About her throat the scar of red The deathblow was, dealt silently Unto a generation dead By every new-born century.
I saw this self-same phantom fleet, All Paris ringing with her praise, When soft, diaphanous, mystic, sweet, La Petra Camara held its gaze,--
Closing her eyes with languor rare, Impassive, passionate of art, And, like the murdered Ines fair, Dancing, a dagger in her heart.
Poet of her face divine, Curb this over-zeal of thine! Doves wing frighted from the ground At a step's too sudden sound, And her passion is a dove, Frighted by too bold a love. Mute as marble Hermes wait By the blooming hawthorn-gate. Thou shalt see her wings expand, She shall flutter to thy hand. On thy forehead thou shalt know Something like a breath of snow, Or of pinions pure that beat In a whirl of whiteness sweet. And the dove, grown venturesome, Shall upon thy shoulder come, And its rosy beak shall sip From the nectar of thy lip.
Beneath yon tree sits humble A squalid, hunchbacked house, With roof precipitous, And mossy walls that crumble.
Bolted and barred the shanty. But from its must and mould, Like breath of lips in cold, Comes respiration scanty.
A vapour upward welling, A slender, silver streak, To God bears tidings meek Of the soul in the little dwelling.
Fair Apollonia, name august, Greek echo of the sacred vale, Great name whose harmonies robust Thee as Apollo's sister hail!
Struck with the plectrum on the lyre, And in melodious beauty sung, Brighter than love's and glory's fire, It resonant rings upon the tongue.
At such a classic sound as this, The elves plunge down their German lake. Alone the Delphian worthy is So lustreful a name to take,--
Pythia! when in her flowing dress She mounts her place with feet unshod, And, priestess white and prophetess, Wistful awaits the tardy god.
A blind man walks without the gate, Wild-staring as an owl by day, Fumbling his flute betimes and late, Along the way.
He pipeth, weary wretch and worn, A roundel shrill and obsolete. The spectre of a dog forlorn Attends his feet.
For him the days go lustreless. Invisible life with beat and roar He heareth like a torrent press Around, before.
What strange chimeras haunt his head_ _And on his mind's bedarkened space, What characters unheard, unread, Doth fancy trace?