Chapter VI

Your letter is sealed and is sent. You are mine!--
By now he has broken the wax.... If there flutters
Some dust in his nostrils, who, who will divine
That thus it was poisoned?--Our alchemist utters
No word!--You are happy? and I?--Oh, I feel
That I love and am loved.--The tidings comes heavy
To-night to the King; you are there; you will reel--
Will faint!--Now away to the royal levee.

Note.--In this poem, which originally appeared in a volume of
mine entitled _Lyrics and Idylls_, published in 1890, some
hypercritical critic in the New York _Nation_ accused me of
imitating Browning's _The Laboratory_. The truth of the matter
is that the poem was written ten months before I had ever read
Browning's _Dramatic Lyrics_, and was suggested to me by the
reading of the following passage in one of E. T. W. Hoffman's
(the German Poe's) stories. The passage occurs in _Mademoiselle
De Scuderi_ and is as follows: "The poisons which Sainte Croix
prepared were of so subtle a nature that if the powder (called by
the Parisians _Poudre de Succession_, or Succession Powder) were
prepared with the face exposed, a single inhalation of it might
cause instantaneous death. Sainte Croix therefore, when engaged
in its manufacture, always wore a mask of fine glass. One day,
just as he was pouring a prepared powder into a phial, his mask
fell off, and inhaling the fine particles of the poison, he fell
dead on the spot."

THE TROUBADOUR

He stood where all the rare voluptuous west,
Like some mad Mænad, wine-stained to the breast,
Laughed with delirious lips of ruby must,
Wherein, it seemed, the fierceness of all lust
Burnt like a feverish wine, exultant whirled
High in a golden goblet, gem-impearled.
And all the west, and all the amorous west,
Caressed his beauty, dreamed upon his breast;
And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows,
A passion-flower of men of snowy rose,
Beneath the casement of her old red tower,
Whereat the lady sat, as fair a flower
As ever bloomed in Provence; and the lace
Mist-like about her hair, half-hid her face
And the emotions that his singing raised,
So that he knew not if she blamed or praised.
And where the white rose, climbing over and over
Up to her wide-flung lattice, like a lover,
And stalks of lavender and fleurs-de-lis
Held honey-cups up for the violent bee,
Within her garden by the ivied wall,
Where many a fountain, falling musical,
Flamed rubies in the eve against it flung,
Like some wild nightingale the minstrel sung:--

"The passion, oh, of gently smoothing through
Long locks of brown, soft hands as lovers do!
Thy dark, deep locks, rich-jeweled as the dusk
Is scintillant with stars! Oh, frenzy rare
Of clasping slender fingers round thy hair!--
What balm, what breath of winds from summer seas!
What silken softness and what sorceries
Doth it contain!--Ah God! ah God! to lie
Wrapped strand on strand deep in thy hair and die!
Ay me, oh, ay!

"Oh, happy madness and, oh, rapturous pain,
With white hands smoothing back thy locks, to drain
Into thine eyes my soul!--Oh, perilous eyes!
As agates polished; where the thoughts that rise,
Within thy heart are imaged; thoughts that pass
As magic pictures in a witch's glass.--
What siren sweetness, wailed to lyres of gold,
What naked beauty that the Greeks of old,
God-bosomed, through the bursting foam did see,
Could sway my soul with half their mastery!
Ay, ay, ay me!

"Far o'er the sea, of old time, once a witch,
The fair Ææan, Circe, dwelt; so rich
In marvellous magic, she was like a god,
And made or unmade mortals with a nod:
Turned all her lovers into bird or brute.--
More cruel thou, who mak'st my heart a lute,
That lies before thee, hushed and sadly mute!
Who let'st it lie, yet from its soul might draw
More magic music than Acrasia,
Or Circe knew, that filled them with its bliss,
Didst thou but take me to thine arms and kiss!
Ay, ay, I wis!"

Knee-deep amid the dews, the flowers there,
Beneath the stars that now were everywhere
Flung through the perfumed heavens of angel hands,
And, linked in tangled labyrinths and bands
Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled
One vast immensity of mazy gold,
He sang; like some hurt creature, desolate,
Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate
Hounded and speared to death of heartless men
In old romantic Arden waste; and then
Turned to the moon that, like a polished stone
Of precious worth, low in the heaven shone,
A pale poetic face and passed away
From the urned terrace and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in dim drapery,
High in the old red tower--did she sigh
To see him fading through the purple night,
His lute faint-twinkling in th' uncertain light,
Then lost amid the rose-pleached avenues,
Dark walls of ivy, hedged with low-clipped yews?
And left alone with but the whispering rush
Of fountains and the evening's hyacinth hush,
Did she complain unto the stars above,
All the lone night, of that forbidden love?
Or down the rush-strewn stairs, where arras old
Waved with her mantled passage, fold on fold,
Beyond the tower's iron-studded gate,
That snarled with rust, did she steal forth and wait
Deep in the dingled lavender and rose
For him, her troubadour?... Who knows? who knows?

MY ROMANCE

If it so befalls that the midnight hovers
In mist no moonlight breaks,
The leagues of the years my spirit covers,
And my self myself forsakes.

And I live in a land of stars and flowers,
White cliffs by a silver sea;
And the pearly points of her opal towers
From the mountains beckon me.

And I think that I know that I hear her calling
From a casement bathed with light--
Thro' music of waters in waters falling
'Mid palms from a mountain height.

And I feel that I think my love's awaited
By the romance of her charms;
That her feet are early and mine belated
In a world that chains my arms.

But I break my chains and the rest is easy--
In the shadow of the rose,
Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy,
We meet and no one knows.

We dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses;
The world--it may live or die!
The world that forgets; that never misses
The life that has long gone by.

We speak old vows that have long been spoken,
And weep a long-gone woe,--
For you must know our hearts were broken
Hundreds of years ago.

THE EPIC

"To arms!" the battle bugles blew.
The daughter of their Chief was she,--
Lord of a thousand spears and true;--
He but a squire of low degree.

The horns of war blew up to horse:
He kissed her mouth; her face was white:
"God grant they bear thee back no corse!"
"God give I win my spurs to-night!"

The watch-towers' blazing beacons scarred
With blood-red wounds the face of night:
She heard men gallop battleward;
She saw their armor gleam with light.

"My God, deliver me and mine!
My child! my love!"--all night she prayed:
She watched the battle beacons shine;
She watched the battle beacons fade....

They brought him on a bier of spears.--
For him, the death-won spurs and name;
For her, the grief of lonely years,
And donjon walls to hide her shame.

THE MINSTREL AND THE PRINCESS

I

He had no hope to win her hand,
A harper in a loveless land,
And yet he sang of love;
And marked the blue vein of her throat
Swell with mute rage at every note:
And when he ceased she spake him then,--
"Such whining slaves are less than men!"
And anger in her dark eyes wrote
Contempt thereof.

II

He had no hope to win her hand,
A harper in a hostile land,
And yet he sang of peace;
And marked how mock'ry curled her lip
With scorn as, 'neath each finger-tip,
The chords breathed pastoral content:
Till haughtiness, that beauty lent
To beauty, sneered, "Would'st feel the whip?--
O fool, surcease!"