C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Augusta Webster (1837–1894)
Circe
W
And fears and turmoils of the cross-grained world,
Dwell, like a lonely god, in a charmed isle
Where I am first and only, and like one
Who should love poisonous savors more than mead,
Long for a tempest on me, and grow sick
Of resting and divine free carelessness!
O me! I am a woman, not a god;
Yea, those who tend me even are more than I,—
My nymphs who have the souls of flowers and birds
Singing and blossoming immortally.
And loving, laughing, find a full content;
But I know naught of peace, and have not loved.
Not knowing whom he calls? does his soul cry
For mine to grow beside it, grow in it?
Does he beseech the gods to give him me,—
The yet unknown rare woman by whose side
No other woman, thrice as beautiful,
Should once seem fair to him; to whose voice heard
In any common tones no sweeter sound
Of love made melody on silver lutes,
Or singing like Apollo’s when the gods
Grow pale with happy listening, might be peered
For making music to him; whom once found
There will be no more seeking anything?
Out of the waiting shadows into life?
Art not yet come after so many years
That I have longed for thee? Come! I am here….
And marvelously minded, and with sight
Which flashes suddenly on hidden things,
As the gods see who do not need to look?
Why wear I in my eyes that stronger power
Than basilisks, whose gaze can only kill,
To draw men’s souls to me to live or die
As I would have them? Why am I given pride
Which yet longs to be broken, and this scorn
Cruel and vengeful for the lesser men
Who meet the smiles I waste for lack of him,
And grow too glad? Why am I who I am,
But for the sake of him whom fate will send
One day to be my master utterly,
That he should take me, the desire of all,
Whom only he in all the world could bow to him?
O sunlike glory of pale glittering hairs,
Bright as the filmy wires my weavers take
To make me golden gauzes; O deep eyes,
Darker and softer than the bluest dusk
Of August violets, darker and deep
Like crystal fathomless lakes in summer moons;
O sad sweet longing smile; O lips that tempt
My very self to kisses; O round cheeks,
Tenderly radiant with the even flush
Of pale smoothed coral; perfect lovely face
Answering my gaze from out this fleckless pool;
Wonder of glossy shoulders, chiseled limbs,—
Should I be so your lover as I am,
Drinking an exquisite joy to watch you thus
In all a hundred changes through the day,
But that I love you for him till he comes,
But that my beauty means his loving it?…
Crowding around me when I pass their way,
Glower on me, and although they love me still
(With their poor sorts of love such as they could),
Call wrath and vengeance to their humid eyes
To scare me into mercy, or creep near
With piteous fawnings, supplicating bleats.
Too cruel? Did I choose them what they are?
Or change them from themselves by poisonous charms?
But any draught—pure water, natural wine—
Out of my cup, revealed them to themselves
And to each other. Change? There was no change;
Only disguise gone from them unawares:
And had there been one right true man of them,
He would have drunk the draught as I had drunk,
And stood unchanged, and looked me in the eyes,
Abashing me before him. But these things—
Why, which of them has ever shown the kind
Of some one nobler beast? Pah! yapping wolves
And pitiless stealthy wild-cats, curs and apes
And gorging swine and stinking venomous snakes,—
All false and ravenous and sensual brutes
That shame the earth that bore them,—these they are.