Poems

And bears them onward with no rest
To ampler skies and some grey plain
Sad with the tumbling of the main.
But see, a sidelong eddy slips
Back into the soft eclipse
Of day, while careless fate allows,
Darkling beneath still olive boughs;
Then with chuckle liquid sweet
Coils within its shy retreat;
This is mine, no wave of might,
But pure and live with glimmering light;
I dare not follow that broad flood
Of Poesy, whose lustihood
Nourishes mighty lands, and makes
Resounding music for their sakes;
I lie beside the well-head clear
With musing joy, with tender fear,
And choose for half a day to lean
Thus on my elbow where the green
Margin-grass and silver-white
Starry buds, the wind’s delight,
Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude
Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood
Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop,
And in hand-hollow dare to scoop
This scantling from the delicate stream;
It lies as quiet as a dream,
And lustrous in my curvèd hand.
Were it a crime if this were drain’d
By lips which met the noonday blue
Fiery and emptied of its dew?
Crown me with small white marish-flowers!
To the good Dæmon, and the Powers
Of this fair haunt I offer up
In unprofanèd lily-cup
Libations; still remains for me
A bird’s drink of clear Poesy;
Yet not as light bird comes and dips
A pert bill, but with reverent lips
I drain this slender trembling tide;
O sweet the coolness at my side,
And, lying back, to slowly pry
For spaces of the upper sky
Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves;
And, last, while some fair show deceives
The closing eyes, to find a sleep
As full of healing and as deep
As on toil-worn Odysseus lay
Surge-swept to his Ionian bay.

IN THE GALLERIES

I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

Radiance invincible! Is that the brow
Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped?
Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead
That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou:
For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow
And break us, and at best when we have bled,
And are much marred, perchance propitiated
A little doubtful victory they allow:
We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains
A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less.
O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great
And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains
Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness,
—Even to worship thee I come too late.

II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,
No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas
Shifting and circling past their Cyclades
Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod
First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad
Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,
And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase,
Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.
So thy victorious fairness, unallied
To bitter things or barren, doth bestow
And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;
Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow
Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side,
And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

(In the British Museum)

Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath
And clustered berries burdening the hair?
Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware
O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath,
Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth!
The gods are free, and drink a stainless air,
And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear
A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death
Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine.
O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught