( AFTER SEEING BERNHARDT )

I

Incorporate passion and dark tower of flame
Swayed by the torment of supreme despair!
What violence do those divine ones dare
To this lone-quivering, silent woman-shame,
Themselves secure, down gazing on her fame
From cruel, remote, serene Olympian air!
What purpose rules the gods? Sit they and stare
Like madmen, striking virtue down with blame?
Or are there splendid spirits of mankind
Wrought of a finer metal than will flow
To the rich mould of immortality
Without the blasting fire, the crucibles' glow,
The writhing of the alloys as they flee,
Leaving the true gold thrice on thrice refined?

II

Nay, not such thou, blind daughter of the Sun!
Thou art pure flame, fire's deepest furnace-bloom,
And wast create thine own soul to consume
Ere, cast from that ancestral burning one,
Thy woes on the chill earth were yet begun;
For the deliberate Fates had spoke thy doom —
Lo, ere the recess of that throbbing womb
Teemed with the brood of Minos, it was done!
Such is thy soul — a self-devouring star
Whose embers in the dull Medean drink
Are quenched, and whom no shades at Minos' bar
Shall crowd around; nor ever dread of night,
Nor wrath of gods, shall make thy spirit shrink:
Thou hast thy boon — thou art extinguished quite!