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(From The Soul of Osiris, 1901)
WHERE, in the coppice, oak and pine | |
| And mystic yew and elm are found, | |
| Sweeping the skies, that grow divine | |
| With the dark wind’s despairing sound, | |
| The wind that roars from the profound, | 5 |
| And smites the mountain-tops, and calls | |
| Mute spirits to black festivals, | |
| And feasts in valleys iron-bound, | |
| Desolate crags, and barren ground;— | |
| There in the strong storm-shaken grove | 10 |
| Swings the pale censer-fire for love. | |
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| The foursquare altar, rightly hewn, | |
| And overlaid with beaten gold, | |
| Stands in the gloom; the stealthy tune | |
| Of singing maidens overbold | 15 |
| Desires mad mysteries untold, | |
| With strange eyes kindling, as the fleet | |
| Implacable untiring feet | |
| Weave mystic figures manifold | |
| That draw down angels to behold | 20 |
| The moving music, and the fire | |
| Of their intolerable desire. | |
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| For, maddening to fiercer thought, | |
| The fiery limbs requicken, wheel | |
| In formless furies, subtly wrought | 25 |
| Of swifter melodies than steel | |
| That flashes in the fight: the peal | |
| Of amorous laughters choking sense, | |
| And madness kissing violence, | |
| Ring like dead horsemen; bodies reel | 30 |
| Drunken with motion; spirits feel | |
| The strange constraint of gods that clip | |
| From Heaven to mingle lip and lip. | |
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| The gods descend to dance; the noise | |
| Of hungry kissings, as a swoon, | 35 |
| Faints for excess of its own joys, | |
| And mystic beams assail the moon, | |
| With flames of their infernal noon; | |
| While the smooth incense, without breath, | |
| Spreads like some scented flower of death, | 40 |
| Over the grove; the lovers’ boon | |
| Of sleep shall steal upon them soon, | |
| And lovers’ lips, from lips withdrawn, | |
| Seek dimmer bosoms till the dawn. | |
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| Yet on the central altar lies | 45 |
| The sacrament of kneaded bread, | |
| With blood made one, the sacrifice | |
| To those, the living, who are dead— | |
| Strange gods and goddesses, that shed | |
| Monstrous desires of secret things | 50 |
| Upon their worshippers, from wings | |
| One lucent web of light, from head | |
| One labyrinthine passion-fed | |
| Palace of love, from breathing rife | |
| With secrets of forbidden life. | 55 |
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| But not the sunlight, nor the stars, | |
| Nor any light but theirs alone, | |
| Nor iron masteries of Mars, | |
| Nor Saturn’s misconceiving zone, | |
| Nor any planet’s may be shown, | 60 |
| Within the circle of the grove, | |
| Where burn the sanctities of love: | |
| Nor may the foot of man be known, | |
| Nor evil eyes of mothers thrown | |
| On maidens that desire the kiss | 65 |
| Only of maiden Artemis. | |
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| But horned and huntress from the skies, | |
| She bends her lips upon the breeze, | |
| And pure and perfect in her eyes, | |
| Burn magical virginity’s | 70 |
| Sweet intermittent sorceries. | |
| When the slow wind from her sweet word | |
| In all their conchéd ears is heard. | |
| And like the slumber of the seas, | |
| There murmur through the holy trees | 75 |
| The kisses of the goddess keen, | |
| And sighs and laughters caught between. | |
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| For, swooning at the fervid lips | |
| Of Artemis, the maiden kisses | |
| Sob, and the languid body slips | 80 |
| Down to enamelled wildernesses. | |
| Fallen and loose the shaken tresses; | |
| Fallen the sandal and girdling gold, | |
| Fallen the music manifold | |
| Of moving limbs and strange caresses, | 85 |
| And deadly passion that possesses | |
| The magic ecstasy of these | |
| Mad maidens, tender as blue seas. | |
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| Night spreads her yearning pinions, | |
| The baffled day sinks blind to sleep; | 90 |
| The evening breeze outswoons the sun’s | |
| Dead kisses to the swooning deep. | |
| Upsoars the moon; the flashing steep | |
| Of Heaven is fragrant for her feet; | |
| The perfume of the grove is sweet | 95 |
| As slumbering women furtive creep | |
| To bosoms where small kisses weep, | |
| And find in fervent dreams the kiss | |
| Most memoried of Artemis. | |
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| Impenetrable pleasure dies | 100 |
| Beneath the madness of new dreams; | |
| The slow sweet breath is turned to sighs | |
| More musical than many streams | |
| Under the moving silver beams, | |
| Fretted with stars, thrice woven across. | 105 |
| White limbs in amorous slumber toss, | |
| Like sleeping foam, whose silver gleams | |
| On motionless dark seas; it seems | |
| As if some gentle spirit stirred | |
| Their lazy brows with some swift word. | 110 |
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| So, in the secret of the shrine, | |
| Night keeps them nestled, so the gloom | |
| Laps them in waves as smooth as wine, | |
| As glowing as the fiery womb | |
| Of some young tigress, dark as doom, | 115 |
| And swift as sunrise. Love’s content | |
| Builds its own monument, | |
| And carves above its vaulted tomb | |
| The Phoenix on her fiery plume, | |
| To their own souls to testify | 120 |
| Their kisses’ immortality. | |
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