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133
THE SONG OF APHRODÎTÊ.
I
In his first bright slumber I paused beside him,My bosom heaved over him in his sleep,
And longing to kiss him, to clasp and keep,
I said in my pride, “Let the dark queen hide him,
Let her keep him safe from the heart he will slay.”
But still in my bosom the sweet child lay;
I felt my glad arms round his warm limbs close
In sleep that to happy dream entices;
And his breath came sweet as the clove-pink spices
To the languorous rose.
II
To the dark Queen of Hades repentant I hasted;The boy was rained o'er by her fast-raining tears;
His rich beauty lay, a dropt flower from the years
Of her girlhood amid the gay fields, ere she wasted
In the dark world Aïdōneus swayed. “As the bloom
Of the bright poppied path where I found my dread doom
Glows the radiant child thou hast bidden me nurse.
I am motherless now, and he makes me a mother;
Oh, take, if you take him from me, to another
Persephonê's curse.”
134
III
I sought the Great Father; his suppliant everHe listens benignant, benignantly calms,
And I bade him unprison the boy from the arms
That held him in darkness: “Adônis will never
Be thine, save in passion of joy half-possest:
Four months in the mid underworld must he rest;
Four months, if it list him, his golden-tressed hair
Shall lie on the pillow thy heart-throb makes heaving;
Four months he shall be the lone hunter, love-leaving
For wild forest lair.”
IV
As a pale flower filmed by the darkness that faded,Looked the wan cheek, dead with the dead world's hush;
But with summer of kisses I brought the blush;
Then soft from the luminous roses I shaded
My o'er-dazzled eyes, he in turn would desire;
And their sapphire-deep dream of the dropt lids require
With the tremulous claim of his lips' wooing breath,
Till I lifted them laughing, and bade him forsake me
For forest and freedom. He sware, “None shall take me
Save she who tends Death.”
V
Yet sometimes he broke from the gladness that girt him,For he loved the wild chase, and I could not restrain,
Who trembled lest Artemis, angered, should hurt him.
Too cold for his beauty, too proud for my pain,
135
I left the white lips, to drink deep of the wound,
Cold to cold, corpse to corpse, with my dead love to lie:
The doom with the deathless ones lonely to languish
Brought something like age to my heart; but, oh anguish,
The gods love, nor die!
VI
“Dost thou cry for the bitter-sweet lot of a mortal,Who heavest the heart-sigh with heavenly breath?
Go, drink, thou divine one, the deep springs of death;
Let thy broken desire faint by Hadês' dark portal,”
So doomed the dread Father, “and thou wilt learn all:—
Death is but a loss for renewal, a call
To a love beyond answer; the broad sun doth set
The earth for a while of his bright beams bereaving,
Athwart the thick darkness, past cleft and past cleaving,
The dawn to beget.
VII
“A mourner can learn all that death has for telling;Through dark days of winter thy love shall lie dead,
Then wake with the May-breeze his bright queen to wed,
And, till the grapes' purple and pomegranates' swelling,
Shall love as they only can love who must part.
Be helpless, be hopeful; the fluttering heart
The child of my thunder-bound brows may despise;
To thee, by the tremulous lip, the eyes' tender
Blue dimness of tears, I Love's kingdom surrender,
A kingdom of sighs.
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VIII
“The track of the cistus Adônis shall borrow,When thine own lily blooms thou shalt see him return;
Thy tears in anemone clusters shall burn,
The purple for passion, the pale for the sorrow.
The cyclamen fields shall be fair for his tread,
The daphne bloom fragrant to bower round his head;
Watch wistful the curve of the crocus' sheen gold
In aureate wreath round the mountain-snow creeping,
So round thine Adônis still white from death-sleeping
Thy bright arms shall fold.”
IX
So I sing of him, sing of him, sigh for him, sicken,—The swan at my passionate plaint leaves her nest;
So I clasp my soft doves to my sore-craving breast,
And breathe on the dull myrtle-buds till they quicken,
For 'mid their white blossoms once more I am bride!
And, rich in love-pity, to ransom from pride
The bosom love sways not, the hero to arm,
As sad for my tarrying lover I linger,
For joy of his beauty, I weave with bright finger
The cestus of charm.
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