Whym Chow: Flame of Love :: :: University of Virginia Library

Jasper and jacinth, amber and fine gold,
The topaz, ruby, the fire-opal, grey
And lucent agate covered thee with glory,
O Eastern Prince from fuming China hoary,
That on thy orient rug celestial lay,
Thy coat a web of treasure manifold!

And from thy glinted eye what lust of eye,
What joy in having joy to thy desire,
What potency out of thy gold to fashion
Thy slaves to aptness for each regal passion,
What ambush and what ease of rampant fire!
What somnolence of ancient cruelty!

And what endowment of what frenzied joy,
That our cold flesh of the Hesperides
Can reach not,... eyes and teeth and feet all blended
In pomp of dithyramb that only ended
By sleep, through which the god remitting frees
His votary from fire-flames that destroy.

Yet in thee such a bowing-down to doom:
Docile and proud with humbleness a spell,
Thy talisman of universal splendour—
That with necessity by still surrender
Thou wouldst be level whatsoe'er befell,
Nor by defeated light establish gloom.

And mysteries, old mysteries like stars
Rose in thy spread gaze, and thy thought was filled
With worship, with perpetual adoration;
Thy very breath of being an oblation;
Infinitude a faith life never stilled,
The lustier for its chains, its wrongs and jars.

O Orient Prince, thou Asian Bacchant, dear
To Eleutherius, how thou knewest love!—
Thy Mistress thy hot self thou couldst not render;
Yea, with indifference, a strain untender,
She being thy very self, thou would'st not move
Even to caress her, for caress too near.

Thou would'st not break thy trance save at the hour
Of welcome: then the glories of thy race,
Then dance and sovereign courtesy, elation
As thou would'st heap the substance of a nation
At feet that had the ritual of thy face,
And all thy gems in flash, thy gold in shower.