Classic Poem

How long shall virtue, good, most empty names,
Bind fast the limbs of him who rules the world?
How long shall senate, state, familiar claims,
Around his hopes like restless snakes be curled?
How long the power which every pleasure tames
In virtue's cerements be most basely furled?
Let Love and Joy call forth their happy crowds
Resplendent as a flock of sunset clouds.

From bliss to bliss, the lucent waves of life,
Let our souls' barques glide onward pauselessly,
Past sound or sight remove all storm and strife,
Where we seek rest, may calm forever be,
The winds with wildest odors ever rife,
Mild blossoms grow, and fruits down-load the tree,
Forgotten cares that nest within our hearts,
And slay our dreams with swift envenomed darts.

To-morrow let the all-beholding sun,
Whose altars smoke with ceaseless sacrifice,
Rejoice as never yet since first begun
His daily course; his flame-dispersing eyes
Shall dim in smoke of rapturous triumph won,
For his sake, by the King, who, dust-clad, lies,
Lord of the world, yet abject slave mid slaves,
Before his throne, and his protection craves.

Prepare the feast! To-morrow's noon shall know
A carnival where life and death shall meet,
Where life in splendor like the sun's shall glow,
Where death wild revelry shall kiss and greet,
Where joys shall fall like countless flakes of snow,
Where death shed myriad darts like sharp-tongued sleet.
Sing praises to the Sun, our God, our Lord:
We bring him victims more than war and sword!

Prepare the feast! Earth's choicest treasures spill
More lavish than the full-blown moon her light;
Bright gold, that filled the bowels of the hill,
And gems that lay deep-hidden from the sight,
Convert to shapes that suit unfettered will;
And fruits, and wines that drank immeasured night
Of depths mysterious, flowers, dance, and song,
Our summer tide of revels shall prolong!

At the clear morrow's noon, the palace gates
Admit the noble, wise, and great, and good;
The regal slendor brightly dissipates
The latest fear that checked the rapid blood.
Elagabalus, fair amid such mates,
Reflects on all the radiance of his mood;
Like morn's fair beams traversing a clear lake,
The smiles across his pale face fleet and shake.

Up marble stairs whose balustrades with gold
Are thick encrusted as the night with stars,
Through halls whose beauty crowns the sense, past old
Dusk chambers through whose moonlit window-bars
The midnight glow on kingly revels rolled,
Satiate with splendor that no discord mars,
The dreaming guests follow the rustling girls,
Whose feet make softer music than the whirls

Of midnight oreads in aerial dance.
Lo! marvels that the brain but half conceives;
For as the darkness flees, when truth's strong lance
Pierces the air with gleaming strokes and leaves
To light fields uncontested, or as prance
Morn's radiance-winged coursers, when she weaves
Her night-slaying spell, and showers white floods of splendence
From mane and hoofs across their swift ascendence,

Even thus the night of bliss experienced fled,
The fiery morn of bliss expectant rose.
Their souls like outworn garments from them shed
The dreams of the wan past, the real grows
On them as summer's sun on winter dead,
The fleeting moments novel joys disclose,
Rapture on rapture gradual revel keeps,
Capricious as a fountain's golden leaps.

What mortal tongue may hope in words to tell
The wonder of the place wherein they stood?
From lands mysterious by some potent spell,
From sunless depths of seldom-visited wood,
From gloomy cavern or sprite-haunted dell,
Sprang forth the hands whose subtle masterhood
Fashioned the solid miracle of dream,
Whose wondrous glory did around them gleam.

A vast hall, through whose many-windowed walls
The noontide fell with yellow fire and flame,
The senses lulled by slumberous water-falls,
And melancholy strains fitfully came
Like echoes soft and low. Loose-robed thralls,
African slaves, like beasts that singers tame,
Recline about the boards of gem-starred gold,
Or in their dusky hands the wine-cups hold.

The roof presents an intertangled net
Of precious fretwork, vine and grapes and flower,
Around the central orb, all golden, set
To catch the errant sunbeams, then to shower
A rain of light upon the fount whose wet
Circumference beneath is bright with dower
Of broad-leaved lilies, round whose thinnest cups
Quick sunbows leap in merry downs and ups.

And myriad loves shoot subtly-pointed darts
Across the walls, whose crowning carved curves
Titans uplift, and on which Painting starts
Into fair life of thought. Here ocean swerves
As Venus treads its waves like lovers' hearts,
Here Helen passion's wildest flights ennerves,
Here Phaedra spurns the cold Hippolytus,
Here sings of love fierce Sappho amorous.

The tortured earth in meek subservience
Had oped her thousand doors, and shown her spoils
To countless slaves, who bore her treasures thence,
And wove them in their unimagined toils
To all that fills the eye, or thrills the sense;
There lay the fruits and flowers of nameless soils,
The forest and the sea their tribute brought,
Whate'er the brain conceived, the hand had wrought.

The garlands crown the brows, the rosy wine
Shines thick with sunbeams like weird snakes of fire,
Pleasure and song their passioned souls entwine,
And wake the slumbering brood of strong desire;
Fiercer the music, wilder wild eyes shine,
Fiercer the mirth like flames upclambering higher;
Fancy withdraws them from the streaming light,
They live in dreams outshining those of night.

It was the height and fury of the feast;
The King descends, and through the risen crowd
Walks slow, his priest-garb glorious as the East,
When morning kindles all its waste of cloud,
Shone in the sun a lesser sun. Sound ceased
As low a subtle purpose he avowed:
" Ye strove for glory, for the laurel crown,
To-day shall furnish you fair roses of renown. "

Like noiseless cloud or breeze he crept away,
The doors behind him clanged with harshest din;
Wild music rose upon the air. Men say
A youth whose young years were as thick with sin
As ruins old with ivy, heard that lay
As he past Circe's isle was wandering.
Fear sprung from sleep that lulled its fiends awhile,
They stood with lifted cup and frozen smile.

Lo! as an exhalation flees the morn,
The roof recedes before the engulfing air;
They stand amazed, they watch in dread, in scorn,
The yawning cleft; some sink in weak despair,
Some dream of scenes whose splendor will adorn
Past splendor; hark! the King's voice low and rare:
" Sing praises to the Sun, our God, our Lord:
We bring him victims more than war or sword! "

Down rang the trembling cups, loud cries of rage
And fear and woe affright the shaken walls,
The doors are shut. Like tigers in a cage
They stamp the floor, and beat the space that galls
Their impotence. In vain the white-haired sage,
The poet, patrician, and most wretched thralls,
Attempt to flee. They wrench the casement bars;
Behold unnumbered spears like midnight's stars.

But, lo! a miracle. The winds are red
With unimaged rain, that fills the light
With rosy hue like curtains of the bed
Adonis sleeps on, hid from human sight.
They pause and laugh, mirth is no longer dead,
They fill the bowl and joy in such a night;
A rain whose drops were roses swiftly fell,
And quick enclosed them in a roseate dell.

They bind the roses in their streaming locks,
They drink to Joyance, Hope, and mighty Love,
They tear the lilies from the fountain's rocks,
Their steps to sensuous music nimbly move,
Their blood comes from their hearts in maddening shocks,
Through dreams their errant fancies errant rove,
And ever fell engirt by odors keen
The roses like a baleful star-shower seen.

Roses, roses, roses, wonderful rain,
Roses, roses, thicker than wintry hail,
Immixed with blooms that veins of dryads stain,
And blooms that at a lover's vows grow pale,
White, golden, violet, red, the dim eyes fain
Would close their weary orbs lest sight should fail;
Roses, roses, roses, ceaselessly falling,
With steps more soft than echo on love faint calling.

Roses, roses, roses, up to the knees,
Where now lies mirth forgotten and forlorn?
Roses, roses, their fallings do not cease,
Where now are all the joys that lit the morn?
Roses, roses, roses, their heaps increase,
Ah! better Death when blows the onset horn.
Roses, roses, roses, up to the neck,
These crowds of their last joy or passion reck.

No breeze disturbs the sky; the risen moon
Lies in the shivering arms of the dusk east;
The setting sun affrights the eve, at noon
His rays were paler; like a blood-stained beast
The King stands on the roof and hearks the tune
The priests below chant unto their high-priest:
Rejoice! rejoice! O Sun, our God, our Lord,
Thou hast had victims more than war and sword!