Was not the menace indeed more silent? Ah, what care for labour and sorrow?
Gods in the meadows of moly and amaranth surely might envy their deep sweet bed
Here where the butterflies troubled the lilies of peace, and took no thought for the morrow,
And golden-girdled bees made feast as over the lotus the soft sun spread.
Nearer, nearer the menace glided, out of the gorgeous gloom around them,
Out of the poppy-haunted shadows deep in the heart of the purple brake;
Till through the hush and the heat as they lay, and their own sweet listless dreams enwound them,—
Mailed and mottled with hues of the grape-bloom suddenly, quietly, glided the snake.
Subtle as jealousy, supple as falsehood, diamond-headed and cruel as pleasure,
Coil by coil he lengthened and glided, straight to the fragrant curve of her throat:
There in the print of the last of the kisses that still glowed red from the sweet long pressure,
Fierce as famine and swift as lightning over the glittering lyre he smote.
IV
And over the cold white body of love and delight
Orpheus arose in the terrible storm of his grief,
With quivering up-clutched hands, deadly and white,
And his whole soul wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf:
As a leaf that beats on a mountain, his spirit in vain
Assaulted his doom and beat on the Gates of Death:
Then prone with his arms o'er the lyre he sobbed out his pain,
And the tense chords faintly gave voice to the pulse of his breath.
And he heard it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand,
And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied:
And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land,
And gathered the tears of all Time in the rush of its tide.
There was never a love forsaken or faith forsworn,
There was never a cry for the living or moan for the slain,
But was voiced in that great consummation of song; ay, and borne
To storm on the Gates of the land whence none cometh again.
Transcending the barriers of earth, comprehending them all
He followed the soul of his loss with the night in his eyes;
And the portals lay bare to him there; and he heard the faint call
Of his love o'er the rabble that wails by the river of sighs.
Yea, there in the mountains before him, he knew it of old,
That portal enormous of gloom, he had seen it in dreams,
When the secrets of Time and of Fate through his harmonies rolled;
And behind it he heard the dead moan by their desolate streams.