Classic Poem

Her hair it floated fair and free
In the blushful evening sky;
The purple sea
Sobbed wearily,
To the curlew's mournful cry;
Her white feet mock'd
The barren rock,
With their warmth and beauty and life;
Her white hands prest
All close her breast,
To stifle its bursting strife.
The musical sea
Sobbed musically,
The warm wind whispered her, — " Flee:
Counsel I thee
That thou warily flee
The fair-seeming snare of the sea. "
But deeper she drank,
As the gold sun sank,
The mist of the sea's purple breath;
While the sun's last embrace
Lit flame in her face,
And her eyes searched the shadows of Death.

But the shadows are driven,
Like night-clouds riven,
From her eyes by a heaven of song,
That trembles and floats,
In silver-lipped notes,
From a light skiff drifting along:
All the singers save one
Full-faced to the sun,
But the one to the rim of the moon;
And it seemed the tune
Was the voice of the moon,
Or the moon the embodied tune.

O'er the tingling pink
Of her eager ear's brink
The golden melody swells,
As a ripple's song slips
In the dawn-kissed lips
Of listening, mimicking shells;
And chases away —
So enchanting the lay —
Her purpose and pain, forsooth,
Till she sees the face,
In the thin moon's embrace,
Of the Mitylenian youth;
And the shadows return,
And her drooped lids burn,
And she calls to him under her breath;
Then leaps to meet,
At the cliff's chilled feet,
The hungry embraces of Death.

And the slumbrous sea
Wakes tremulously,
And thrills to his furthest streams;
And a sudden glow
Through the depths below
Gives the Nereids blissful dreams;
And the deepest sea-graves
In Leucadian caves
Are lighted with golden gleams,
As though the sunk sun
Had thitherward run
To pry with his fronting beams.
And the musical sea
Sings more musically
Than he ever has sung before,
And the whole night long
His syrenal song
Beguiles the soul of the shore.
And at peep of morrow
In red-eyed sorrow
The Lesbian maids come by;
And search the sand
Of the rippled strand,
And the shallows remote and nigh;
But they see the maiden
All tenderly laid in
A coral bed deep from harms;
And for all their endeavor
The sea will not give her
From his encircling arms.

Nor ever could they
Have won her away,
For all their Ionian cunning,
Had not the sea-maids,
In their emerald braids,
Who were wont to sit a-sunning
In the sea-monarch's smile,
In their envy and guile
Upborn her again to the shore,
Which shall gleam with the blaze of her funeral-pile,
But throb with her song no more.

Chorus of Lesbian youth, singing around the funeral-pyre.

SEMI-CHORUS I .

Scatter roses from full hands;
Wreathe bright garlands; bring white heifers.
Call sweet savors from far lands,
Borne on wings of morning zephyrs.

SEMI-CHORUS II .

Burn, with olives outpressed fatness,
Riches of the swarthy bees,
Bring to slake the thirsty embers
Wine new-purged from the leas.

SEMI-CHORUS I .

Twine the voices; wreathe the song;
Weave a dirge of mythic numbers.

SEMI-CHORUS II .

Breathe it high and sweet and strong,
For ye will not pierce her slumbers.

CHORUS

Jove-bestowed, thy passioned singing
O'er the Grecian nations came;
Was in Grecian ears a heaven,
And in Grecian blood a flame.

Now thy songful lips are silent;
But thy deathless song shall dwell
In men's bosoms, and its echoes
Down far-distant ages swell.

And forever thy sweet singing
Rich to hearts of men shall come,
In its meaning and its music
A full goblet crowned with foam.

Now the sea lies gray and chilly
Under the wet streaks of dawn;
Now the dull red embers darken,
And their glow is almost gone:

Quench them; pour the last libation;
Slake them with red Lesbian wine;
In wrought brass enclose her ashes;
Once more are the Muses nine.