University of Virginia Library

ENDYMION.

The lush green grasses washed his soiled white feet
With cooling waves of verdure, as he slept,
And kissed his mouth that melted to a smile
Of joy and glory; one blue shaft of light
Shot through the cave and showed its golden gloom,
As shines a good deed through a shadowed life.
Tears, but of rapture, glittered on his eyes
And graced the darkness of those curtained lashes,
Pearl-dropping; and his pillow was the moss,
Brown, yellow, red, and softer than the silk
Tost idly on the beauty of tall queens
Sunk in undress and amorous. He dreamed,
A goddess came to him most wonderful
And ministrant, as though the moon herself
Stept from her purple halls of native night,
With starry robes and native loveliness
Of straining bosom and bright limbs, and drew
Nearer and nearer to his eager arms
And blood that beat like fire within his veins;
Until she touched him with her tender hands,
And all his being gathered to itself
Her passion and its warm deliciousness,
Unveiled. She offered him a dazzling choice,
Empire and realms of majesty and might,
Or riches that the world had never given
Yet to its votaries, or exceeding love
Passing the love of woman; and she laid
Her ripe red lips a seal upon his own,
And left a blushing rose a-flame. But he
Thrust from him wealth and the magnificence
Granted with power and sceptred pomp of kings
And stately use and circumstance, and pageants
Crowned; and aside he put voluptuousness
Of married lives and faiths, and full desire
Drinking its pleasure. But he asked for youth
Perpetual, and the springtide and the spell
Laughing and leaping in the pulse of bliss,
Which mocks us for a moment and is gone
Before we taste those hidden truths unplumbed
And mix ourselves with their deep ecstacies.
Smiling she seemed to answer, and embraced
Once more his ardour with the bursting blossom
Of her own breast; she promised him his prayer,
Conquest of time and gray infirmities
And all the old sad burdens heaped on age
Unequal; but she added the delights
Known not to any, save the sealed and few.
So he slept on and shall for ever sleep,
Awake alone to her high communings,
Though in the world he liveth yet and loves
And with him bears a glorious heart of dreams.