Читать книгу Poems - Edward Dowden - Страница 4

Radiance invincible! Is that the brow

Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped?

Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead

That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou:

For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow

And break us, and at best when we have bled,

And are much marred, perchance propitiated

A little doubtful victory they allow:

We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains

A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less.

O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great

And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains

Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness,

—Even to worship thee I come too late.

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,

No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas

Shifting and circling past their Cyclades

Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod

First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad

Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,

And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase,

Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.

So thy victorious fairness, unallied

To bitter things or barren, doth bestow

And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;

Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow

Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side,

And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath

And clustered berries burdening the hair?

Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware

O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath,

Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth!

The gods are free, and drink a stainless air,

And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear

A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death

Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine.

O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught

Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see

The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine

Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety,

Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought?

Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair

Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait

Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate

Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?

Secret perfection! Mystery too fair!

Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate

Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate

Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair.

Nay, nay,—I wrong thee with rough words; still be

Serene, victorious, inaccessible;

Still smile but speak not; lightest irony

Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still

O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy

Allure us and reject us at thy will!

It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid,

Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best;

See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest

Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid

On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed

And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed

By soft maternal fingers the full breast

Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed

By her own bosom and half passes down

To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame

Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly

Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town.

Innocent calm! no token here of shame,

A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary.