Classic Poem

I THINK on thee amid these spring-time flowers,
On thee, my emperor, my sovran lord,
Dwelling alone in dim Tartarean towers
Of thy dark realm, by earth and heaven abhorred,
Wandering afar by that Avernian river
Where dead kings walk and phantoms wail forever.

I think on thee in that stern palace regnant,
Where no sweet voice of summer charms the air,
Where the vast solitude seems ever pregnant
With some wild dream of unforetold despair.
Thy love, remembered, doth heaven's light eclipse;
I feel thy lingering kisses on my lips.

I languish for the late autumnal showers,
The cool, cool plashing of the autumn rain,
The shimmering hoar-frost and fast-fading flowers,
That give me back to thy dark realm again:
To thee I'll bring Sicilia's starry skies
And all the heaven of summer in my eyes.

When from earth's noontide beauty borne away
To the pale prairies of that under world,
A mournful flower upon thy breast I lay
Till round thy heart its clinging tendrils curled —
A frighted dove, that tamed its fluttering pinion
To the dear magic of thy love's dominion.

For thou wert grandly beautiful as night,
Stern Orcus, in thy realm of buried kings;
And thy sad crown of cypress in my sight
Fairer than all the bright and flowery rings
Of wreathed poppies and of golden corn
By Ceres on her stately temples worn.

I sat beside thee on Hell's dusky throne,
Nor feared the awful shadow of thy fate;
Content to share the burden of thy crown.
And all the mournful splendors of thy state;
Bending my flower-like beauty to thy will,
Seeking with light thy lonely dark to fill.

Wondering, I think how thy dear love hath bound me
In a new life that half forgets the old;
All day I haunt the meadows where you found me,
Knee-deep in daffodils of dusky gold,
Or sit by Cyane's sad fountain, dreaming
Of the red lake by thy proud palace gleaming.

When, in her car by winged dragons borne,
Pale Ceres sought me through the shuddering night,
With angry torches and fierce eyes, forlorn,
Slaying the dark that screened me from her sight,
Like a reft lioness that rends the air
Of midnight with her perilous despair,

Jove, pitying the great passion of her woe,
Gave back thy queen-bride to the mother's grief —
To Ceres gave — through summer's golden glow
And all the crescent months, from spear to sheaf:

Alas, how sadly in Sicilian bowers
I pass this lonely, lingering time of flowers!

In the long silence of the languid noons,
When all the panting birds are faint with heat,
I wander listless by the blue lagoons
To hear their light waves rippling at my feet
Through the dead calm, and count the lingering time
By the slow pulsing of their silver chime.

I languish for the late autumnal showers,
The cool, cool plashing of the autumn rain,
The shimmering hoar-frost and fast-fading flowers,
That give me back to thy dark realm again:
I have no native land from thee apart,
And my high heaven of heavens is in thy heart.