| |
| HERE Charmian, take my bracelets: | |
| They bar with a purple stain | |
| My arms; turn over my pillows— | |
| They are hot where I have lain: | |
| Open the lattice wider, | 5 |
| A gauze o’er my bosom throw, | |
| And let me inhale the odors | |
| That over the garden blow. | |
| |
| I dreamed I was with my Antony, | |
| And in his arms I lay; | 10 |
| Ah, me! the vision has vanished— | |
| The music has died away. | |
| The flame and the perfume have perished— | |
| As this spiced aromatic pastille | |
| That wound the blue smoke of its odor | 15 |
| Is now but an ashy hill. | |
| |
| Scatter upon me rose leaves, | |
| They cool me after my sleep, | |
| And with sandal odors fan me | |
| Till into my veins they creep; | 20 |
| Reach down the lute, and play me | |
| A melancholy tune, | |
| To rhyme with the dream that has vanished | |
| And the slumbering afternoon. | |
| |
| There, drowsing in golden sunlight, | 25 |
| Loiters the slow smooth Nile, | |
| Through slender papyri, that cover | |
| The wary crocodile. | |
| The lotus lolls on the water, | |
| And opens its heart of gold, | 30 |
| And over its broad leaf pavement | |
| Never a ripple is rolled. | |
| The twilight breeze is too lazy | |
| Those feathery palms to wave, | |
| And yon little cloud is motionless | 35 |
| As a stone above a grave. | |
| |
| Ah, me! this lifeless nature | |
| Oppresses my heart and brain! | |
| Oh! for a storm and thunder— | |
| For lightning and wild fierce rain! | 40 |
| Fling down that lute—I hate it! | |
| Take rather his buckler and sword, | |
| And crash them and clash them together | |
| Till this sleeping world is stirred. | |
| |
| Hark! to my Indian beauty— | 45 |
| My cockatoo, creamy white, | |
| With roses under his feathers— | |
| That flashes across the light. | |
| Look! listen! as backward and forward | |
| To his hoop of gold he clings, | 50 |
| How he trembles, with crest uplifted, | |
| And shrieks as he madly swings! | |
| Oh, cockatoo, shriek for Antony! | |
| Cry, “Come, my love, come home!” | |
| Shriek, “Antony! Antony! Antony!” | 55 |
| Till he hears you even in Rome. | |
| |
| There—leave me, and take from my chamber | |
| That stupid little gazelle, | |
| With its bright black eyes so meaningless, | |
| And its silly tinkling bell! | 60 |
| Take him,—my nerves he vexes— | |
| The thing without blood or brain, | |
| Or, by the body of Isis, | |
| I ’ll snap his thin neck in twain! | |
| |
| Leave me to gaze at the landscape | 65 |
| Mistily stretching away, | |
| Where the afternoon’s opaline tremors | |
| O’er the mountains quivering play; | |
| Till the fiercer splendor of sunset | |
| Pours from the west its fire, | 70 |
| And melted, as in a crucible, | |
| Their earthly forms expire; | |
| And the bald blear skull of the desert | |
| With glowing mountains is crowned, | |
| That burning like molten jewels | 75 |
| Circle its temples round. | |
| |
| I will lie and dream of the past time, | |
| Æons of thought away, | |
| And through the jungle of memory | |
| Loosen my fancy to play; | 80 |
| When, a smooth and velvety tiger, | |
| Ribbed with yellow and black, | |
| Supple and cushion-footed | |
| I wandered, where never the track | |
| Of a human creature had rustled | 85 |
| The silence of mighty woods, | |
| And, fierce in a tyrannous freedom, | |
| I knew but the law of my moods. | |
| The elephant, trumpeting, started, | |
| When he heard my footstep near, | 90 |
| And the spotted giraffes fled wildly | |
| In a yellow cloud of fear. | |
| I sucked in the noontide splendor, | |
| Quivering along the glade, | |
| Or yawning, panting, and dreaming, | 95 |
| Basked in the tamarisk shade, | |
| Till I heard my wild mate roaring, | |
| As the shadows of night came on | |
| To brood in the trees’ thick branches, | |
| And the shadow of sleep was gone; | 100 |
| Then I roused, and roared in answer, | |
| And unsheathed from my cushioned feet | |
| My curving claws, and stretched me, | |
| And wandered my mate to greet. | |
| We toyed in the amber moonlight, | 105 |
| Upon the warm flat sand, | |
| And struck at each other our massive arms— | |
| How powerful he was and grand! | |
| His yellow eyes flashed fiercely | |
| As he crouched and gazed at me, | 110 |
| And his quivering tail, like a serpent, | |
| Twitched curving nervously. | |
| Then like a storm he seized me, | |
| With a wild triumphant cry, | |
| And we met, as two clouds in heaven | 115 |
| When the thunder before them fly. | |
| We grappled and struggled together, | |
| For his love like his rage was rude; | |
| And his teeth in the swelling folds of my neck | |
| At times, in our play, drew blood. | 120 |
| |
| Often another suitor— | |
| For I was flexile and fair— | |
| Fought for me in the moonlight, | |
| While I lay couching there, | |
| Till his blood was drained by the desert; | 125 |
| And, ruffled with triumph and power, | |
| He licked me and lay beside me | |
| To breathe him a vast half-hour. | |
| Then down to the fountain we loitered, | |
| Where the antelopes came to drink; | 130 |
| Like a bolt we sprang upon them, | |
| Ere they had time to shrink. | |
| We drank their blood and crushed them, | |
| And tore them limb from limb, | |
| And the hungriest lion doubted | 135 |
| Ere he disputed with him. | |
| |
| That was a life to live for! | |
| Not this weak human life, | |
| With its frivolous bloodless passions, | |
| Its poor and petty strife! | 140 |
| |
| Come to my arms, my hero! | |
| The shadows of twilight grow, | |
| And the tiger’s ancient fierceness | |
| In my veins begins to flow. | |
| Come not cringing to sue me! | 145 |
| Take me with triumph and power, | |
| As a warrior storms a fortress! | |
| I will not shrink or cower. | |
| Come, as you came in the desert, | |
| Ere we were women and men, | 150 |
| When the tiger passions were in us, | |
| And love as you loved me then! | |
| |
