I
Day is all drenched with heavy rain of tears;
The silences of joy are lost in sound
Of sorrow; for I weep the wasted years—
Wasted as wine poured out upon the ground
From beakers brimming red for thirsty lips.
Hushed are the trumpets that will call no more;
Lonely and vast the spaces of the sea
Where oft my mariners have flashed the oar
And ploughed deep furrows with my scarlet ships—
Eager and ready for the fight, and free.
II
Egypt! My Egypt! Actium, and thou
The glory and the wonder of the world,
Titles and place, all that I had are now
Rolled up within a sphere of flame and hurled
Into the gulfs of doom; quaking of earth,
And thunder, as of gods deriding, fill
The darkness and the void of those abysses:
Yet in my anger and my anguish still
Hath Love his ancient way, stirring to birth
Dreams of the lost, dead days, thy lips and kisses.
III
Yea, I must love thee though I fall and die!
Yea, hath my heart become for Love a lyre,
And he hath syllabled thy name, and I
Fill in each silence with a song; aspire
To rival in my rapture Euterpe.
For life or death, Elysium or Doom,
We soar and sink together through the vast
And unrevealed, dim reaches of the Room
Whose walls are Night, and its wide portals three—
The Future, and the Present, and the Past!
IV
Leave thou thy chamber and its spectral glooms;
Rise like the morn upon the mountains; stand,
My Rose of Dawn, among all lesser blooms,
And with white lilies mate each slender hand,
And let the sky grow glorious and blue
To match thine eyes! ... Come, Queen, and my Adored,
Clothed in thy splendour as I saw thee first!
Oh, come, ere I thwart Cæsar on my sword,
And with my body pay him what is due!
Quench with thy lips on mine, O Heart, love's thirst.
V
Why dost thou linger, thou the miracle
Among all marvels? Hither call the birds;
The faint, far song of rivers; silver bell
And pause of twilight, when the crooning words
Of mothers bending over babes awake
Echoes of whispers through the reeds and grass:
Let these and other voices vie with thine,
And lo! the god who vanquished Marsyas
Yields thee his harp, and one by one forsake
The nymphs their singing for thy voice divine.
VI
O beauty, beauty that can never die!
O music, music meeting on thy mouth!
Challenge the wings of morning, bid them fly
Over the earth, east, west, north, and south,
To find one other woman fair as thou;
One other woman in whom harmonies
Rise up like fountains singing in the sun.
Supernal Wonder! thou art more than these
Frail jars of perfumed balsams from the bough
Of Life's tree, emptied ere the day be done.
VII
Since thou wast born, the dreamy lotus blows
Its blossomed buds no more in vales of ease;
Mnemosyne revives where Lethe flows
Past sad, lost souls; for he who beauty sees,
That moment lives forever, and the sight
Shatters the crystal chalices of dream;
While phantom faces form, and legions wan
And ghostly gather from the dark to stream
Out through the wide, star-studded gates of night,
Claiming the open portals of the dawn!
VIII
Behold the chaff is beaten from the wheat:
Dost thou not hear the flails upon the floor?
Within the presses purple-stainéd feet
Bruise joy from out the grape, and o'er and o'er
The tale of Bacchus and the vine is told.
Laughter and dance and song are everywhere.
Shall we who live and love be then denied
The harvest? Nay; the fields are not all bare;
Still have they fragrant autumn gourds of gold;
The trees have yet their majesty and pride.
IX
Listen and hear Rome roaring from afar!
Oh, hearken to the tumult of the hordes
Of Cæsar, drunk with the red wine of war!
Blow trumpets! Clang, O brazen shields and swords,
Your thunder to the steady march of men!
And sing, O purple pennons that unfold
Beneath the bronze-tipped menace of the spears!
The gods! The gods are gleaming on the gold,
Wide-winged, great eagles of the Tiber, when
The standard of the Emperor appears!
X
Come, Cleopatra, from thy prison break,
And I will gather now my waiting band—
My cohorts; yea, I will rise up and shake
Over Octavius a mighty hand;
Yea, I— What sayest thou? The Queen is dead?
O Joy of gods and men! thou couldst not die—
Never to Cleopatra could come death!
There, lad! hold thou my sword, and let me fly
On wings of love to realms unvisited
Where Cleopatra, waiting, wandereth!