Le Jeune Homme Caressant sa Chimère

A boy of eighteen years mid myrtle-boughs
Lying love-languid on a morn of May,
Watch'd half-asleep his goats insatiate browse
Thin shoots of thyme and lentisk, by the spray
Of biting sea-winds bitter made and grey:
Therewith when shadows fell, his waking thought
Of love into a wondrous dream was wrought.

A woman lay beside him, — so it seem'd;
For on her marble shoulders, like a mist
Irradiate with tawny moonrise, gleam'd
Thick silken tresses; her white woman's wrist,
Glittering with snaky gold and amethyst,
Upheld a dainty chin; and there beneath,
Her twin breasts shone like pinks that lilies wreathe.

What colour were her eyes I cannot tell;
For as he gazed thereon, at times they darted
Dun rays like water in a dusky well;.
Then turn'd to topaz: then like rubies smarted
With smouldering flames of passion tiger-hearted;
Then 'neath blue-veined lids swam soft and tender
With pleadings and shy timorous surrender.

Thus far a woman: but the breath that lifted
Her panting breast with long melodious sighs,
Stirr'd o'er her neck and hair broad wings that sifted
The perfumes of meridian Paradise;
Dusk were they, furr'd like velvet, gemm'd with eyes
Of such dull lustre as in isles afar
Night-flying moths spread to the summer star.

Music these pinions made — a sound and surge
Of pines innumerous near lisping waves —
Rustling of reeds and rushes on the verge
Of level lakes and naiad-haunted caves —
Drown'd whispers of a wandering stream that laves
Deep alder-boughs and tracts of ferny grass
Border'd with azure-bell'd campanulas.

Potent they were: for never since her birth
With feet of woman this fair siren press'd
Sleek meadow swards or stony ways of earth;
But 'neath the silken marvel of her breast,
Display'd in sinuous length of coil and crest,
Glitter'd a serpent's tail, fold over fold,
In massy labyrinths of languor roll'd.

Ah, me! what fascination! what faint stars
Of emerald and opal, with the shine
Of rubies intermingled, and dim bars
Of twisting turquoise and pale coralline!
What rings and rounds! what thin streaks sapphirine
Freckled that gleaming glory, like the bed
Of Eden streams with gems enamelled!

There lurk'd no loathing, no soul-freezing fear,
But luxury and love these coils between:
Faint grew the boy; the siren fill'd his ear
With singing sweet as when the village-green
Re-echoes to the tinkling tambourine,
And feet of girls aglow with laughter glance
In myriad mazy errors of the dance.

How long he dallied with delusive joy
I know not; but thereafter never more
The peace of passionless slumber soothed the boy;
For he was stricken to the very core
With sickness of desire exceeding sore,
And through the radiance of his eyes there shone
Consuming fire too fierce to gaze upon.

He, ere he died — and they whom lips divine
Have touch'd, fade flower-like and cease to be —
Bade Charicles on agate carve a sign
Of his strange slumber: therefore can we see
Here in the ruddy gem's transparency
The boy, the myrtle boughs, the triple spell
Of moth and snake and white witch terrible.