres
Wherein thy beauty burns eternally,
Among the Gods divinest, as thy star
Shines in the meaner circle of its mates;
Nor do I thirst to breathe the ambient fire
That is the air of those celestial plains.
Too well I know, my world-worn soul might not
Endure the intolerable ecstasy
Of that fierce ichor coursing through my veins:
The fragile texture of this cunning clay
Would shrink and shrivel into nothingness
In the hot flame of an immortal love.
I do but ask of thee forgetfulness
And the blank calm of unremembering night.
Ah me!
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |