| |
From ‘Nepenthe’, Canto I
O BLEST unfabled Incense Tree, | |
| That burns in glorious Araby, | |
| With red scent chalicing the air, | |
| Till earth-life grow Elysian there! | |
| |
| Half buried to her flaming breast | 5 |
| In this bright tree, she makes her nest, | |
| Hundred-sunn’d Phoenix! when she must | |
| Crumble at length to hoary dust! | |
| |
| Her gorgeous death-bed! her rich pyre | |
| Burnt up with aromatic fire! | 10 |
| Her urn, sight high from spoiler men! | |
| Her birthplace when self-born again! | |
| |
| The mountainless green wilds among, | |
| Here ends she her unechoing song! | |
| With amber tears and odorous sighs | 15 |
| Mourn’d by the desert where she dies! | |
| |
| Laid like the young fawn mossily | |
| In sun-green vales of Araby, | |
| I woke hard by the Phoenix tree | |
| That with shadeless boughs flamed over me, | 20 |
| And upward call’d for a dumb cry | |
| With moonbroad orbs of wonder I | |
| Beheld the immortal Bird on high | |
| Glassing the great sun in her eye. | |
| Stedfast she gazed upon his fire, | 25 |
| —Still her destroyer and her sire!— | |
| As if to his her soul of flame | |
| Had flown already whence it came; | |
| Like those that sit and glare so still, | |
| Intense with their death struggle, till | 30 |
| We touch, and curdle at their chill!— | |
| But breathing yet while she doth burn, | |
| The deathless Daughter of the sun! | |
| Slowly to crimson embers turn | |
| The beauties of the brightsome one. | 35 |
| O’er the broad nest her silver wings | |
| Shook down their wasteful glitterings; | |
| Her brinded neck high-arch’d in air | |
| Like a small rainbow faded there; | |
| But brighter glow’d her plumy crown | 40 |
| Mouldering to golden ashes down; | |
| With fume of sweet woods, to the skies, | |
| Pure as a Saint’s adoring sighs, | |
| Warm as a prayer in Paradise, | |
| Her life-breath rose in sacrifice! | 45 |
| The while with shrill triumphant tone | |
| Sounding aloud, aloft, alone, | |
| Ceaseless her joyful deathwail she | |
| Sang to departing Araby! | |
| |
| O, fast her amber blood doth flow | 50 |
| From the heart-wounded Incense Tree, | |
| Fast as earth’s deep-embosom’d woe | |
| In silent rivulets to the sea! | |
| |
| Beauty may weep her fair first-born, | |
| Perchance in as resplendent tears, | 55 |
| Such golden dewdrops bow the corn | |
| When the stern sickleman appears: | |
| |
| But O! such perfume to a bower | |
| Never allured sweet-seeking bee, | |
| As to sip fast that nectarous shower | 60 |
| A thirstier minstrel drew in me! | |
| |
