Classic Poem

1

As one who dreams, in a light sleep, may hear
Sounds through his dream, — bells, or passing steps
On the floor above him, or in the street below, —
Rhythmic, precise and clear:
Or voices muttering in an adjacent room,
Lifting a moment, to die again; —
Yet all the while he will pursue his dream,
Guessing a sinister purport in well-known sounds,
And still in his own deep silent world remain:
So now I guess the world from which I came,
In flares of light, ghosts of remembered sound,
Which haunt me here ... A voice, a street, a bell ...
Whence do I come, and why? And what's my name?

And you, who cut an orange upon a plate,
With a small silver knife, and lean, and smile, —
You whose mouth is a sly carnivorous flower,
Whose flesh is softer and cooler than rainy wind, —
I gaze upon you, and muse strange aberrations,
I hear unearthly music, ghostly flutes:
I dance in a black eclipse, and through my veins
Is a cold froth of sea; and you are forgotten ...

And you, who when your act is over peer
Witchlike between the curtains, above the footlights,
Holding the curtains with jewelled hands, to smile
A slow and mordant smile from cavernous eyes —
What hideous things amuse you secretly?
What have you drunk to make your lips so red?
And when the moon creeps up, and stars dance coldly,
And crickets cry in the dew, and dead leaves fall,
Do you spread bat-wings from a starlit wall? ...
Music dissolves and dies, — and sings again,
Changing its mood; the lights wink out in darkness,
A shrill wind crosses us, we are blown and stagger.
Our footsteps ring intense. The lights return.
And we have silently changed ... To what, to whom?

2

Midnight it was, or just before;
And as I dipt for the hundredth time
The small white quill to add a rhyme
To the cold page, in candlelight,
Whereon my treatise slowly grew, —
Someone harshly knocked at the door;
And marvelling I became aware
That with that knock the entire night
Went mad; a sudden tempest blew;
And shrieking goblins rode the air.

Alarmed, not knowing why, I rose
And dropt my quill across the page.
What demon now, what archimage,
So roiled the dark? And my blood froze
When through the keyhole, with the wind,
A freezing whisper, strangely thinned,
Called my name out, called it twice ...
My heart lay still, lay black as ice.
The candle trembled in my hands;
Between my fingers the dim light went;
Shadows hurried and shrank and blent,
Huddled, grotesque, in sarabands,
Amazed my eyes, till dumb I stood,
And seemed to see upon that air
Goblins with serpents in their hair,
Mouths contorted for soundless cries,
And hands like claws, and wounded throats,
And winking embers instead of eyes.
The blood went backward to my heart.
Thrice in the night a horn was blown.
And then it seemed that I had known,
For ages, even before my birth,
When I was out with wind and fire,
And had not bargained yet with earth,
That this same night the horn would blow
To call me forth. And I would go.
And so, as haunted dead might do,
I drew the bolt and dropped the chain,
And stood in dream, and only knew
The door had opened and closed again:
Until between my eyelids came
A woman's face, a sheath of flame,
The wink of opals in dusky hair,
A golden throat, a smile like fire,
And eyes that seemed to burn the air
So luminous were they with desire.
She laid one hand upon my arm
And straight a blaze was in my veins,
It pierced me so I feared a charm,
And shrank; whereat, pale, hurriedly,
She whispered " Quickly! Come with me!
All shall be clear! But now make haste —
Four hours till dawn, no time to waste! " —
The amazing whiteness of her skin
Had snared my eyes, and now her voice
Seethed in my ears, and a ghost of sin
Died, and above it I heard rejoice
Loud violins, in chords ascending,
And laughter of virgins; I blew the light,
And followed her, heedless of the ending,
Into the carnival of that night.

(Make haste, beloved! the night passes,
The day breaks, the cock crows,
Mist slinks away in the sunlight,
And the thin blood drips from the rose.)

Black stallions rushed us through the air,
Their hooves upon the wind struck fire;
Rivers, and hills, and a moonlit spire
Glided beneath us, and then a flare
Of gusty torches beckoned us down
To a palace-gate in a darkened town.
She took my hand and led me in
Through walls of basalt and walls of jade,
And I wondered, to hear a violin
Sweetly within that marble played.
I heard it sing, a wandering tone,
Imprisoned forever in that deep stone.

And then upon a couch we lay,
And heard invisible spirits play
A ghostly music; the candles muttered,
Rose-leaves trembled upon the floor,
Lay still, or rose on the air and fluttered;
And while the moon went dwindling down
Poisoning with black web the skies,
She narrowed her eyelids, and fixed her eyes,
Fiercely upon me; and searched me so
With speeding fire in every shred
That I, consumed with a witching glow,
Knew scarcely if I were alive or dead:
But lay upon her breast, and kissed
The deep red mouth, and drank the breath,
And heard it gasping, how it hissed
To mimic the ecstasy of death.
Above us in a censer burning
Was dust of lotos-flowers, and there
Ghosts of smoke were ever turning,
And gliding along the sleepy air,
And reaching hands, and showing faces,
Or coiling slowly like blue snakes,
To charm us moveless in our places ...
But then she softly raised her head
And smiled through brooding eyes, and said
" O lover, I have seen you twice.
You changed my veins to veins of ice.
The first time, it was Easter Eve, —
By the church door you stood alone;
You listened to the priests intone
In pallid voices, mournfully;
The second time you passed by me
In the dusk, but did not see ... "
Her whisper hissed through every vein
And flowered coldly in my brain ...
I slept, how long I do not know;
But in my sleep saw huge lights flare,
And felt a rushing of wild air,
And heard great walls rock to and fro ...
Make haste, beloved! The cock crows,
And the cold blood drips from the rose ...

... And then I woke in my own room,
And saw the first pale creep of sun
Drip through the dewed shutters, and run
Across the floor, and in that gloom
Marvelled to find that I had slept
In robe and sandals, and had kept
One bruised white rose-leaf in my hand —
From whom? — and could not understand.

For seven days my quill I dipt
To wreathe my filigrees of script:
For seven nights, when midnight came,
I swooned, I swept away on flame,
Flew on the stallions of the air,
Heard goblins laugh, saw torches flare,
And all night long, while music mourned,
Hidden under the vibrant floor,
I heard the insidious voice implore,
As one who speaks from under the earth,
Imploring music, imploring mirth,
Before the allotted time was done
And cock crew up the sullen sun.
Day by day my face grew pale,
Hollowed and purple were my eyes,
I blinked beneath too brilliant skies:
And sometimes my weak hand would fail,
Blotting the page whereon I wrought ...
This woman is a witch! I thought ...
And I resolved that night to find
If this were real, or in my mind.

Voil and flute and violin
Remote through labyrinths complained.
Her hand was foam upon my skin.

And then I closed my eyes and feigned
A sudden sleep; whereat her eyes
Peered, and darkened, and opened wide,
Her white brow flushed, and by my side
Laughing, with little ecstatic cries,
She kissed my mouth, she stroked my hair
And fed upon me with fevered stare.
" One little drop! " she murmured then —
" One little bubble from this red vein,
And safe I await the sun again — "

I heard my heart hiss loud and slow;
A gust of wind through the curtains came;
It flapped the upright candle-flame.
Her famishing eyes began to glow,
She bared my arm; with a golden pin,
Leaned, and tenderly pricked the skin.
And as the small red bubble rose,
Her eyes grew bright with an evil light,
She fawned upon me; and my heart froze
Seeing her teeth so sharp and white.

Vampire! I cried. The flame puffed out.
Two blazing eyes withdrew from me.
The music tore discordantly.
The darkness swarmed with a goblin rout.
Great horns shattered, and walls were falling,
Green eyes glowed, voices were calling;
Stars above me paled in the sky,
Far off I heard one mournful cry —
Or under the earth — and then I found
I lay alone on leafy ground.
And when stars died, and the cock crowed,
The first pale gleam of sunlight showed
That it was on a grave I lay,
A new-made grave of sodden clay.

That night I took a priest with me;
And sharp at midnight, secretly,
By lantern-light, with spade and pick,
Striking on stones with metal click,
We laid a golden coffin bare,
And sprinkled the holy water there.
And straight we heard a sorrowful cry;
Something upon the air went by;
Far off, slowly, pealed a bell.
A voice sobbed, and silence fell.
And I grew sad, to think that I
Should make that marvelous spirit die.
Make haste, beloved! The night passes,
The day creeps, the cock crows,
Mist slinks away in the pale sun,
And the opened grave must close.

3

Vampires, they say, blow an unearthly beauty,
Their bodies are all suffused with a soft witch-fire,
Their flesh like opal ... their hair like the float of night.
Why do we muse upon them, what secret's in them?
Is it because, at last, we love the darkness,
Love all things in it, tired of too much light?

Here on the lamplit pavement, in the city,
Where the high stars are lost in the city's glow,
The eyes of harlots go always to and fro —
They rise from a dark world we know nothing of,
Their faces are white, with a strange love —
And are they vampires, or do I only dream? ...
Lamps on the long bare asphalt coldly gleam.

And hearing the ragtime from a cabaret,
And catching a glimpse, through turning doors,
Of a spangled dancer swaying with drunken eyes,
Applauded and stared at by pimps and whores —
What decadent dreams before us rise? ...

The pulse of the music thickens, it grows macabre,
The horns are a stertorous breath,
Someone is dying, someone is raging at death ...
Around a coffin they dance, they pelt dead roses,
They stand the coffin on end, a loud spring clangs,
And suddenly like a door the coffin uncloses:

And a skeleton leers upon us in evening dress, —
There in the coffin he stands,
With his hat in his white-gloved hands,
And bows, and smiles, and puffs at a cigarette.
Harlots blow kisses to him, and fall, forgotten,
The great clock stikes; soft petals drift to the floor;
One by one the dancers float through the door,
Hair is dust, flesh is rotten,
The coffin goes down into darkness, and we forget ...

Who told us this? Was it a music we heard,
A picture we saw, a dream we dreamed? ...
I am pale, I am strangely tired.
A warm dream lay upon me, its red eyes gleamed,
It sucked my breath ... It sighed ... It afflicted me ...
But was that dream desired, or undesired?
We must seek other tunes, another fragrance:
This slows the blood in our hearts, and cloys our veins.
Open the windows. Show us the stars. We drowse.