I would bring them again unto you,
The gods with broad and placid brows;
And for you have I wrought their images
Of carven ivory and gold;
That your lips may be shaped to praise them,
And your praises be laughter and all delights of the body,
Dancing and exultation, a dance of torches
In scarlet sandals, with burnished targes:
A dance of boys by the wine-press
Naked, with must-stained purple thighs:
Of young girls by the river in saffron vesture
Dancing to smitten strings and reed flutes.
Praise then mine images: Helios; Artemis,
With a leash of straining hounds: and the Foam-born.
Turning from love to sleep, drowsy and smiling,
With the fluttering of doves and dreams about her
And, softer than silk, Hephaistos’ golden net.
Lo, Bacchus and his painted beasts!
Praise ye mine images!
A dryad whom clinging ivy holds while laughs
The swarthy centaur pursuing; and a troop
Of small Pans delicate and deformed.
Yet your lips praise not,
Crying: We too would be deathless as these are,
We, the hunted! But dance and adore them,
Praise my sweet grave gods of the blue, and the earth-born!
Praise their strong grace and swiftness!
For in these gods mine hands have wrought,
In these alone are ye deathless.
SIMAETHA
For D. S. D.
Thou art wine, Simaetha! When mine eyes drink thee
My blood flames with the golden joy thou art,
Bewildering me, until thy loveliness
Is veiled in its own light: nor know I then
Pure brows, and placid lips and eyes, and hair
With wind and sunlight glorious: but all
Are mingled in one flame. O thou, in me,
Art shrined, as none hath seen thee, as gods live
Whom Time shall not consume; nor rusts thy gold
Ever, so hath my soul enclosed thee round
With its divine air. Yea, thy very life,
Which flows through all the guises of thy moods,
Escaping as they die, and laughs and weeps
And builds again its beauty, have I set
Beyond the jeopards of rough time: yea! all
Thine ivory, imperilled loveliness,
And winey sanguine where the cheek’s curve takes
Light as a bloom upon it, not to pass
So there be God.
Thy praise hath made speech song
And song from lip to lip flies, and black ships
Bear it from sea to sea; and on some quay
Where rise tall masts, and gay booths flank the ways
A tumbler sings it; and an alien air
Trembles with thee, while strange men wonder, dumb
To see thee pass: thou being all my song.