If you venture hitherward, With a tender veil to cheat Glances over-daring, guard Well your Andalusian feet!
Snow shall fashion like a frame On your foot's impression rare, Signing with each step your name On the carpet soft and vair.
Thus were surly master led To the hidden trysting-place, Where his Psyche, faintly red, Were beheld in Love's embrace.
Near a great water's waste A brook mid rock and spar Came bubbling up in haste, As though to travel far.
It sang: "What joy to rise! 'T was dismal under ground. I mirror now the skies. My banks with green abound.
"Forget-me-nots--how fair! Beseech me from the grass; Wings frolic in the air, And graze me as they pass.
"I yet shall be--who knows?-- A river winding down, And greeting as it flows Valley and cliff and town.
"I'll broider with my spray Stone bridge and granite quay, And bear great ships away Unto the long wide sea."
So planned it, babbling by, As water boiling fast Within a basin high, To top its brim at last.
Cradle by tomb is crossed. Giants are early dead. Scarce born, the brook was lost Within a lake's deep bed.
No grim cadaver set its flaw In happy days of pagan art, And man, content with what he saw, Stripped not the veil from beauty's heart.
No form once loved that buried lay, A hideous spectre to appal, Dropped bit by bit its flesh away, As one by one our garments fall;
Or, when the days had drifted by And sundered shrank the vaulted stones, Showed naked to the daring eye A motley heap of rattling bones.
But, rescued from the funeral pyre, Life's ashen, light residuum Lay soft, and, spent the cleansing fire, The urn held sweet the body's sum,--
The sum of all that earth may claim Of the soul's butterfly, soul passed,-- All that is left of spended flame Upon the tripod at the last.
Between acanthus leaves and flowers In the white marble gaily went Loves and bacchantes all the hours, Dancing about the monument.
At most, a little Genius wild Trampled a flame out in the gloom, And art's harmonious flowering smiled Upon the sadness of the tomb.
The tomb was then a pleasant place. As bed of child that slumbereth, With many a fair and laughing grace The joy of life surrounded death.
Then death concealed its visage gaunt, Whose sockets deep, and sunken nose, And railing mouth our spirits haunt, Past any dream that horror shows.