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For an Intaglio
A BOY of eighteen years mid myrtle-boughs | |
| Lying love-languid on a morn of May, | |
| Watch’d half-asleep his goats insatiate browse | |
| Thin shoots of thyme and lentisk, by the spray | |
| Of biting sea-winds bitter made and grey: | 5 |
| Therewith when shadows fell, his waking thought | |
| Of love into a wondrous dream was wrought. | |
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| A woman lay beside him,—so it seem’d; | |
| For on her marble shoulders, like a mist | |
| Irradiate with tawny moonrise, gleam’d | 10 |
| Thick silken tresses; her white woman’s wrist, | |
| Glittering with snaky gold and amethyst, | |
| Upheld a dainty chin; and there beneath, | |
| Her twin breasts shone like pinks that lilies wreathe. | |
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| What colour were her eyes I cannot tell; | 15 |
| For as he gazed thereon, at times they darted | |
| Dun rays like water in a dusky well; | |
| Then turn’d to topaz: then like rubies smarted | |
| With smouldering flames of passion tiger-hearted; | |
| Then ’neath blue-veinèd lids swam soft and tender | 20 |
| With pleadings and shy timorous surrender. | |
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| Thus far a woman: but the breath that lifted | |
| Her panting breast with long melodious sighs, | |
| Stirr’d o’er her neck and hair broad wings that sifted | |
| The perfumes of meridian Paradise; | 25 |
| Dusk were they, furr’d like velvet, gemm’d with eyes | |
| Of such dull lustre as in isles afar | |
| Night-flying moths spread to the summer star. | |
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| Music these pinions made—a sound and surge | |
| Of pines innumerous near lisping waves— | 30 |
| Rustling of reeds and rushes on the verge | |
| Of level lakes and naiad-haunted caves— | |
| Drown’d whispers of a wandering stream that laves | |
| Deep alder-boughs and tracts of ferny grass | |
| Border’d with azure-bell’d campanulas. | 35 |
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| Potent they were: for never since her birth | |
| With feet of woman this fair siren press’d | |
| Sleek meadow swards or stony ways of earth; | |
| But ’neath the silken marvel of her breast, | |
| Display’d in sinuous length of coil and crest, | 40 |
| Glitter’d a serpent’s tail, fold over fold, | |
| In massy labyrinths of languor roll’d. | |
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| Ah, me! what fascination! what faint stars | |
| Of emerald and opal, with the shine | |
| Of rubies intermingled, and dim bars | 45 |
| Of twisting turquoise and pale coralline! | |
| What rings and rounds! what thin streaks sapphirine | |
| Freckled that gleaming glory, like the bed | |
| Of Eden streams with gems enamellèd! | |
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| There lurk’d no loathing, no soul-freezing fear, | 50 |
| But luxury and love these coils between: | |
| Faint grew the boy; the siren fill’d his ear | |
| With singing sweet as when the village-green | |
| Re-echoes to the tinkling tambourine, | |
| And feet of girls aglow with laughter glance | 55 |
| In myriad mazy errors of the dance. | |
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| How long he dallied with delusive joy | |
| I know not; but thereafter never more | |
| The peace of passionless slumber soothed the boy; | |
| For he was stricken to the very core | 60 |
| With sickness of desire exceeding sore, | |
| And through the radiance of his eyes there shone | |
| Consuming fire too fierce to gaze upon. | |
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| He, ere he died—and they whom lips divine | |
| Have touch’d, fade flower-like and cease to be— | 65 |
| Bade Charicles on agate carve a sign | |
| Of his strange slumber: therefore can we see | |
| Here in the ruddy gem’s transparency | |
| The boy, the myrtle boughs, the triple spell | |
| Of moth and snake and white witch terrible. | 70 |
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