V.

Gazing down in her white shroud From the edging cloud Comes at night the dimpled moon, Comes, and like a ghost is gone 'Neath the flying cloud O'er the haunted house.

PERLE DES JARDINS.

What am I, and what is he Who can cull and tear a heart, As one might a rose for sport In its royalty?

What am I, that he has made All this love a bitter foam, Blown about a life of loam That must break and fade?

He who of my heart could make Hollow crystal where his face Like a passion had its place Holy and then break!

Shatter with insensate jeers!-- But these weary eyes are dry, Tearless clear, and if I die They shall know no tears.

Yet my heart weeps;--let it weep! Let it weep in sullen pain, And this anguish in my brain Cry itself to sleep.

Ah! the afternoon is warm, And yon fields are glad and fair; Many happy creatures there Thro' the woodland swarm.

All the summer land is still, And the woodland stream is dark Where the lily rocks its barque Just below the mill.

If they found me icy there 'Mid the lilies and pale whorls Of the cresses in my curls Wet of raven hair--

Fool and coward! are you such? Would you have him thus to know That you died for utter woe And despair o'ermuch?

No! my face a marble bust! As the Sphynx, impassioned, stern!-- Passions hid, as in an urn, Burnt to bitter dust!

And I'll write him as he wrote, Making, with his worded scorn, Tyrant,--crowned with stinging thorn,-- His cold, cruel note.

"You'll forget," he says, "and I Feel 'tis better for us twain: It may give you some small pain, But, 'twill soon be by.

"You are dark, and Maud is light; I am dark; and it is said Opposites are better wed;-- So I think I'm right."

"You are dark and Maud is fair!" I could laugh at this excuse If this aching, mad abuse Were not more than hair!

But I'll write him as a-glad Some few happy words and light, Touching on some past delight, That last year we had.

Not one line of broken vows, Sighs or hurtful tears unshed, Faithless lips far better dead, Nor a withered rose.

But a rose, this _Perle_ to wear,-- _Perle des Jardins_ delicate With faint fragrant life elate,-- When he weds her there.

So; 'tis finished! It is well! Go, thou rose! I have no tear, Kiss, or word for thee to bear, And no woe to tell.

Only be thus full of life, Cold and calm, impassionate, Filled with neither love nor hate, When he calls her wife!

OSSIAN'S POEMS.

Here I have heard on hills the battle clash Roar to the windy sea that roared again: When, drunk with wrath, upon the clanking plain Barbaric kings did meet in war and dash Their mailéd thousands down, heard onset crash Like crags contending 'gainst the battering main. Torrents of helms, beaming like streams of rain, Blue-billowing 'neath the pale moon's fitful flash; Saw the scared moon hang over the black wood Like a pale wreath of foam; shields, spears, and swords Shoot green as meteors thro' the steely flood, Or shine like ripples 'round their heathen lords Standing like stubborn rocks, whence the wild wave Of war circled in steel and foamed out brave on brave.

II.--IN MYTHIC SEAS.

IN MYTHIC SEAS.

'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue, Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two. We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore, All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps, That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud, Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes. While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon; And as she rose the nightingales on sprays Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain Wailing far off around a ruined fane. And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing The spirits of the foam came whispering; And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves; Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray, Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play; Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze, Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas. 'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees, We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades; Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn With chilly fingers dewing all the skies, That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes. The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist, Half hidden in a bay of amethyst Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins. And stealing wily from a grove of pines The Oread in cincture of green vines, One twinkling foot half buried in the red Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed-- Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low, Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white, It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light. Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise, And expectation in her bright blue eyes, While slyly from a young oak coppice peers The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears. He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph, Diana sees, and on her wooded hills Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills. Already nearer glow the Oread's charms; To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms-- A senseless statue of white, weeping stone Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone. The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase, While the astonished Faun's bewildered face Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering, He bends above the sculpture of the spring.

We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm, Purpureal, graced us in that season calm; And it was life to thee and me and love With the fair myths below, our God above, To sail in golden sunsets and emerge In golden morns upon a fretless surge. But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too. I knew not how it came, but in a while Myself I found cast on an arid isle Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread, The seas in wrath and thunder overhead, Deep down in coral caverns my pale love, No myths below, no God, it seemed, above.

THE DEAD OREAD.

Her heart is still and leaps no more With holy passion when the breeze, Her whilom playmate, as before, Comes with the language of the bees, Sad songs her mountain ashes sing And hidden fountains' whispering.

Her calm, white feet, erst fleet and fast As Daphne's when a Faun pursued, No more will dance like sunlight past The dim-green vistas of the wood, Where ev'ry quailing floweret Smiled into life where they were set.

Hers were the limbs of living light Most beautiful and virginal, God-graceful and as godly white, And wild as beautiful withal, And hyacinthine curls that broke In color when a wind awoke.

The wild aromas weird that haunt Moist bloomy dells and solitudes About her presence seemed to pant, The happy life of all her moods; Ambrosial smiles and amorous eyes Whose luster would a god surprise.

Her grave be by a dripping rock, A mossy dingle of the hill, Remote from Bacchanals that mock, Wine-wild, the long, mad nights and still, Where no unhallowed Pan with lust May mar her melancholy dust.

APHRODITE.

Apollo never smote a lovelier strain, When swan-necked Hebe paused her thirsty bowl A-sparkle with its wealth of nectar-draughts To lend a list'ners ear and smile on him, As that the Tritons blew on wreathed horns When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam Bursting its bubbles, from the hissing snow Whirled her nude form on Hyperion's gaze, Naked and fresh as Indian Ocean shell Dashed landward from its bed of sucking sponge And branching corals by the changed monsoon. Wind-rocked she swung her white feet on the sea, And music raved down the slant western winds; With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed the conch, Where, breasting with cold bosoms the green waves, That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet, Oceanids with dimple-dented palms Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam, Which wove a silver iris 'round her form. Where dolphins tumbling stained the garish arch Nerëides sang, braiding their wet locks, Or flung them streaming on the broken foam, Till evetide showed her loveliest of stars-- Lost passion-flower of the sinking sun-- In the cool sheen of shadowy waters deep, That moaned wild sea-songs at the Sirens' caves; Then in a hollow pearl, o'er moon-white waves, The creatures of the ocean danced their queen, Till Cytherea like a rosy mist Beneath the star rose blushing from the deep. On the pearled sands of a moon-glassing sea Beneath the moon, narcissus-like, they met, She naked as a star and crowned with stars, Child of the airy foam and queen of love.

PERSEPHONE.

O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves! O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee Without a mother's sanction or her knowledge! He bare her to the horrid gulfs below, And made her queen, a shadowy queen of shades, Queen of the fiery flood and mournful realms Of grating iron and the clank of chains.

On blossomed plains in far Trinacria A maiden, the dark cascade of whose hair Seemed gleaming rays of midnight 'mid the stars, Rays slowly bright'ning 'neath a mellow moon, She 'mid the flowers with the Oceanids Sought Echo's passion, loved Narcissus pale, 'Ghast staring in the mirror of a lake, Whose smoothness brake his image, flickering seen, E'en with the fast tears of his dewy eyes. A shape there rose with iron wain and steeds 'Mid sallow fume of sulphur and pale fires; Its countenance meager, and its eyes e'en such As the wild, ghastly sulphur. In its arms, Its sooty arms, where like to supple steel The muscles rigid lay, unto its breast, Such as its arms, it rushed her fragile form As bosomed bulks of tempest in their joy With arms of winds drag to their black embrace A fairy mist of white that flecks the summer With shadeless wings of gauze, and 'tis no more Heaved on the rapture of its thundering heart.

The snowy flowers shuddered and grew still With withered faces bowed, and on the stream-- Where all the day it was their wont to stand In silent sisterhood down-gazing at their charms-- Withered and limp and dead laid their fair brows. Flames hissed aloft like fiery whips of snakes Blasting and killing all the fragrant sprites That make the dewy zephyrs their dim haunts.

O foam-fair daughters of Oceanus! In vain you seek your mate and chide the flowers For hiding her 'neath their broad, snowy palms; Nor is she hidden in that pearly shell, Which, like a pinky babe cast from the sea, Moans at your pallid feet washed with white spray. But, sitting by the tumbling blue of waves, Mourn to your billows on the foamy sands The falseness of the god who grasps the storm!

DEMETER.

Demeter sad! the wells of sorrow lay Eternal gushing in thy lonely path.

Methinks I see her now--an awful shape Tall o'er a dragon team in frenzied search From Argive plains unto the jeweled shores Of the remotest Ind, where Usha's hand Tinged her grief-cloven brow with kindly touch, And Savitar wheeled genial thro' the skies O'er palmy regions of the faneless Brahm.

In melancholy search I see her roam O'er the steep peaks of Himalayas keen With the unmellowed frosts of Boreal storms, Then back again with that wild mother woe Writ in the anguished fire of her eyes,-- Back where old Atlas groans 'neath weight of worlds, And the Cimmerian twilight glooms the soul. Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales, Where many a languid Philomela moaned The bursting sorrow of a bursting soul. I see her nigh Ionia's swelling seas Cull from the sands a labyrinthine shell, And hark the mystery of its eery voice Float from the hollow windings of its curl, Then cast it far into the weedy sea To view the salt-spray flash, like one soft plume Dropped from the wings of Eros, 'gainst the flame Of Helios' car down-sloping toward his bath. I see her beg a coral flute of red From a tailed Triton; and on Ithakan rocks High seated at the starry death of day, When Selene rose from off her salty couch To smile a glory on her face of sorrow, Pipe forth sad airs that made the Sirens weep In their green caves beneath the sodden sands, And hoar Poseidon clear his wrinkled front And still his surgy clamors to a sigh.

This do I see, and more; ah! yes, far more: I see her, 'mid the lonely groves of Crete, The wild hinds fright from the o'ervaulted green Of thickest boscage, tangling their close covert, With horror of her torches and her wail, "Persephone! Persephone!" till the pines Of rugged Dicte shuddered thro' their cones, And Echo shrieked down in her deepest chasms A wild reply unto her wild complaint; As wild as when she voiced those maidens' woe, Athenian tribute to stern Minos, king, When coiling grim the Minotaur they saw Far in his endless labyrinth of stone.

DIONYSOS.

"O Dionysos! Dionysos! the ivy-crowned! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!"

Within my sleep a Maenad came to me: A harp of crimson agate strung with gold Wailed 'neath her waxen fingers, and her heart 'Neath the white gauze, thro' which a moonlight shone, Kept time with its wild throbbings to her song.

"Aegeus sleeps, O Dionysos! sleeps Pale 'neath the tumbling waves that sing his name Eternally at my dew-glist'ning feet. And so he died, O Dionysos! died! O let me sing thy triumph ere I die!

"With the shrill syrinx and the kissing clang Of silver cymbals clashed by Ethiopes swart, O, pard-drawn youth, thou didst awake the world To joy and pleasure with thy sunny wine! Mad'st India bow and the dun, flooding Nile Grow purple in the radiance of the wine Cast from the richness of Silenus' cup, Whiles yet the heavens of heat saw dances wild Whirl mid the redness of the Libic sands, Which greedy drank the Bacchanalian draught Spun from the giddy bowl, a rose-tinged mist, O'er the slant edge, red twinkling in the eye Of brazen Ra, fierce turning overhead. What made gold Horus smile with golden lips? Anubis dire forget his ghosts to lead To Hell's profoundness, and then stay to sip One winking bubble from the wine-god's cup? What made Osiris, 'mid the palms of Nile, Leave Isis dreaming, and the frolic Pan's Harsh trebles follow as a roaring bull, Far as the gleaming temples of Indra, And mourned in Memphis by his tawny priests? It was thy joys, sun-nourished fire of wine! The brimming purple of the hollow gold They tasted and they worshiped--gods themselves!

"Wan Echo sat once in a spiral shell; She, from its sea-dyed maziness of pearl, Saw the mixed pageant dancing on the strand, Where Nereus slept upon an isle of crags, And o'er the slope of his far-foaming head The strangeness of the orgies wildly cried, Till the frore god shook many a billow curl, Serened his face and stretched a welcome hand With civil utt'rance for the Bacchus horn. But now there tarries in her eye-balls' disks That nomad troop, and naught her tongue may say Save jostling words that haunt her muffled ears Like feeble wave-beats in a deep sea-cave.

"Ah! the white stars, O Dionysos! now Have dropped their glittering blossoms slowly down Behind the snowy mountains in the West. Aegeus sleeps, hushed by my murmuring harp, And I have sung thy triumph; let me die!"

HACKELNBERG.

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm He rides beneath the sounding storm With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm Of hound and horn--a wonder, With his hunter black as night, Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light, And a stag as silver white Drives before, like mist, in flight, Glimmering 'neath the bursten thunder.

The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track, Long-howling hid in braken black; Around the forests reel and crack And mountain torrents tumble; And the spirits of the air Whistling whirl with scattered hair, Teeth that flash and eyes that glare, 'Round him as he chases there With a noise of rains that rumble.

From thick Thuringian thickets growl Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul; And close before him a stritch-owl Wails like a ghost unquiet: Then the clouds aside are driven And the moonlight, stormy striven. Falls around the castle riven Of the Dumburg, and the heaven Maddens then with blacker riot.

THE LIMNAD.