Then I feel big eyes, as bright
As the sea-stars. Gray with glitter,
She behind me, moony white,
Smiles, ’mid hangings wherein flitter
Loves and deeds of Amadis
Darkly worked. And then her kiss
On my mouth falls; sweet and bitter
With a bliss that is not bliss.
And I kiss her eyes and hair;
Smooth her tresses till their golden
Glimmer sparkles. Everywhere
Shapes of strange aromas, holden
Of the walls, around us troop;
And in golden loop on loop,—
Of the lull’d eyes vague beholden,—
Forms of music o’er us stoop.
Yet I see beneath it all,
All this sorcery, a devil,
Beautiful, and white, and tall,
Broods with shadowy eyes of evil:
She, who must resume with morn
Her true shape: a cactus-thorn,
Monstrous, on some lonely level
Of that demon-world forlorn.
I have dreams where I believe
That a queen of some dim palace,
One, whose name is Genevieve,
Weighs me with her love or malice:
And all night I am her slave
There beside the demon wave,
Where I drain the loathsome chalice
Of her love, that is my grave.
MASKS
Cucullus non facit monachum
Live it down! as you have spoken
You could live it ere you knew
What love was—“a bauble broken,
Foolish, of a thing untrue.”—
You, Viola, with your beauty,
Cloistered, die a nun? No! you—
You must wed: it is your duty.
There’s your poniard; for the second
In this tazza dropped: the blood
On it scarcely hard.... I reckoned
Happily that hour we stood
There upon your palace-stairway,
How, with the Franciscan hood
Cowled, I said, there was a bare way.
In the minster there I found it—
Our revenge. I saw him, wild,
Stalking towards the church: around it
Dogged him, marking how he smiled
In the moonlight where I waited.
When the great clock, beating, dialed
Ten, I knew he would be mated.
Heaven or my better devil!—
Hardly had his sword and plume
Vanished in the dark, when, level
On the long lagoon, did loom,
Under moonlight-woven arches,
Her slim gondola: all gloom:
One tall gondolier: no torches.