Chapter XXI: Canto XIX

But like Beauty's clover-leaf,
In the very midst arose
Three fair women. I shall never
Their majestic forms forget!

Well I knew the first! Her head
Glittered with the crescent moon.
Haughty, like some ivory statue
Sat the goddess on her steed.

And her fluttering tunic fell
Loose about her hips and breasts,
And the torchlight and the moon
Laved with love her snowy limbs.

Marble seemed her very face
And like marble cold. How dread
Was the pallor and the chill
Of that stern and noble front!

But within her dusky eye
Smouldered a mysterious,
Cruel and enticing fire
Which devoured my poor soul.

What a change has come o'er Dian
Since in outraged chastity
She smote Actæon to a stag
As a quarry for his hounds!

Doth she now requite this crime
In this gallant company,
Riding like some ghostly mortal
Through the bleak, nocturnal air?

Late did passion wake in her
But for that the stronger burns,
And within her eyes its flames
Gleam like fiercest brands of hell.

For those vanished times she grieves
When the men were beautiful;
Now in quantity perchance,
She forgets their quality.

At her side a fair one rode--
Fair, but not by Grecian lines
Was she fair; for all her features
Shone with wondrous Celtic glow.

'Twas Abunda, fairy queen,
Whom to know I could not fail
By the sweetness of her smile
And the madness of her laugh!

Full and rosy was her face,
Like the faces limned by Greuze;
And from out her heart-shaped mouth
Flashed the splendour of her teeth!

All the winds made dalliance
With her robe of azure blue,
And such shoulders never I
In my wildest dreams beheld.

I was almost moved to leap
From the window for a kiss;
This had been sheer folly, true,
Ending in a broken neck!

Ah, and she, she would have laughed
If within that awful gulf
I had fallen at her feet;--
Laughter such as this I know!

And the third fair phantom, she
Who so moved my errant heart,--
Was this but some female fiend
Like the other figures twain?

Whether devil this or saint
Know I not. With women, ah,
None can ever know where saint
Ends nor where the fiend begins.

All the magic of the East
Lay within her glowing face,
And her dress brought memories
Of Scheherazadê's tales.

Lips as red as pomegranates
And a curved nose lily white,
Limbs as slender and as cool
As some green oasis-palm.

From her palfrey white she leaned,
Flanked by giant Moors who trod
Close beside the queenly dame
Holding up the golden reins.

Of most royal blood was she,
She the Queen of old Judea,
She great Herod's lovely wife,
She who craved the Baptist's head.

For this crimson crime was she
Banned and cursed. Now in this chase
Must she ride, a wandering spook,
Till the dawn of Judgment Day.

Still within her hands she bears
That deep charger with the head
Of the Prophet, still she kisses--
Kisses it with fiery lips.

For she loved the Prophet once,
Though the Bible naught reveals,
Yet her blood-stained love lives on
Storied in her people's hearts.

How might else a man declare
All the longing of this lady?
Would a woman crave the head
Of a man she did not love?

She perchance was slightly vexed
With her darling, and was moved
To behead him, but when she
On the trencher saw his head,

Then she wept and lost her wits,
Dying in love's madness straight.
(What! Love's madness? pleonasm!
Love itself is madness still!)

Rising nightly from her grave,
To this frenzied hunt she hies,
In her hands the gory head
Which with feline joy she flings

High into the air betimes,
Laughing like a wanton child,
Cleverly she catches it
Like some idle rubber ball.

As she swept past me she bowed
Most coquettishly and looked
On me with her melting eyes,
So that all my heart was stirred.

Thrice that rout raged up and down
Past my window, then did she,
Ah, most beautiful of shades!
Greet me with her precious smile.

Even when the pageant dimmed
And the tumult silent grew
In my brain, that smiling face
Shone and beckoned on and on.

All that night I tossed and turned
My o'erwearied limbs on straw,
Musty straw. No feather-beds
In Uraka's hut I found!

And I mused: what might this mean,
This mysterious beckoning?
Why, Oh, why, Herodias,
Held thy look such tenderness?