WEEP for me but one day, Dry then your eyes; Think, is a heap of clay Worth a maid’s sighs?
Sigh nine days if you can For my waste blood; Think then, you love a man Whose face is mud;
Whose flesh and hair thrill not At your faint touch; Dear! limbs and brain will rot, Dream not of such.
"What shall I write?" said Yegor.--TCHEKOV.
"What shall I write?" said Yegor; "Of the bright-plumed bird that sings Hovering on the fringes of the forest, Where leafy dreams are grown, And thoughts go with silent flutterings, Like moths by a dark wind blown?"
"Oh, write of those quiet women, Beautiful, slim and pale, Whose bodies glimmer under cool green waters, Whose hands like lilies float Tangled in the heavy purple veil Of hair on their breast and throat."
"Or write of swans and princes Carved out of marble clouds, Of the flowers that wither upon distant mountains, Grey-pencilled in the brain; Of fiercely hurrying night-born crowds By the first swift sun-ray slain."
"Nay, I will sing," said Yegor, "Of stranger things than these, Of a girl I met in the fresh of morning, A laughing, slender flame; Of the slow stream’s song and the chant of bees, In a land without a name."
WHEN my girl swims with me I think She is a Shark with hungry teeth, Because her throat that dazzles me Is white as sharks are underneath.
And when she drags me down with her Under the wave, she clings so tight, She seems a deadly Water-snake Who smothers me in that dim light.
Yet when we lie on the hot sand, I find she cannot bite or hiss, But she swears I’m a Tiger fierce Who kills her slowly with a kiss.
[A] The lyrics from "The Burden of Babylon" appeared in OXFORD POETRY, 1919. The present editors have decided to reprint them with their context.
SCENE: _An upper chamber in the Palace of the King of Babylon. Dusk on a hot summer’s evening. The voice of one singing far off beyond the palace-gardens is heard vaguely from time to time. The King is sitting by an open window._
SINCE I am Babylon, I am the world. The windy heavens and the rainy skies Attend the earth in humble servitude. And I am Babylon, I am the world: The heavens and their powers attend on me.
_Babylon, the glory of the Kingdoms,_ _And the Chaldee’s excellency,_ _Is become as Sodom and Gomorrah,_ _Whom God overthrew by the Sea._