Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

At last, in a grove of ilexes
Off Epirus, in the sea,
She built a Grecian pleasure-house
Altar'd to poetry
And Heine. (May the clan that own
The palace now adore his stone
As piously as she!)

“Here, an old woman, I will rest,”
She said: and from the north
Sent for a girl's toys, jewelries.
But lo! when they come forth
In that clear Adriatic morn,

On the cold imperial bed
The coil of pearls, so long unworn,
Lay lustreless and dead.

“Tell me now, Monks of the sea-crag,
Men wise in country lore,
Whose bee-hive cluster of white cells
Juts on the Corfiote shore,
Where shall I sain them back to white
And how sick pearls restore?” . . .
And one looked up from his lentil pan,
Like an olive, silvery-hoar,
This Monk they sent her for a guide
To row her out at the ebb-tide.

He rowed her in a little boat
That secret place to learn,
His wrinkled hands pulled on the loom,
His eye serene and stern,
A Charon in the boat of doom,
Unblinking, taciturn.

There was gold broom on the sun-bright hills,
The plash of oars in chime,
And came a smell from the rocky bays
Of lentisk-bush and thyme.

They rowed along the rosy crags
Sea-gnawn, with bouldered base,
“O can you see yon headland high
With the slant cave in its face?

Deep down within it runs the pool
Where your sick pearls must lie;
At its mouth is the sea-otter's hole
And a slant slit is the sky.
The walls aloft are green with slime,
And the sea-birds' dung is soft with time
Along the ledges high.”

And by that cranny darkly down
They went the sea-birds' way
Into the cavern's foul descent;
Above, the roofs of mountain leant
That plunge down to the spray.
At last they heard a black wave wash,
The subterranean channel plash,
That never sees the day.

She took the pearls from her sere breast,
Felt them all, long unworn,
And in the gloom, swift and unseen,
She kissed those pearls as they had been
The love-babe never born;
And dropt them in the salt, salt wave
With tears of the forlorn.

A voice cried: “Long, O long lie there,
Beneath the break of foam!
Far have ye wandered, suffered much;
To that ye wandered from
We give you back, thrice-noble pearls,

Until ye shall become
Perfect again and pure again
In that which is your home!”

And swift came rushings through the air
Of cold and wingèd things
Alarmed escaping from their lair,
Blasts and torch-flickerings.

“Who art thou, visionary Monk,
That speak'st this requiem?”
“One that sees peak'd and stormy towers
Steep as Jerusalem,
Battlements grey, and over all
One window like a gem,
And a young girl, weeping on the wall,
That wears a diadem!”

In the cavern darkness where they stand
She takes the high torch from his hand
To search till she discerns
That manèd visage, trace by trace,—
The solemn-sounding mountain's base
Rough'd to a humorous savage face
Wherein the granite burns. . . .

“How sharp,” he said, “that last, last hour
Of departure's sick delay
Prints on the warm, cleft, trembling soul
The thing it takes away!

Stamped how imperishably clear
Your northern night dwells in me here!
In my Greek island cell
How oft I shut my eyes and smell
Your sweetbriar by the northern shore
And hear that fountain play!
Its spouted rabble of loud drops
Hangs in the evening still!
November woods becloud the turf
By the dove-house squat and chill.
All's hush; and a ragged thunder-storm
Comes up over towers and wood;
White doves beat in a throbbing swarm
Against the thunder-cloud
As though they had thy transport been—
The yielding of my flame-foot Queen!
We pace together up the sward
As they circle over the firth;
The moonfall on thy coifless hair
Makes glamour of the earth. . . .
And then, leaning on the parapet,
‘Ah!’ thou say'st, ‘before passion's voice
All, all is overset:—
But what's a madman's passion worth?’ . . .
Well, hast thou learnt it yet?

“Why, great one, never kneel to me!
We are too wise and old;
Thou hast brought back the young man's pearls
Before his heart is cold! . . .

Calm, calm's for all such agonies
As happened long ago!
Calm is the Earth, though from its side
A moon was torn! What woe!
Yet time hath filled the wound with salt
And solitary flow.

“We were too dream-intent and hard
To mingle each with each.
Thou hadst to be thyself—to become
Thyself the last, high, tragic song
Of this our piercèd Christendom,
Too high, too sad, for speech! . . .
Saved in some vessel we see not,
Some dark urn of the Lord,
Is shed this everlasting loss,
This waste of spirit poured.

“For me, more than I need is mine;
Labour of the hands is mine;
Content, among my lentils here,
And the obscurity divine.”