CRASSUS.
These faint and fearful shores
Of time are beaten by the surge of sense,
Love worn away - by love? - to indifference.
Who knows what god - or demon - she adores?
Or in what wood she shelters, or what grove
Sees her profane our sacrament of love?
ALICIA.
I saw her follow
The stream in the hollow
Where never Apollo
Abides.
So thick are the trees
That never the breeze
Stirs them, or sees
What satyr inhabits the glen, what nymph in the
pools of it hides.
Lighter of foot
Than a sylph or a fairy,
Sinuous, wary,
I passed from the airy
Lawns, where the flute
Of the winds made tremulous music for man.
I followed the ripple
Of the stream; I crept
Where the waters wept -
The floss in the foss
Gurgling across
The bosses of moss,
Like a dryad's nipple
In the mouth of Pan!
CRASSUS.
O pearl of the house! you came to the end?
ALICIA.
The dusk of the slave, the dawn of a friend?
CRASSUS.
Freedom is thine for the skill and the will.
ALICIA.
The skill is mine - but the will lies still,
Still as the earth that dare not stir
Till the kiss of the sun awaken her!
CRASSUS.
Yet at these secrets and riddles? Behold!
I can fill thy lap with a harvest of gold.
ALICIA.
Yet all the gold you could give to me
Would fall at my feet when I rose to be free.