Classic Poem

PART III

Come, lovers, come, forget your pains!
I know upon this earth a spot
Where clinking coins, that clank as chains,
Upon the souls of men, are not;
Nor man is measured for his gains
Of gold that stream with crimson stains.

There snow-topp'd towers crush the clouds
And break the still abode of stars,
Like sudden ghosts in snowy shrouds,
New broken through their earthly bars,
And condors whet their crooked beaks
On lofty limits of the peaks.

O men that fret as frets the main!
You irk me with your eager gaze
Down in the earth for fat increase —
Eternal talks of gold and gain,
Your shallow wit, your shallow ways,
And breaks my soul across the shoat
As breakers break on shallow seas.

They bared their brows to the palms above,
But some look'd level into comrades' eyes,
And they then remember'd that the thought of love
Was the thing forbidden, and they sank in sighs.

They turned from the training, to heed in throng
To the old, old tale; and they trained no more,
As he sang of love; and some on the shore,
And full in the sound of the eloquent song,

With womanly air and an irresolute will
Went listlessly onward as gathering shells;
Then gazed in the waters, as bound by spells;
Then turned to the song and so sigh'd, and were still.

And they said no word. Some tapp'd on the sand
With the sandal'd foot, keeping time to the sound,
In a sort of dream; some timed with the hand,
And one held eyes full of tears to the ground.

She thought of the days when their wars they were not,
As she lean'd and listened to the old, old song,
When they sang of their loves, and she well forgot
Man's hard oppressions and a world of wrong.

Like a pure true woman, with her trust in tears
And the things that are true, she relieved them in thought,
Though hush'd and crush'd in the fall of the years;
She lived but the fair, and the false she forgot.

As a tale long told, or as things that are dreams
The quivering curve of the lip it confest
The silent regrets, and the soul that teems
With a world of love in a brave true breast.

Then this one, younger, who had known no love,
Nor look'd upon man but in blood on the field,
She bow'd her head, and she leaned on her shield.
And her heart beat quick as the wings of a dove
That is blown from the sea, where the rests are not
In the time of storms; and by instinct taught
Grew pensive, and sigh'd; as she thought and she thought
Of some wonderful things, and — she knew not of what.

Then this one thought of a love forsaken,
She thought of a brown sweet babe, and she thought
Of the bread-fruits gather'd, of the swift fish taken
In intricate nets, like a love well sought.

She thought of the moons of her maiden dawn,
Mellow'd and fair with the forms of man;
So dearer indeed to dwell upon
Than the beautiful waves that around her ran:
So fairer indeed than the fringes of light
That lie at rest on the west of the sea
In furrows of foam on the borders of night,
And dearer indeed than the songs to be —

Than calling of dreams from the opposite land,
To the land of life, and of journeys dreary,
When the soul goes over from the form grown weary,
And walks in the cool of the trees on the sand.

But the Queen was enraged and would smite him at first
With the sword unto death, yet it seemed that she durst
Not touch him at all; and she moved as to chide,
And she lifted her face, and she frown'd at his side,
Then she touch'd on his arm; then she looked in his eyes
And right full in his soul, but she saw no fear,
In the pale fair face, and with frown severe
She press'd her lips as suppressing her sighs.

She banish'd her wrath, she unbended her face,
She lifted her hand and put back his hair
From his fair sad brow, with a penitent air,
And forgave him all with unuttered grace.

But she said no word, yet no more was severe;
She stood as subdued by the side of him still,
Then averted her face with a resolute will,
As to hush a regret, or to hide back a tear.

She sighed to herself: " A stranger is this,
And ill and alone, that knows not at all
That a throne shall totter and the strong shall fall,
At the mention of love and its banefullest bliss.

" O life that is lost in bewildering love —
But a stranger is sacred! " She lifted a hand
And she laid it as soft as the breast of a dove
On the minstrel's mouth. It was more than the wand.

Of the tamer of serpents, for she did no more
Than to bid with her eyes and to beck with her hand,
And the song drew away to the waves of the shore;
Took wings, as it were, to the verge of the land.

But her heart was oppress'd. With penitent head
She turned to her troop, and retiring, she said:
" Alas! and alas! shall it come to pass
That the panther shall die from a blade of grass?

" That the tiger shall yield at the benthorn's blast?
That we, who have conquer'd a world and all
Of men and of beasts in the world must fall
Ourselves at the mention of love at last? "

The tall Queen turn'd with her troop;
She led minstrel and all to the innermost part
Of the palm-crowned Isle, where great trees group
In armies, to battle when black-storms start,
And made a retreat from the sun by the trees
That are topp'd like tents, where the fire-flies
Are a light to the feet, and a fair lake lies,
As cool as the coral-set center of seas.

The palm-trees lorded the scope like kings,
Their tall tops tossing the indolent clouds
That folded the Isle in the dawn, like shrouds,
Then fled from the sun like to living things.

The cockatoo swung in the vines below,
And muttering hung on a golden thread,
Or moved on the moss'd bough to and fro,
In plumes of gold and array'd in red.
The lake lay hidden away from the light,
As asleep in the Isle from the tropical noon,
And narrow and bent like a newborn moon,
And fair as a moon in the noon of the night.

'Twas shadow'd by forests, and fringed by ferns,
And fretted anon by red fishes that leapt
At indolent flies that slept or kept
Their drowsy tones on the tide by turns.

And here in the dawn when the Day was strong
And newly aroused from leafy repose,
With dews on his feet and tints of the rose
In his great flush'd face was a sense of song
That the tame old world has not known or heard.

The soul was filled with the soft perfumes,
The eloquent wings of the humming bird
Beguiled the heart, they purpled the air
And allured the eye, as so everywhere
On the rim of the wave or across it in swings,
They swept or they sank in a sea of blooms,
And wove and wound in a song of wings.

A bird in scarlet and gold, made mad
With sweet delights, through the branches slid
And kiss'd the lake on a drowsy lid
Till the ripples ran and the face was glad;

Was glad and lovely as lights that sweep
The face of heaven when the stars are forth
In autumn time through the sapphire north,
Or the face of a child when it smiles in sleep.

And here came the Queen, in the tropical noon,
When the wars and the world and all were asleep,
And nothing look'd forth to betray or to peep
Through the glories of jungle in garments of June,
To bathe with her court in the waters that bent
In the beautiful lake through tasseling trees,
And the tangle of blooms in a burden of bees,
As bold and as sharp as a bow unspent.

And strangely still, and more strangely sweet,
Was the lake that lay in its cradle of fern,
As still as a moon with her horns that turn
In the night, like lamps to white delicate feet.

They came and they stood by the brink of the tide,
They hung their shields on the boughs of the trees,
They lean'd their lances against the side,
Unloosed their sandals, and busy as bees
Ungather'd their robes in the rustle of leaves
That wound them as close as the wine-vine weaves.

The minstrel then falter'd, and further aside
Than ever before he averted his head;
He pick'd up a pebble and fretted the tide
Afar, with a countenance flushed and red.

He feign'd him ill, he wander'd away,
He sat him down by the waters alone,
And pray'd for pardon, as a knight should pray,
And rued an error not all his own.

The Amazons press'd to the girdle of reeds,
Two and by two they advanced to the tide,
They challenged each other, they laughed in their pride,
And banter'd, and vaunted of valorous deeds.

They push'd and they parted the curtains of green,
All timid at first; then looked in the wave
And laugh'd; retreated, then came up brave
To the brink of the water, led on by their Queen.

Again they retreated, again advanced,
Then parted the boughs in a proud disdain,
Then bent their heads to the waters, and glanced
Below, then blush'd, and then laughed again.

A bird awaken'd; then all dismayed
With a womanly sense of a beautiful shame
That strife and changes had left the same
They shrank to the leaves and the somber shade.

At last, press'd forward a beautiful pair
And leapt to the wave, and laughing they blushed
As rich as their wines; when the waters rush'd
To the dimpled limbs, and laugh'd in their hair.

The fair troop follow'd with shouts and cheers,
They cleft the wave, and the friendly ferns
Came down in curtains and curves by turns,
And a brave palm lifted a thousand spears.

From under the ferns and away from the land,
And out in the wave until lost below,
There lay, as white as a bank of snow,
A long and beautiful border of sand.

Here clothed alone in their clouds of hair
And curtain'd about by the palm and fern,
And made as their maker had made them, fair,
And splendid of natural curve and turn;
Untrammel'd by art and untroubled by man
They tested their strength, or tried their speed:
And here they wrestled, and there they ran,
As supple and lithe as the watery reed.

The great trees shadow'd the bowtipp'd tide,
And nodded their plumes from the opposite side,
As if to whisper, Take care! take care!
But the meddlesome sunshine here and there
Kept pointing a finger right under the trees, —
Kept shifting the branches and wagging a hand
At the round brown limbs on the border of sand,
And seem'd to whisper: Fie! what are these?

The gold-barr'd butterflies to and fro
And over the waterside wander'd and wove
As heedless and idle as clouds that rove
And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.

A monkey swung out from a bough in the skies,
White-whisker'd and ancient, and wisest of all
Of his populous race, when he heard them call
And he watch'd them long, with his head sidewise.

He wondered much and he watch'd them all
From under his brows of amber and brown,
All patient and silent, and never once stirr'd
Till he saw two wrestle, and wrestling fall;
Then he arched his brows and he hasten'd him down
To his army below and said never a word.