University of Virginia Library

His hand must yet achieve his spirit's aim,
Must yet embody forms that oft-times fade
Oft float before his gaze; that hang between
His eyes and sleep, and ever unappeased
In marble's luring paleness covet rest.
The soul's wan creditors! Urge they a debt
His genius owes to Heaven, that he repays
A hundred-fold, he, the Praxiteles
Who moves the weary aspect of the world
To youthful passion? Yes, for he adores
Her, always pure; in his far-searching dreams
Beseeching the chaste Venus to reveal
A vision of the form that never dies.
Time drags the load of prayer, but does not pause
At the immortal hour when he may see
That bosom heave in the blue light of heaven,
The kindred marble budding at his touch
With orbs of love whose pantings perish not.
Full-dawns the morning on him when his eyes
Drawn from those dreams are on the shore outside
Where Phryné bathes and all the vivid bay
Shines in her glory. She, who sees him watch,
Hides in the crystal waters which betray
Her beauty's trust; there laughing, at his beck
She follows to his hall across the sands,
And careless as sea-nymphs are, leaves her robe
To crimson the void shore.

“Methought I saw
The goddess,” said he; “you have all her youth,
Be like her in the pureness of her soul:
You only, Phryné, can reveal to me
How Venus looks in Heaven.”

The flush of pride
That pales back to the lips flows over her
At his heart-searching praise and at her eyes
Pours out beatitude. Thoughtful she leans
Upon the unwrought marble that awaits
Her image, in the moments of a dream
Her hands and cheeks sweetening each other's hues.
Then while self-stirred from such light reverie,
Her gorgeous hair crisping in ocean-foam,
She seems to shiver in some fragile wave
Fresh-broken o'er her bosom. In his hall
She stands as he beheld her by the sea.
She flings her hair aside; one arm she leaves
To share her bosom's bed, then, in her play
She dips behind the marble that would melt
To bear her likeness, thrilling in her spell,
While to the roof her simple laugh resounds;
The music of her smile made audible.
From her escapes into the trancèd air
Grace after grace that fills its empty glow
With rosy spectres, lovely all, not lost
But vanishing to haunt a coming dream.
Yet is not one of these the one he craves.
Must then the immortal hour again pass by
In barren flight? Where is the modest pride
That swayed her when at love's first sacrifice,
Pale as a fountain tremulous in its strength,
She wept? Not here, where to his soul's great depths
Her bright, impassioned gambols sorrow him.
“Recall,” he said, “how first you came to love:
How your soul's wonder gave a sudden throb
And the new life burst forth, and in the pangs
Of over-joy asked its young tenement
If love were wrong; how answered doubtingly
Those eyes that drooped and hid the golden tear
Before it fell; those arms that artless hung
As if in penance to confess a guilt:
Phryné, remembering all, be so again,
That I may know how Venus looks in Heaven.”
Too hard the task: she feigns the shame in play
Steeped in whose virgin dye love-tinted airs
Once fanned her cheeks to flame; but not so now;
She is the Venus of the world: she bends
As o'er a foamy rock, laughs like the waves
Till the pleased waters seem to splash at her
In wantonness: then skips as o'er the sands
In dance so sense-entangling, the bright floor
Is burning in the shadow of her feet,
And earth dissolves in her absorbing spell.

Praxiteles, with fond reproachful gaze,
Speaks not a word: she loves him, and is fain
If not to feel to mimic modesty.
Her lips meet closer to rebuke her smile,
But the rich laugh rings forth and while she strives
To stifle it, her hands pressed to her sides,
Piteous she moans, sinks to the welcome floor,
And suffers on the rack of merriment.
His mind has drifted to the past and sees
Her standing mute in youth's first coy attire;
Then at her mother's side. All there is vague,
Cloud-hidden; when by distant shouts aroused,
And drums, and martial fifes, from his vain dreams
He starts: lo! Phryné, self-reliant towers
In maiden pride which heightens as the roar
Grows louder and the sheltering solitude
Dissolves around. Held in strange ecstasy
By her whose presence turns the glance of men
With lightning-flash, she hears the conqueror's troops
Approach; perchance the conqueror of the world:
And shielded by a modesty divine
There stands to awe beholders, one bent arm
Laid on her breast, the other as a belt
Shading her lower waist; her head aside
In virgin fear.

“The Venus is revealed!”
He cries: “yes, this is the immortal hour.”