But thou, Apollo, who prevailest!
Hast thou made me thine envy? choosing,
Out of all creatures, me the frailest;
Me the most piteous, for the loosing
Of thy swift amorous looks like hounds
That hunt my soul—heavy and rife
With bodiless delights and sounds,
And knowledge of a goodlier life?
—O, not until some fate shall darken
This soul with death, shall any scorn
Or hate of heaven make me mute:
Rather, through hot days, will I hearken
For quick breaths panting in pursuit,
And the swift feet of some sweet fawn
Crashing among the fallen fruit:
And him—making my whole blood blush—
I will all languishing beseech,—
Crush me, O God, as thou wouldst crush
Some fire-fed fruit, some fallen peach,
Some swollen skin of purple wine;
Care not to spare me,—nor refuse me;
Take me, to use me or abuse me,
And slay me taking me for thine!—
So—till he seize me with a shout,
Tear me, and sear me with his breath;
Yea, till he tread my heart quite out,
And give me Death!
And if not Death!—
O all the night I shall be free
To steep me and to stifle me
In dew, and cool dew-dropping hair,
In every shadowy haunt and lair
Where most forgetfulness may be;
And, all on flame, my soul shall flare
Into the chillest of the dark,
And there be quenchéd, spark by spark.
To the last faintest spark of me.
I will be wasted as a spoil
On all things of the woods and winds;
Earned with no eagerness or toil
I will be for the first who finds—
A revel for mad zephyr lips,
A soft eternity of sips:
I will no sweet of mine detain;
But wholly be to them a prey,
Used lavishly or cast away
For the whole rout of them to drain.
Or I will give myself to make
Sport for the green gods of the lake;
—All fierce are they with foamy breath,
And rainbow eyes, and watery souls,
Quaint things, half deity, half snake;
—O, I shall lay me in the shoals
Of waves: or any way get Death!—
So I shall rid myself from thee,
Apollo!—So at length be free!
THE POET’S GRAVE.
IN a lonely spot that was filled with leaves,
And the wild waste plants without scent or name,
Where never a mourner came,—
That was far from the ground where the false world grieves,
And far from the shade of the church’s eaves—
They buried the Poet with thoughts of shame,
And not as one who believes.
Then the tall grass flower with lolling head,
Who is king of all flowers that twine or creep
On graves where few come to weep,
To the briar, and bindweed, and vetch, he said,
“Lo, here is a grave of the lonely dead;
Let us go up and haste while his soul may sleep,
To make the fresh earth our bed.”
Then the rootless briar and bindweed mean,
And the grovelling vetch, with the pale trefoil
That cumbers the fruitless soil,
Yea, the whole strange rout of the earth’s unclean
Went up to the grave that was fresh and green;
And together they wrought there so dense a coil
The grave was no longer seen.
But the tall mad flower whose head is crowned
With the long lax petals that fall and flap
Like the ears of a fool’s bell-cap,
He stood higher than all on the fameless mound;
And nodded his head to each passing sound,
Darting this way and that, as in sport to trap
Each laugh of the winds around.