Classic Poem

XI

There stands the living ruin; she weeps not,
Tears in their fountains dried have marble grown;
Despair's last pulse is stilled, the deed is wrought
That hurled her reason headlong from its throne;
Branchless, and lightning-stricken, and alone,
She lives, retaining breathless consciousness
Of passion chilled and petrified to stone;
The appealing gesture and the vain caress,
Attest bewildered woe in mute grief passionless.

XII

Cold is the eye that looks on thee unmoved,
Colder the heart that warms not at thy tale,
Dark Sappho! Who like thee has ever loved
And left such burning record? what avail
Genius, the glorious faculty to entail
The deathless life of the immortal Muse,
When slave to human passion? when doth fail
Wreaths on the laureate forehead to infuse
Peace, or the throbbing brain impregnate with their dews.

XIII

Entwined their arms, their souls met in their eyes,
Into one being circumfused, one heart,
Stand Love and Psyche pure as their own skies;
She seeks not yet to draw life's veil apart,
The child of innocence, she knows not art.
Oh, could the immortal soul thus happy rest,
Nor seek to wound itself with its own dart,
What else is knowledge? how might it be blest,
Its paradise this earth, of all it loves possessed.

XIV

The Dancing Faun, the bacchanal of joy,
The pulses of delight within him bounding;
His foot pressed lightly on his cymbal-toy,
Now soft, now full, the answering music rounding;
How is his triumph at each note redounding!
His arms are tossed in motion like the tree
When the wind through its joyous boughs is sounding;
His face, his eyes brimful, o'erflow with glee:
His the delirious life of rapture's ecstasy.

XV

Behold light Hermes, messenger of heaven,
On the supporting breath of the wild wind
Balanced, ere flight to his poised wings is given;
How through that form aerial breathes the mind,
Grace, speed of thought, and freedom unconfined!
He points, his arm thrown upward with a smile,
To his far home; Jove's mandate is consigned;
Not even Calypso's charms the god beguile,
One bound, he leaves afar Ogygia's azure isle!

XVI

Lo, that lone Statue! lonely as a cloud
Above the desert; in his beauty he
Is sorrowful, his thoughtful head is bowed,
His drooping torch sinks quenched beside his knee:
Thoughts of the past and of futurity
Darken his brow; his lonely spirit yearns
For a life passed into eternity.
The Spirit of Death his deathless being mourns,
The beautiful is gone, and ne'er, alas! returns.

XVII

What is this death, this terror of the mind,
This sightless substance bodied by our fear,
Felt, though unseen, the step of life behind;
For ever distant, yet for ever near?
Mocked by our sleep, whose pillow is our bier,
From whence hope wakes us to pursue again
The syren luring us to persevere,
Until, foredone, we own the chase was vain:
Resigned to rest in peace beneath his leaden reign.

XVIII

Angel of Death! august in beauty thou;
Thine the dark loveliness the night doth wear
When the stars lighten o'er her clouded brow;
They paint thee terrible who do not dare
To watch thee steadfastly; thy features bear
The marble stillness of eternal rest!
All passions meet in slumber buried there;
All hopes, loves, hatreds, hidden or confessed,
Life's agitations stilled on thy petrific breast.

XIX

To the grief-stricken, thou, the great unmoved,
Medicinal comforter art; 'tis thou alone
Joinest the lover with the dust he loved;
To him who owns immortal longings, none
Reveal save thou what he would look upon;
The secrets of the dead, life-infinite,
Spirits or gods that radiate from the One;
The realm of shadows, the waste void of night,
Where the soul rests, or wings its everlasting flight.

XX

The sense of thy great coming, mighty Death!
Chills sage and hero; strength bows down the knee;
Beauty before thee casts her withered wreath;
Pride kneels in abject humbleness to thee,
And wisdom owns her name humility!
Thou hold'st the mirror to the beautiful,
And show'st its fleetingness; the pageantry
Of wealth thou mock'st; thy foot is on the stool
Of thrones, all just! that dost the slave as monarch rule.