(Le Jeune Homme caressant sa chimère: agate rouge, trouvée près de Sorrente, rapportée au Musée de Naples.)
A BOY of eighteen years mid myrtle-boughs
Lying love-languid on a morn of May,
Watched half asleep his goats insatiate browse
Thin shoots of thyme and lentisk by the spray
Of biting sea-winds bitter made and grey:
Therewith when shadows fell, his waking thought
Of love into a wondrous dream was wrought.
A woman lay beside him,-so it seemed;
For on her marble shoulders, like a mist
Irradiate with ruddy splendour, gleamed
Thick silken tresses; her white woman's wrist,
Glittering with snaky gold and amethyst,
Upheld a dainty chin; and there beneath
Her twin breasts shone like pinks that lilies wreath.
What colour were her eyes I cannot tell;
For as he gazed thereon, at times they darted Dun rays like water in a dusky well;
Then turned to topaz: then like rubies smarted With smouldering flames of passion tiger-hearted; Then 'neath blue-veinéd lids swam soft and tender With pleadings and shy timorous surrender.
Thus far a woman: but the breath that lifted
Her panting breast with long melodious sighs, Stirred o'er her neck and hair broad wings that sifted The perfumes of meridian Paradise;
Dusk were they, furred like velvet, gemmed with eyes Of such dull lustre as in isles afar
Night-flying moths spread to the summer star.
Music these pinions made-a sound and surge
Of pines innumerous near lisping waves-
Rustlings of reeds and rushes on the verge
Of level lakes and Naiad-haunted caves-
Drowned whispers of a wandering stream that laves
Deep alder-boughs and tracts of ferney grass
Bordered with azure-belled campanulas.
Potent they were: for never since her birth
With feet of woman this fair siren pressed
Sleek meadow-swards or stony ways of earth;
But neath the milky marvel of her breast,
Displayed in sinuous length of coil and crest,
Glittered a serpent's tail, fold over fold,
In mazy labyrinths of langour rolled.
Ah me! what fascination! what faint stars
Of emerald and opal, with the shine
Of rubies intermingled, and dim bars
Of twisting turquoise and pale coralline!
What rings and rounds! what thin streaks sapphirine
Freckled that gleaming glory, like the bed
Of Eden streams with gems enamelléd!
There lurked no loathing, no soul-freezing fear,
But luxury and love these coils between:
Faint grew the boy; the siren filled his ear
With singing sweet as when the village-green
Re-echoes to the tinkling tambourine,
And feet of girls aglow with laughter glance
In myriad mazy errors of the dance.
How long he dallied with delusive joy
I know not: but thereafter nevermore
The peace of passionless slumber soothed the boy;
For he was stricken to the very core
With sickness of desire exceeding sore,
And through the radiance of his eyes there shone
Consuming fire too fierce to gaze upon.
He, ere he died—and they whom lips divine
Have touched, fade flower-like and cease to be-
Bade Charicles on agate carve a sign
Of his strange slumber: therefore can we see
Here in the ruddy gem's transparency
The boy, the myrtle-boughs, the triple spell
Of moth and snake and white witch terrible.
"As certain also of your own poets have said"—
CLEON the poet, (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece”)— To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!
They give thy letter to me, even now:
I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades
Gift after gift; they block my court at last
And pile themselves along its portico
Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee:
And one white she-slave from the group dispersed
Of black and white slaves, (like the chequer-work
Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift,
Now covered with this settle-down of doves)
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands
Commends to me the strainer and the cup
Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.
Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence!
For so shall men remark, in such an act
Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,
Thy recognition of the use of life;
Nor call thy spirit barely adequate
To help on life in straight ways, broad enough
For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest.
Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil,
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth,
Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim
Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect,
Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake-
Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope
Of some eventual rest a-top of it,
Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed,
Thou first of men mightst look out to the East:
The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun.
For this, I promise on thy festival
To pour libation, looking o'er the sea,
Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak
Thy great words, and describe thy royal face—
Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most,
Within the eventual element of calm,
Thy letter's first requirement meets me here.
It is as thou hast heard: in one short life
I, Cleon, have effected all those things
Thou wonderingly dost enumerate.
That epos on thy hundred plates of gold
Is mine,-and also mine the little chant,
So sure to rise from every fishing-bark
When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net.
The image of the sun-god on the phare,
Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine;
The Pocile, o'er-storied its whole length,
As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too.
I know the true proportions of a man
And woman also, not observed before;
And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
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