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In Mythic Seas.
By Madison Julius Cawein
'Neath saffron stars and satin skies, dark-blue,
Between dim sylvan isles, a happy two.
We sailed, and from the siren-haunted shore,
All mystic in its mist, the soft gale bore
The Siren's song, while on the ghostly steeps
Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps,
That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud,
Thick-powdered, pallid, or like urns of blood
Dripping, and blowing from wide mouths of blooms
On our bare brows cool gales of sweet perfumes.
While from the yellow stars that splashed the skies
O'er our light shallop dropped soft mysteries
Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon
Rose full of fire above a dark lagoon;
And as she rose the nightingales on sprays
Of heavy, shadowy roses burst in praise
Of her wild loveliness, with boisterous pain
Wailing far off around a ruined fane.
And 'round our lazy keel that dipped to swing
The spirits of the foam came whispering;
And from dank Neptune's coral-columned caves
Heard the Oceanids rise thro' the waves;
Saw their smooth limbs cold-glimmering in the spray,
Tumultuous bosoms panting with their play;
Their oozy tresses, tossed unto the breeze,
Flash sea-green brightness o'er the tumbled seas.
'Mid columned isles, glance vaguely thro' the trees,
We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades;
Heard Pan's fierce trebles and the Triton's horn
Sound from the rock-lashed foam when rose the Morn
With chilly fingers dewing all the skies,
That blushed for love and closed their starry eyes.
The Naiad saw sweet smiling, in white mist,
Half hidden in a bay of amethyst
Her polished limbs, and at her hollow ear
A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear
Dim echoes of the Siren's haunting strains
Emprisoned in its chords of crimson veins.
And stealing wily from a grove of pines
The Oread in cincture of green vines,
One twinkling foot half buried in the red
Of a deep dimpled, crumpled poppy bed -
Like to the star of eve, when, lapsing low,
Faint clouds that with the sunset colors glow
Slip down in scarlet o'er its crystal white,
It shining, tear-like, partly veils its light.
Her wine-red lips half-parted in surprise,
And expectation in her bright blue eyes,
While slyly from a young oak coppice peers
The wanton Faun with furry, pointed ears.
He leaps, she flies as flies the startled nymph
When Pan pursues her from her wonted lymph,
Diana sees, and on her wooded hills
Stays her fair band, the stag hounds' clamor stills.
Already nearer glow the Oread's charms;
To seize them Faunus strains his hairy arms -
A senseless statue of white, weeping stone
Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone.
The stag-hounds bay, Dian resumes the chase,
While the astonished Faun's bewildered face
Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering,
He bends above the sculpture of the spring.
We sailed; and many a morn of breathing balm,
Purpureal, graced us in that season calm;
And it was life to thee and me and love
With the fair myths below, our God above,
To sail in golden sunsets and emerge
In golden morns upon a fretless surge.
But ah, alas! the stars that dot the blue
Shine not alway; the clouds must gather too.
I knew not how it came, but in a while
Myself I found cast on an arid isle
Alone and barkless, soaked and wan with dread,
The seas in wrath and thunder overhead,
Deep down in coral caverns my pale love,
No myths below, no God, it seemed, above.
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