Jephthah and Other Mysteries

LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC. IT. THE FLIGHT. IFT up thine eyes! for night is shed around, As light profound, : And visible as snow on steepled hills, Where silence fills The shaded hollows: night, a royal queen Most dimly seen Through silken curtains that bedeck the bed. Lift up thine head ! For night is here, a dragon, to devour The slow sweet hour Filled with all smoke of incense, and the praise More loud than day’s That swings its barren censer in the sky, And asks to die > Because the sea will hear no hollow moan Beyond its own, Because the sea that kissed dead Sappho sings Of strange dark things— Shapes of bright breasts that purple as the sun Grows dark and dun, Of pallid lips more haggard for the kiss Of Salmacis, 77