TARPEIA.
WOE: lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!
Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!
Lo, now it was night, with the moon looking chill as she went:
It was morn when the innocent stranger strayed into the tent.
The hostile Sabini were pleased, as one meshing a bird;
She sang for them there in the ambush: they smiled as they heard.
Her sombre hair purpled in gleams, as she leaned to the light;
All day she had idled and feasted, and now it was night.
The chief sat apart, heavy-browed, brooding elbow on knee;
The armlets he wore were thrice royal, and wondrous to see:
Exquisite artifice, whorls of barbaric design,
Frost’s fixèd mimicry; orbic imaginings fine
In sevenfold coils: and in orient glimmer from them,
The variform voluble swinging of gem upon gem.
And the glory thereof sent fever and fire to her eye.
‘I had never such trinkets!’ she sighed,—like a lute was her sigh.