THE TALE OF ARCHAIS
O gardened rosc !
The fern-fronds gird thy fragrant beauty
round,
Thy ways are bound
With petals that unclose
When the sun seeks his way
Through night and sleep and love to all the
dreams of day.
Love, sleep, and death !
The three that melt together, mingle so
Man may not know
The little change of breath
(Caught sigh that love desires,)
When love grows sleep, and sleep at last in
death expires.
© lamp of love!
The hissing spray shall jet thee with desire
And foaming fire,
And fire from thee shall move
Her spirit to devour,
And fuse and mingle us in one transcendent
hour.
Godhead is less
Than mortal love, the garland of the spheres,
Than those sweet tears
That yield no bitterness
To the luxurious cries
That love shrills out in death, that murmur
when love dies.
Love dies in vain.
For breezes hasten from the summer south
To touch his mouth
And bid him rise again,
Tul, ere the dawn-star’s breath,
Love kisses into sleep, Sleep swoons away
to Death.
So Zeus in her sweet arms slept daintily
Till the sun crept into the midmost sky,
And his own curse came back to sleep with
him.
Through the noon’s haze the world was vast
and dim,
The streams and trees and air were
shimmering
With summer heat and earth’s cool vapouring,
When, round his limbs entwined, a fiery
snake
Hissed in his frightened ear the call ‘‘ Awake.”
And Zeus arisen strives vainly to release
His valiant body from the coils, nor cease
lis angry struggles in their cruel hoid.
But all implacable, unyielding, cold,
Their sinuous pressure on his breast and
thighs,
The white teeth sharp and ready otherwise
In one fierce snap to slay. There hissed
‘‘ Beware !
Fear Charicles avenging, and despair !”’
And Zeus beheld the springe his foot was in,
And, once more wise, being out of love,
would win
His freedom on good terms. — His liberty
lor Charicles’ he bartered. Willingly
The boy accepts, yet in his eye remains
A tender woman-feeling, and his pains,
And even Archais’ woes he did forget
In the sweet Lethe, that his lips had set
To their ripe brim, that he had drained.
But now,
Freedom regained, more manly grows the
brow ;
He is again the free, the bold, the lover!
Far o’er the green his new-starred eyes dis-
cover
A kirtle glancing in the breeze, a foot
That lightly dances, though the skies be
mute
Of music. Forth she flies, the distant dove,
And calls the woodland birds to sing of love ;
Forth leaps the stag and calls his mates; the
stream
Flashes a silver sunbeam, a gold gleam
Of leaping laughter, that the fish may know
The goodly tidings; all the woodlands
glow
With olive and pure silver and red gold,
And all sweet nature’s marvels manifold
Combine together in the twilight dim
To harmonise in the thalamic hymn.