LITMIR.BIZ

      Come hither all sweet maidens soberly,

      Down-looking aye, and with a chasten’d light,

      Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,

      And meekly let your fair hands joined be,

      As if so gentle that ye could not see,

      Untouch’d, a victim of your beauty bright,

      Sinking away to his young spirit’s night, -

      Sinking bewilder’d ‘mid the dreary sea:

      ’Tis young Leander toiling to his death;

      Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips

      For Hero’s cheek, and smiles against her smile.

      O horrid dream! see how his body dips

      Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile:

      He’s gone: up bubbles all his amorous breath!

      Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies,

      For more adornment, a full thousand years;

      She took their cream of beauty’s fairest dyes,

      And shap’d and tinted her above all Peers’

      Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,

      And underneath their shadow fill’d her eyes

      With such a richness that the cloudy Kings

      Of high Olympus utter’d slavish sighs.

      When from the heavens I saw her first descend,

      My heart took fire, and only burning pains,

      They were my pleasures – they my life’s sad end;

      Love pour’d her beauty into my warm veins …

      Upon a time, before the faery broods

      Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,

      Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,

      Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem,

      Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns

      From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns,

      The ever-smitten Hermes empty left

      His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:

      From high Olympus had he stolen light,

      On this side of Jove’s clouds, to escape the sight

      Of his great summoner, and made retreat

      Into a forest on the shores of Crete.

      For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt

      A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;

      At whose white feet the languid Tritons poured

      Pearls, while on land they wither’d and adored.

      Fast by the springs where she to bathe was wont,

      And in those meads where sometime she might haunt,

      Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,

      Though Fancy’s casket were unlock’d to choose.

      Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!

      So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat

      Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,

      That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,

      Blush’d into roses ‘mid his golden hair,

      Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.

      From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew,

      Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,

      And wound with many a river to its head,

      To find where this sweet nymph prepar’d her secret bed:

      In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found,

      And so he rested, on the lonely ground,

      Pensive, and full of painful jealousies

      Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.

      There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice,

      Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys

      All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake:

      “When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!

      When move in a sweet body fit for life,

      And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife

      Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!”

      The God, dove-footed, glided silently

      Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,

      The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,

      Until he found a palpitating snake,

      Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.

      She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,

      Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;

      Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,

      Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d;

      And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,

      Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed

      Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries —

      So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,

      She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,

      Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.

      Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire

      Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:

      Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!

      She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete:

      And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there

      But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

      As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.

      Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake

      Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake,

      And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,

      Like a stoop’d falcon ere he takes his prey.

      “Fair Hermes, crown’d with feathers, fluttering light,

      I had a splendid dream of thee last night:

      I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold,

      Among the Gods, upon Olympus old,

      The only sad one; for thou didst not hear

      The soft, lute-finger’d Muses chaunting clear,

      Nor even Apollo when he sang alone,

      Deaf to his throbbing throat’s long, long melodious moan.

      I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes,

      Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks,

      And, swiftly as a bright Phoebean dart,

      Strike for the Cretan isle; and here thou art!

      Too gentle Hermes, hast thou found the maid?”

      Whereat

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