Boston Transcript Edward J. O’Brien
SONNET XXXVII
Through vales of Thrace, Peneus’ stream is flowing
Past legend-peopled hillsides to the deep;
From Paestum’s rose-hung plains soft winds are blowing;
The halls of Amber lie in haunted sleep;
The Cornish sea is silent with the Summer
That once bore Iseult from the Irish shore;
And lovely lone Fiesole is dumber
Than when Lorenzo’s garland-guests it wore.
This eve for us the emerald clearness glowing
Over the stream, where late was ruddy might,
Whispers a wonder, dumb to other knowing,—
Known but to you, the silence, and the night.
Our boat drifts breathless; the last light is dying;
Stars, dawn, shall find us here together lying.
The Forum Arthur Davison Ficke
THE HUNTING OF DIAN
In the silence of a midnight lost, lost forevermore,
I stood upon a nameless beach where none had been before,
And red gold and yellow gold were the shells upon that shore.
Lone, lone it was as a mist-enfolded strand
Set round a lake where marble demons stand—
Held like a sapphire-stone in Thibet’s monstrous hand.
And there I beheld how One stood in her grace
To hold to the stars her wet and faery face,
And on the smooth and haunted sands her footfall had no trace.
White, white was she as the youngest seraph’s word,
Or milk of Eden’s kine or Eden’s fragrant curd,
Cast in love by Eve’s wan hand to her most snowy bird.
Fair, fair was she as Venus of the sky,
And the jasmine of her breast and starlight of her eye
Made the heart a pain and the soul a hopeless sigh.