Ah! Lady Clara Vere de Vere, The dear old times have passed away : Have ceased to be sincere and true, Naught caring for a single soul, You spare no trouble, reck no pain, To add another name unto The bead-roll of the hearts you've slain. To you, my Lady Vere de Vere, What is it that a heart may break? You had no hazard in the game He should have played with equal stake. You did but seek to while away The slow hours of an idle night; You make your wares by far too cheap; You try to make me love again; But I am safe the while I think You've sat thus with a scorn of men. Still, Lady Clara, Clara, dear, Beneath your finished mask I see The gentle heart, the honest mind, That made you once so dear to me. Your voice is still as sweet as then, Your face is still as pure and good: I see the graces of my love All ripened in her womanhood. If some day, Clara Vere de Vere, You weary of the counterfeit, The old times linked with this seat- Of me win all renown you may; A new world for your sovereign sway Bring all your practised charms in play, THE VICTIM. I. A PLAGUE upon the people fell, For on them brake the sudden foe; The Gods are moved against the land." "Help us from famine Were it our nearest, We give you his life." VI. The rites prepared, the victim bared, Me, not my darling, no!" He caught her away with a sudden cry; I am his dearest!" rush'd on the knife. We give you a life. LUCRETIUS. LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush Of passion and the first embrace had died Between them, tho' he loved her none the less, Yet often when the woman heard his foot Return from pacings in the field, and ran To greet him with a kiss, the master took Small notice, or austerely, for- his mind Half buried in some weightier argument, Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise And long roll of the Hexameter-he past To turn and ponder those three hundred (scrolls 223 Left by the Teacher whom he held divine. She brook'd it not; but wrathful, petulant, Dreaming some rival, sought and found a (witch Who brew'd the philtre which had power, (they said, To lead an errant passion home again. And this, at times, she mingled with his (drink, And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth Confused the chemic labour of the blood, And tickling the brute brain within the (man's Made havock among those tender cells and (check'd His power to shape: he loath'd himself; and (once After a tempest woke upon a morn That mock'd him with returning calm, and (cried; Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the (rain, Rushing; and once the flash of a thunder(bolt Methought I never saw so fierce a fork Struck out the streaming mountain-side, (and show'd A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it, Where all but yester-eye was dusty-dry. Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods (what dreams! For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Perchance Of and belonging to me, as the dog With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies His function of the woodland: but the next! I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed Came driving rainlike down again on earth, And where it dash'd the reddening meadow, (sprang No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth, For these I thought my dream would show (to me, But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art, In narrowing circles till I yell'd again Then, then, from utter gloom stood out (the breasts, The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire, Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that I (woke, ,,Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine, Because I would not one of thine own doves, Not ev❜n a rose, were offer'd to thee? thine, Forgetful how my rich prooemion makes Thy glory fly along the Italian field, In lays that will outlast thy Deity? ,,Deity? nay, thy worshippers. My tongue Trips, or I speak profanely. Which of these Angers thee most, or angers thee at all? Not if thou be'st of those who, far aloof From envy, hate and pity, and spite and (scorn, Live the great life which all our greatest fain Would follow, center'd in eternal calm. ,,Nay, if thou can'st, O Goddess, like our(selves Touch, and be touch'd, then would I cry to (thee To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms Round him, and keep him from the lust of (blood That makes a steaming slaughter-house of (Rome. "Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant not (her, Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and (tempt The Trojan, while his neat-herds were (abroad; Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept Her Deity false in human-amorous tears; Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods, Of cattle, and light is large and lambs are (glad Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of (flowers: Which things appear the work of mighty (Gods. The Gods! and if I go my work is left Unfinish'd-if I go. The Gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a (wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar Not follow the great law? My master held I have forgotten what I meant: my mind "Look where another of our Gods, the Sun Apollo, Delius, or of older use All-seeing Hyperion- what you willHad mounted yonder; since he never sware, Except his wrath were wreak'd on wretched (man, That he would only shine among the dead Hereafter; tales! for never yet on earth Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roasting ox Moan round the spit -nor knows he what (he sees; King of the East altho' he seem, and girt With song and flame and fragrance, slowly (lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven: Not thankful that his troubles are no more. Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at once, Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and (sink Past earthquake (that break ay, and gout and stone, Body toward death, and palsy, death-in-life, And wretched age- and worst disease of (all, These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, And fleeting thro' the boundless universe, „How should the mind, except it loved (them, clasp These idols to herself? or do they fly In a fall of snow, and so press in, perforce The basest, far into that council-hall Can I not fling this horror off me again, Seeing with how great ease Nature can (smile, Balmier and nobler from her bath of storm, "But who was he, that in the garden (snared Picus and Faunus, rustic Gods? a tale The mountain quickens into Nymph and (Faun; And here an Oread- how the sun delights To glance and shift about her slippery sides, And rosy knees and supple roundedness, And budded bosom-peaks - who this way (runs Before the rest- A satyr, a satyr, see, Follows; but him I proved impossible; Twy-natured is no nature: yet he draws Nearer and nearer, and I scan him now Beastlier than any phantom of his kind That ever butted his rough brother-brute For lust or lusty blood or provender: I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and she Loathes him as well; such a precipitate heel, Fledged as it were with Mercury's ankle(wing, Whirls her to me: but will she fling herself, Shameless upon me? Catch her, goatfoot: (nay, Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder (ness, And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide! do I (wish What? - that the bush were leafless? or to (whelm All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods, Only such cups as left us friendly-warm, 226 His vast and filthy hands upon my will, in Or Heliconian honey in living words, And since the nobler pleasure seems to fade, What Roman would be dragg'd in triumph (thus? Not I; not he, who bears one name with her Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom (of kings, When, brooking not the Tarquin in her (veins, She made her blood in sight of Collatine And all his peers, flushing the guiltless air, Spout from the maiden fountain in her (heart. And from it sprang the Commonwealth, (which breaks As I am breaking now! ,,And therefore now Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart Those blind beginnings that have made (me man Dash them anew together at her will into man once Through all her cycles (more, Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower: But till this cosmic order everywhere Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day Cracks all to pieces, and that hour (perhaps Is not so far when momentary man And even his bones long laid within the (grave, The very sides of the grave itself shall pass, Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, Into the unseen for ever, till that hour, My golden work in which I told a truth That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel, The mortal soul from on immortal hell, - thus: the soul flies out and dies in Thus (the air." With that he drove the knife into his side: She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran (in, Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd; he answer'd, But good things have not kept aloof, I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, THE CAPTAIN. HE that only rules by terror Doeth grievous wrong. Let him hear my song. |