The Three Hills, and Other Poems Part 7

THE ALCHEMY OF GRIEF

One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright, One gives thee weeds to mourn withal; And what to one is burial Is to the other life and light.

The unknown Hermes who a.s.sists And alway fills my heart with fear Makes me the mighty Midas' peer The saddest of the alchemists.

Through him I make gold changeable To dross, and paradise to h.e.l.l; Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.

A stark dead body I love well, And in the gleaming fields on high I build immense sarcophagi.

SPLEEN

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid Upon the spirit aching for the light And all the wide horizon's line is hid By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank, Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin, Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain, And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;--

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air, Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hea.r.s.es, without drum or instrument, File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful, Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent, Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

My heart was like a bird and took to flight, Around the rigging circling joyously; The s.h.i.+p rolled on beneath a cloudless sky Like a great angel drunken with the light.

"What is yon isle, sad and funereal?"

"Cythera famed in deathless song," said they, "The gay old bachelors' Eldorado-Nay, Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"

Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!

The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills Scentlike above thy level seas and fills Our souls with languor and all amorous things.

Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers Held holy by all men for evermore, Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,

And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:-- Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies, A rocky waste rent by discordant cries: Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.

No shady temple was it, close enshrined I' the trees; no flower-crowned priestess. .h.i.ther came With her young body burnt by secret flame, Baring her breast to the caressing wind;

But when so close to the land's edge we drew Our canvas scared the sea-fowl--gradually We knew it for a three-branched gallows tree Like a black cypress stark against the blue.

A rotten carcase hung, whereon did sit A swarm of foul black birds; with writhe and shriek Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife-like beak Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it.

The eyes were holes; the belly opened wide Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs; The grim birds, gorged with dreadful delicacies, Had dug and furrowed it on every side.

Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout, And in the midst of these there turned about One, the chief hangman, larger than the rest....

Lone Cytherean! now all silently Thou sufferest these insults to atone For those old infamous sins that thou hast known, The sins that locked the gate o' the grave to thee.

Mine are thy sorrows, ludicrous corse; yea, all Are mine! I stood thy swaying limbs beneath, And, like a bitter vomit, to my teeth There rose old shadows in a stream of gall.

O thou unhappy devil, I felt afresh, Gazing at thee, the beaks and jaws of those Black savage panthers and those ruthless crows, Who loved of old to macerate my flesh.

The sea was calm, the sky without a cloud; Henceforth for me all things that came to pa.s.s Were blood and darkness,--round my heart, alas!

There clung that allegory, like a shroud.

Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust Found I on Venus island desolate....

Ah, G.o.d! the courage and strength to contemplate My body and my heart without disgust.

THE CRACKED BELL

'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long, To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist, The distant memories which slowly throng, Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.

Happy the st.u.r.dy, vigorous-throated bell Who, spite of age alert and confident, Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.

For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care, She strives with songs to people the cold air It happens often that her feeble cries

Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies Wounded, forgotten, 'neath a mound of slain And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in pain.

THE OFFENDED MOON

O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale!

Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind, Wors.h.i.+pped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,

Dost see the poet, weary-eyed and pale, Or lovers on their happy beds reclined, Showing white teeth in sleep, or vipers twined, 'Neath the dry sward; or in a golden veil

Stealest thou with faint footfall o'er the gra.s.s As of old, to kiss from twilight unto dawn The faded charms of thine Endymion?...

"O child of this sick century, I see Thy grey-haired mother leering in her gla.s.s And plastering the breast that suckled thee!"

TO THEODORE DE BANVILLE,