Hymen Part 3

not marble set with purple hung with roses and tall sweet lilies--such as the nightingale would summon for us with her wail-- (surely only unhappiness could thrill such a rich madrigal!) not she, the nightingale can fill our souls with such a wistful joy as this:

nor, bird, so sweet was ever a swallow note-- not hers, so perfect with the wing of lazuli and bright breast-- nor yet the oriole filling with melody from her fiery throat some island-orchard in a purple sea.

Ah dear, ah gentle bird, you spread warm length of crimson wool and tinted woven stuff for us to rest upon, nor numb with ecstasy nor drown with death:

only you soothe, make still the throbbing of our brain: so through her forest trees, when all her hope was gone and all her pain, Calypso heard your call-- across the gathering drift of burning cedar-wood, across the low-set bed of wandering parsley and violet, when all her hope was dead.

THE ISLANDS

I

What are the islands to me, what is Greece, what is Rhodes, Samos, Chios, what is Paros facing west, what is Crete?

What is Samothrace, rising like a s.h.i.+p, what is Imbros rending the storm-waves with its breast?

What is Naxos, Paros, Milos, what the circle about Lycia, what, the Cyclades'

white necklace?

What is Greece-- Sparta, rising like a rock, Thebes, Athens, what is Corinth?

What is Euboia with its island violets, what is Euboia, spread with gra.s.s, set with swift shoals, what is Crete?

What are the islands to me, what is Greece?

II

What can love of land give to me that you have not-- what do the tall Spartans know, and gentler Attic folk?

What has Sparta and her women more than this?

What are the islands to me if you are lost-- what is Naxos, Tinos, Andros, and Delos, the clasp of the white necklace?

III

What can love of land give to me that you have not, what can love of strife break in me that you have not?

Though Sparta enter Athens, Thebes wrack Sparta, each changes as water, salt, rising to wreak terror and fall back.

IV

"What has love of land given to you that I have not?"

I have questioned Tyrians where they sat on the black s.h.i.+ps, weighted with rich stuffs, I have asked the Greeks from the white s.h.i.+ps, and Greeks from s.h.i.+ps whose hulks lay on the wet sand, scarlet with great beaks.

I have asked bright Tyrians and tall Greeks-- "what has love of land given you?"

And they answered--"peace."

V

But beauty is set apart, beauty is cast by the sea, a barren rock, beauty is set about with wrecks of s.h.i.+ps, upon our coast, death keeps the shallows--death waits clutching toward us from the deeps.

Beauty is set apart; the winds that slash its beach, swirl the coa.r.s.e sand upward toward the rocks.

Beauty is set apart from the islands and from Greece.

VI

In my garden the winds have beaten the ripe lilies; in my garden, the salt has wilted the first flakes of young narcissus, and the lesser hyacinth, and the salt has crept under the leaves of the white hyacinth.

In my garden even the wind-flowers lie flat, broken by the wind at last.

VII

What are the islands to me if you are lost, what is Paros to me if your eyes draw back, what is Milos if you take fright of beauty, terrible, torturous, isolated, a barren rock?

What is Rhodes, Crete, what is Paros facing west, what, white Imbros?

What are the islands to me if you hesitate, what is Greece if you draw back from the terror and cold splendour of song and its bleak sacrifice?

AT BAIA

I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream) I send you this, who left the blue veins of your throat unkissed.

Why was it that your hands (that never took mine) your hands that I could see drift over the orchid heads so carefully, your hands, so fragile, sure to lift so gently, the fragile flower stuff-- ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream) the very form, the very scent, not heavy, not sensuous, but perilous--perilous-- of orchids, piled in a great sheath, and folded underneath on a bright scroll some word:

Flower sent to flower; for white hands, the lesser white, less lovely of flower leaf,

or

Lover to lover, no kiss, no touch, but forever and ever this.