So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,
Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,
In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes.
They lie deep, deep; but I at times behold
In doubtful glimpses, on some reefy shelf,
The gleam of irrecoverable gold.
ON RAPHAEL’S ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.
From out the depths of crocus-coloured morn
With rush of wings the strong Archangel came
And glistening spear; and leapt as leaps a flame
On Satan unprepared and earthward borne;
And rolled the sunless Rebel, bruised and torn,
Upon the earth’s bare plain, in dust and shame,
Holding awhile his spear’s suspended aim
Above the humbled head in radiant scorn.
So leaps within the soul on Wrong or Lust
The warrior Angel whom we deem not near,
And rolls the rebel impulse in the dust,
Scathing its neck with his triumphal tread,
And holding high his bright coercing spear
Above its inexterminable head.
ON A SURF-ROLLED TORSO OF VENUS,
FOUND AT TRIPOLI VECCHIO, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE.
One day in the world’s youth, long, long ago,
Before the golden hair of Time grew grey,
The bright warm sea, scarce stirred by the dolphins’ play,
Was swept by sudden music soft and low;
And rippling, as ’neath kisses, parted slow,
And gave a new and dripping goddess birth,
Who brought transcendent loveliness on earth,
With limbs more pure than sunset-tinted snow.
And lo, that self-same sea has now upthrown
A mutilated Venus, rolled and rolled
For ages by the surf, and that has grown
More soft, more chaste, more lovely than of old,
With every line made vague, so that the stone
Seems seen as through a veil which ages hold.
ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.
I.
What stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made,
Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold,
What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold
A stony head and an unbloody blade?
In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid
To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold
In open street, and paint the heads that rolled
Beneath the axe, in every square displayed?
No, no; not such was Judith, on the night
When, in the silent camp, she watched alone,
Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light
Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done,
She seized the head, and with intent delight
Stared in a face as quivering as her own.
II.
There was a gleam of jewels in the tent
Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam—
And from his scattered armour seemed to stream
A dusky, evil light that came and went.
But from her eyes, as over him she bent,
Watching the surface of his drunken dream,
There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam,
A look in which her life’s one lust found vent.
There was a hissing through her tightened teeth,
As with her scimitar she crouched above
His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath,
While ever and anon she saw him move
His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath
His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.