 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
And thus, unweeting who bent o'er her couch,
The maiden, in delirium, made reply.
“O holy Dian! hath thine Iris come
To lead me through Elysium's myrtle groves?
Thanks for the briefest pangs of death! my soul
Blends with the radiance, songs and incense here
In rapture, unforgetting earth's dark ills,
The victim bonds, gloom, terror, madness borne
Amid the vaulted corridors—deep thanks,
Chaste Dian! for the dart that winged me here!”
Thus she lay whispering faintly, while the veins,
Again, like violets, began to glow,
And Thought from the elysian portals turned
To shed, once more, its light along her brow.
The lips, like rifted sunset clouds, burned o'er
With beauty, and the sloe-dark eyes, from lids
Of loveliness o'erarched like rainbows, flashed
Upon the luxuries of wantonness
With a delirious radiance; and she pressed
Her fairy hand upon her troubled brain
As dismal memories through all the pomp
Around her thronged. “Do visions o'er me rush
Through the ivory gate? or what is this? methinks
The limbs of Vesta pass not Charon's ward—
Yet bear I them! and I behold no forms
Like the supreme divinities who dwell
Beyond the azure curtains of the skies!
The maiden, in delirium, made reply.
“O holy Dian! hath thine Iris come
105
Thanks for the briefest pangs of death! my soul
Blends with the radiance, songs and incense here
In rapture, unforgetting earth's dark ills,
The victim bonds, gloom, terror, madness borne
Amid the vaulted corridors—deep thanks,
Chaste Dian! for the dart that winged me here!”
Thus she lay whispering faintly, while the veins,
Again, like violets, began to glow,
And Thought from the elysian portals turned
To shed, once more, its light along her brow.
The lips, like rifted sunset clouds, burned o'er
With beauty, and the sloe-dark eyes, from lids
Of loveliness o'erarched like rainbows, flashed
Upon the luxuries of wantonness
With a delirious radiance; and she pressed
Her fairy hand upon her troubled brain
As dismal memories through all the pomp
Around her thronged. “Do visions o'er me rush
Through the ivory gate? or what is this? methinks
The limbs of Vesta pass not Charon's ward—
Yet bear I them! and I behold no forms
Like the supreme divinities who dwell
Beyond the azure curtains of the skies!
The rainbow, in every mythology, has been beautifully personified. Iris, its goddess, was the messenger of the ancient deities; and though employed by jealous Juno to create “greeneyed monsters,” she was more happily occupied, in general, in separating virtuous souls from feeble frames and escorting them to Elysium. No one is ignorant of the Scandinavian bifrost, and the romantic tales of the Eddas.
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |