Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;
“Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust
Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies!
Lo, the fair garlands that I weave for thee,
Unchanging as the belt Orion wears,
Bright as the jewels of the seven-starred Crown,
The spangled stream of Berenice’s hair!”
And so she twines the fetters with the flowers
Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird
Stoops to his quarry,—then to feed his rage
Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood
And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night
Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek,
And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes.
All for a line in some unheeded scroll;
All for a stone that tells to gaping clowns,
“Here lies a restless wretch beneath a clod
Where squats the jealous nightmare men call Fame!”
I marvel not at him
who scorns his kind
And thinks not sadly
of the time foretold
When the old hulk we
tread shall be a wreck,
A slag, a cinder drifting
through the sky
Without its crew of
fools! We live too long
And even so are not
content to die,
But load the mould that
covers up our bones
With stones that stand
like beggars by the road
And show death’s
grievous wound and ask for tears;
Write our great books
to teach men who we are,
Sing our fine songs
that tell in artful phrase
The secrets of our lives,
and plead and pray
For alms of memory with
the after time,
Those few swift seasons
while the earth shall wear
Its leafy summers, ere
its core grows cold
And the moist life of
all that breathes shall die;
Or as the new-born seer,
perchance more wise,
Would have us deem,
before its growing mass,
Pelted with stardust,
atoned with meteor-balls,
Heats like a hammered
anvil, till at last Man
and his works and all
that stirred itself
Of its own motion, in
the fiery glow
Turns to a flaming vapor,
and our orb
Shines a new sun for
earths that shall be born.
I am as old as Egypt
to myself,
Brother to them that
squared the pyramids
By the same stars I
watch. I read the page
Where every letter is
a glittering world,
With them who looked
from Shinar’s clay-built towers,
Ere yet the wanderer
of the Midland sea
Had missed the fallen
sister of the seven.
I dwell in spaces vague,
remote, unknown,
Save to the silent few,
who, leaving earth,
Quit all communion with
their living time.
I lose myself in that
ethereal void,
Till I have tired my
wings and long to fill
My breast with denser
air, to stand, to walk