Poems and Essays :: :: University of Virginia Library

Flushed Ariadne, laid
Upon her bridal bed,
Stretched forth at morn her half-awakened hand,
But found no lover's breast,
Where warmly it might rest,
And still, half-slumbering, by his breath be fanned;
She found the spot desert and cold,—
No sleeping lover couched where he had done of old.

Whereat, in half-surprise,
She oped her orbed eyes,
Gathering her thoughts from the domain of sleep;
And dazzled by the bright
And streaked rays of light
That through the cavern's silver chinks did peep,
Fancies she sees him as of yore,
And blames her sleepy hand that troubled her so sore.

But when indeed she spied
He lay not by her side,
She sprang upon her feet with throbbing breast;
And pacing the cold floor
She oped the cavern door,
Through which the eager light exulting pressed,
And spreading wide on every side
Left no unlighted nook throughout the cavern wide.

But all within its round
He was not to be found;
In growing fear she fled from out the cave;
It opened on the sand,
And far away from land
Her lover's keel was cutting the blue wave;
At which sad sight she swooned away,
And on the yellow sand all helpless long she lay.

Her pale lips lie apart,
Nor beats her broken heart;
Her light smock floating doth lay bare her beauties;
Her white limbs, all astray,
In tangled disarray
Lie helplessly, nor heed their bounden duties.
In heavy masses, all unbound,
Her golden glittering hair lies heaped upon the ground.

Old Ocean, all aghast
At the sad scene that passed,
On crested waves stole sadly to the shore,
And sighing made his way
To where the maiden lay,
And kissed her cold feet in affliction sore;
Whereat she started from her trance,
And rising, gazed around with sad and troubled glance.

But soon rushed back again
The torrent of her pain,

Her lover's vessel was in sight no longer;
Dreaming he may be found,
She roams the isle around,
And ever as she roams her grief grows stronger;
Until the doubt is dreadful truth,
That he hath fled the isle, and left her without ruth.

Then, yielding to despair,
She tears her yellow hair,
And beats her bursting breast in hopeless sorrow;
Thinks of her native land,
Curses the desert strand,
And fain from frenzy would she comfort borrow.
Then sinking into milder grief,
In shedding floods of tears she seeks a sad relief.

The birds and beasts are all
Melted at her sad call;
But Philomela, from a neighbouring bush
Adding her grief to hers,
Such plaintive numbers pours,
Bids from her throat such thrilling notes to gush,
And from her soul such woes she calls,
That drowned in liquid music down she dying falls.

Sad Ariadne's grief
Found in the song relief,
And half in listening she forgot her woes;

But when she saw her slain
By her excess of pain,
Envying the bird that thus her grief could close,
She hied her homewards to her cave,
And rather slew herself than would her sorrows brave.

1843.