 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
“Well done, apostate! if thy sword rains blows
As doth thy tongue, words—woe—woe to my beast!
Oh, thou with the Cumæan prophetess
Hast hiddenly consorted and pored on
The almagest of Ptolemy till stars
And meteors have become the ministers
Of thy distempered fashioning of fate!”
Sardonic smiles o'er revel's swollen lips
Passed slowly, and the Prætor's jest had now
E'en from the venal sycophants small praise;
For crime in common natures, once unveiled,
Startles the practiser, and fear becomes
His hell, o'ermastering his daunted heart.
“And thou art thrilled by the sublime, and all
The grandeur of thy destiny o'ercomes
Thy sense with its vast radiance! yet shrink not—
Thou with the wretch that fired the Ephesian fane,
Empedocles and Barcochab, shalt live
In the wild tale of endless infamy,
Drawn in a prophet's robes and mural crown!
And my embraces shall solace the grief
Of thy rare Hebrew Venus, though thou diest,
And, if in dungeon thou art yet reserved,
A conqueror now, to grace the future games,
To her I will rehearse the tale and laud
Thy victory—and 't is hard but beauty sheds
A guerdon on my service!—Dost thou smile?”
As doth thy tongue, words—woe—woe to my beast!
Oh, thou with the Cumæan prophetess
Hast hiddenly consorted and pored on
The almagest of Ptolemy till stars
And meteors have become the ministers
Of thy distempered fashioning of fate!”
Sardonic smiles o'er revel's swollen lips
Passed slowly, and the Prætor's jest had now
E'en from the venal sycophants small praise;
For crime in common natures, once unveiled,
Startles the practiser, and fear becomes
His hell, o'ermastering his daunted heart.
“And thou art thrilled by the sublime, and all
The grandeur of thy destiny o'ercomes
Thy sense with its vast radiance! yet shrink not—
Thou with the wretch that fired the Ephesian fane,
Empedocles and Barcochab, shalt live
In the wild tale of endless infamy,
Drawn in a prophet's robes and mural crown!
And my embraces shall solace the grief
Of thy rare Hebrew Venus, though thou diest,
And, if in dungeon thou art yet reserved,
A conqueror now, to grace the future games,
To her I will rehearse the tale and laud
Thy victory—and 't is hard but beauty sheds
A guerdon on my service!—Dost thou smile?”
Eratostratus, to immortalize himself, set fire to the temple of Ephesian Diana on the night Macedonian Alexander was born; Empedocles, to persuade men he was a god, threw himself into Mount Ætna, but the volcano cast out his slipper and betrayed him; Barcochab, who called himself the Son of a Star, but whom his countrymen named the Son of a Lie, was one of the innumerable false prophets of that strange, rebellious and guilty people—the Jews.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |