What wizard hints across them fleet,—
These heirs of all the town's thick sin,
Swift gypsies of the tortuous street,
With childhood yet on cheek and chin!
What voices dropping through the din
An airy murmuring begin,—
These floating flakes, so fine and thin,
Were they and rock-laid earth akin?
Some woman of the gods was she,
The generous maiden in her glee?
And did whole forests grow within?
A tissue rare as the hoar-frost,
White as the mists spring dawns condemn,
The shadowy wrinkles round her lost,
She wrought with branch and anadem,
Through the fine meshes netting them,
Pomegranate-flower and leaf and stem.
Dropping it o'er her diadem
To float below her gold-stitched hem,
Some duchess through the court should sail
Hazed in the cloud of this white veil,
As when a rain-drop mists a gem.
Her tresses once when this was done,
—Vanished the skein, the needle bare,—
She dressed with wreaths vermilion
Bright as a trumpet's dazzling blare.
Nor knew that in Queen Dido's hair,
Loading the Carthaginian air,
Ancestral blossoms flamed as fair
As any ever hanging there.
While o'er her cheek their scarlet gleam
Shot down a vivid varying beam,
Like sunshine on a brown-bronzed pear.
And then the veil thrown over her,
The vapor of the snowy lace
Fell downward, as the gossamer
Tossed from the autumn winds' wild race
Falls round some garden-statue's grace.
Beneath, the blushes on her face
Fled with the Naiad's shifting chase
When flashing through a watery space.
And in the dusky mirror glanced
A splendid phantom, where there danced
All brilliances in paler trace.
A spicery of sweet perfume,
As if from regions rankly green
And these rich hoards of bud and bloom,
Lay every waft of air between.
Out of some heaven's unfancied screen
The gorgeous vision seemed to lean.
The Oriental kings have seen
Less beauty in their daïs-queen,
And any limner's pencil then
Had drawn the eternal love of men,
But twice Chance will not intervene.
For soon with scarce a loving sigh
She lifts it off half unaware,
While through the clinging folds held high,
Arachnean in a silver snare
Her rosy fingers nimbly fare,
Till gathered square with dainty care.
But still she leaves the flowery flare
—Such as Dame Venus' self might wear—
Where first she placed them, since they blow
More bounteous color hanging so,
And seem more native to the air.
Anon the mellow twilight came
With breath of quiet gently freed
From sunset's felt but unseen flame.
Then by her casement wheeled in speed
Strange films, and half the wings indeed
That steam in rainbows o'er the mead,
Now magnified in mystery, lead
Great revolutions to her heed.
And leaning out, the night o'erhead,
Wind-tossed in many a shining thread,
Hung one long scarf of glittering brede.
Then as it drew its streamers there,
And furled its sails to fill and flaunt
Along fresh firmaments of air
When ancient morn renewed his chant,—
She sighed in thinking on the plant
Drooping so languidly aslant;
Fancied some fierce noon's forest-haunt
Where wild red things loll forth and pant,
Their golden antlers wave, and still
Sigh for a shower that shall distil
The largess gracious nights do grant.
The oleanders in the South
Drape gray hills with their rose, she thought,
The yellow-tasselled broom through drouth
Bathing in half a heaven is caught.
Jasmine and myrtle flowers are sought
By winds that leave them fragrance-fraught.
To them the wild bee's path is taught,
The crystal spheres of rain are brought,
Beside them on some silent spray
The nightingales sing night away,
The darkness wooes them in such sort.
But this, close shut beneath a roof,
Knows not the night, the tranquil spell,
The stillness of the wildwood ouphe,
The magic dropped on moor and fell.
No cool dew soothes its fiery shell,
Nor any star, a red sardel,
Swings painted there as in a well.
Dyed like a stream of muscadel
No white-skinned snake coils in its cup
To drink its soul of sweetness up,
A honeyed hermit in his cell.