APHRODITE
I
Once, when as ever since the world began,
Dawn touched the silver level of the sea,
And like a golden shield of growing span
Crept on the land of twilight stealthily;
The Sun, yet sunk below his eastern lea,
Whence all the heavenly limits he could mark,
As Perseus through Medusa’s locks, in glee
Shot all his shining fingers through the Dark,
And once more laid the monster motionless and stark.
II
In that day for the inhabitants of Earth
And Heaven, moving in darkness heretofore,
A vision of high beauty came to birth
Amid the foam of Ocean’s eastern shore:
Such as the Gods, who tread their golden floor,
And mortals, dwellers in the orange grove
Domed with aerial blue, in all their lore
Feigned not in earth below or sky above,
Yet, seeing, made the queen and regent of their love.
III
For while the waves danced onward o’er the deep,
As at the first day bright and bluely clear,
And morning mounting up the saffron steep
In opaline pure splendour did appear
Pavilioning with flame the ocean-sphere,
A mist shot upward from the shining main,
A deep blush brightened through it, like a tear
That trembles on a rosebud after rain
And glows with heightened hue on what it cannot stain.
IV
One cloud-like moment in the air it hung;
And then the Sun, in eastern state confest,
Great level arms along the ocean flung,
Giving to each swart wave a golden crest,
And let one finger on the foambell rest,
Which like a hollow fretted crystalline
Of some rich secret rudely dispossessed,
Sundered and parted in the bright sunshine,
Showing the Foamborn in her beauty made divine.