Collected Works (Vol. III)

216 ORPHEUS Ah! the bitter legacy left of lyre-light ! Thou wast Nature’s prophet, a wise magician; Magic fails, and love is a false physician :— Deep our disease is ! Now to us the crouching over the firelight, Eating out for hunger of love our vitals! (Eaten out the hollower for respitals Swift as the breeze is.) Ay ! the golden age is a broken vessel. All the golden waters exhale, evanish., Joy of life and laughter of love we banish : Damued is the will dead. Now with brass and iron we writhe and wrestle. Now with clay the torrent of fire is tainted. Life apes death: the lily is curled and painted ; Gold is regilded. Master, we lament thee, as awful anguish Seizes on the infinite maze of mortals. See we love that yearns to the golden portals Bound of the grey god. Love, thy children, laughter and sunlight, languish. Aphrodite, miracle of the flashed foam, Burns with beaten agony in the lashed foam; Down is the day-god. Ay! this first of Lesbian lamentations Still shall burn from zeon to idle zon ! (Chorus, epithalmy, ode, and pzean Dumb or dishevelled !) Still my songs shall murmur across the nations, Gain their meed of misery, praise, and yearning, Smite their stroke on centuries foully burning, Drunk or bedevilled. Song? No beauty shine in a sphere of music! Me? my voice be dull, be a void, be toneless ! Match me, sea! than me thou hast many a moan less, Many a million ! Sun, be broken! dew sick ! Ocean flat and poisonous, earth demented ! Living souls go shuddering through the tented Air, his pavilion ! Moon, be eclipsed; be Ay; the pectis clangs me a soulless discord :— Let me break my visible heart a-weeping ! Loving? Drinking? Misery. Singing, sleeping Touch not my sorrow. Orpheus,-turn the sorrow-chord to the bliss- chord ! All may rise the easier that the one set. So our eyes from saddening at the sunset Turn to to-morrow. CALLIOPE. Silence. I hear a voice That biddeth me rejoice. I know the whole wise plan Of Fate regarding Man. THE LESBIAN SHORE. It is the sun’s dark bride Nuith, the azure-eyed. No longer Sappho sings her spell ; His heart divorced, her heart insatiable. There is deep silence. Earth hath passed To a new kingdom. In a purpose vast Her horoscope is cast. NUITH. Enough. It is ended, the story Of magical zeons of song ; The sun is gone down in his glory To the Houses of Hate and of Wrong. Would ye see if he rise? In Hesperian skies Ye may look for his rising for long. The magical xeon beginneth Of song in the heart of desire, That smiteth and striveth and sinneth, But burns up the soul of the lyre :— There is pain in the note :— _ In the sorcerer’s throat Is a sword, and his brain is afire!