75 Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is
crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another; but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
so And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.7
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
85 For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
90 Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her? still, having seen she shall surely abide in Proserpina
the end.
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
0 daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
1 am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
95 In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where
thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the
heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is
white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the
night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of gods from afar
IOO Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and
undone.
Thou art more than the gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
105 Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass' of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span. mirror A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep,
no For there is no god found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
1866
6. Venus (or Aphrodite), who was born from the Aeneas, a Trojan prince who was the son of Aphwaves near the island of Cythera. rodite. 7. Romans traced their legendary origins back to
.
HERMAPHRODITUS / 149 9
Hermaphroditus1
Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,
Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest
