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…ppy, happy day. CHARICLES Of your revels Ill be king, ARCHAIS I the queen of your array. Both Foot it nimbly in the ring ! CHORUS Stay, stars, and dance with us. Our songs compel The very gods to tremble, Banish the ill ghosts of hell,
…, Till the bridal bed is duly Panoplied with blooms that sigh. CHARICLES Not a flower of them shall die, Every one shall blossom newly ; Stars shall lend them of their beauty, Rain and sunshine know their duty.
…old there came a sylph, whose dreamy eyes Lit all the lawn, clear-glancing, deep and cool ; Whose curls were billowy gold luxuriant With stars and scents of summer woods and skies.
…e ; weave, weave the eager measure, Fill the seas brim from pleasures foaming bowl ! Semi-Chorus of Women Weave, weave the dance ; the stars are not your goal. Freed slaves of Fortune, loves your only treasure.
70 THE TALE OF ARCHAIS Than earthly stars and flowers That beam lasciviously through nights empurpled hours ! O well of fire ! O fountain of delicious spurting flame Grown sad with shame, Whose imminent desire Drinks in the dew of earth, Gives its own limpid streams to quench mans deathly dearth. O gardened rose ! 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,…
… of summer Join to augment it. So the sound-world, filled of the fire of all things, Rolls majestic torrents of mighty music Through the stars where dwell the avenging spirits Bound in the whirlwind . . . So the cliffs their Song . . . For the mist re- gathers, Girds them bride-like, fit for the sun to kiss them ; Darkness falls like dewfall about the hillsides ; Night is upon me.
…ds, Tremble above the sea With song more noble, the divinest potion Of poets wonder and bards melody ! ARCHAIS Cold is the kiss of the stars to the sea, The kiss of the earth to the orient grey That heralds the day ; Warmer the kiss of a love that is free As the wind of the sea, Quick and resurgent and splendid.
…s sleep Earthquake arose, and rocked and raved and roared. He swore the third time. But that Heavens Lord Curbed their black wrath, the stars of Heavens vault Had rushed to whelm the sun with vehement assault. The heavens stood still, but oer the quaking earth, That groaned and shrank with the untimely birth Of fury and freedom, Charicles strode on With fervid foot, to Aphrodites throne In seagirt Paphos, to exact her aid— The sun stood still, creation grew afraid At his firm step and mien erect and undismayed. Strident the godlike hero ca…
… Then with one long intense unpitying kiss Pressed on her bosom, he arose and swore By heaven and earth and all the seas that roar And stars that sing, by rivers and fresh flood, By his own essence, by his body and blood, To lay his godhead down, till night drew nigh, To be a mortal till the vesper cry Of dying breezes. So the morning past And found them linked inexorably fast Each in the others arms. Their lips are wed To drink the breezes from the fountain-head Of lovers breath. Now Zeus half rises up, Sips once again from that moon-curvé…
…hid, knew nothing ; nor the soughing waves, Through all the desolation of those caves The sea-nymphs haunt, could say a word of him ; No stars, to whom she looked, had seen the grim Abodes of Charicles, for deadly shade Lowered oer their top, nor any light betrayed The horror of their core. Despairing then Of natures prophets, and of gods and men, She cast her arms wide open to the sky, Cried loud, and wept, and girt herself to die. It was a pinnacle of ivory Whereon she stood, the loftiest of three fangs
48 THE TALE OF ARCHAIS Might match for splendour, stretch, or airy speed, From cluster unto cluster at her need Of stars, wide waving, and from star to star Extended, in whose span the heavens are. So came she to the maiden, and unseen Gazed on her rapt. So sighed the amorous queen, For her indeed might Charicles despair ! Yet of her presence was the maiden ware, Although her mortal eyes might see her not ; So she knelt down upon that holy spot And greeted her with tears ; for now at last The fountains of her sorrow, vague and vast, Burst …
… moonlight, daughters of the breeze ; Hardly the pleasant waters seem to shake, And only nightingales, for slumbers sake, Lull the soft stars and seas, and matchless music make. And now the sun is risen above the deep,
THE TALE OF ARCHAIS 13 Makes to conceal the fading of the stars : Chance bowed herself across the sunny bars, And watched where through the silence of the lawn Came Charicles, the darling of the dawn, Slowly, and to his steps took little heed ; He came towards the pool, his god-wrought reed Shrilling dim visions of things glorious, And saw the maiden, that disported thus, And worshipped. Then in doubt he stood, grown white And wonderful, with passions perfect might Firing his veins and tingling in his brain, He stood and whitened, and waxed re…
…ed at, but slow treason creeping in, To spread corruption, and destroy the earth. But in the holy hour and happy birth That swam through stars propitious, meadows white, And fresh with newer flowers of the night In the pale fields supernal, when his sire Took from the nurse the child of his desire, A man, the prayers of many maidens sent So sweet a savour through the firmament That no false spirit might draw nigh. And still His angel ministers defend from ill The head they nurtured. Evil dreams and spells, Cast at the dimmest hour, the sword re…
…re dawns A new flower every day, a perfect flower, Each queenlier than her sister, though the shower Of early dew begemmed them all with stars,