Читать книгу Enamels and Cameos and other Poems - Gautier Théophile - Страница 7

In the Northern tales of eld,

From the Rhine's escarpments high

Swan-women radiant were beheld,

Singing and floating by,

Or, leaving their plumage bright

On a bough that was bending low,

Displaying skin more gleaming white

Than the white of their down of snow.

At times one comes our way, —

Of all she is pallidest,

White as the moonbeam's shivering ray

On a glacier's icy crest.

Her boreal bloom doth win

Our eyes to feasting rare

On rich delight of nacreous skin,

And a wealth of whiteness fair.

Her rounded breasts, pale globes

Of snow, wage insolent war

With her camellias and her robes

Of whiteness nebular.

In such white wars supreme

She wins, and weft and flower

Leave their revenge's right, and seem

Yellowed with envy's hour.

On the white of her shoulder bare,

Whose marble Paros lends,

As through the Polar twilight fair,

Invisible frost descends.

What beaming virgin snow,

What pith a reed within,

What Host, what taper, did bestow

The white of her matchless skin?

Was she made of a milky drop

On the blue of a winter heaven?

The lily-blow on the stem's green top?

The foam of the sea at even?

Of the marble still and cold,

Wherein the great gods dwell?

Of creamy opal gems that hold

Faint fires of mystic spell?

Or the organ's ivory keys?

Her wingèd fingers oft

Like butterflies flit over these,

With kisses pending soft.

Of the ermine's stainless fold,

Whose white, warm touches fall

On shivering shoulders and on bold,

Bright shields armorial?

Of the phantom flowers of frost

Enscrolled on the window clear?

Of the fountain drop in the chill air lost,

An Undine's frozen tear?

Of May bent low with the sweets

Of her bountiful white-thorn bloom?

Of alabaster that repeats

The pallor of grief and gloom?

Of the feathers of doves that slip

And snow on the gable steep?

Of slow stalactite's tear-white drip

In cavernous places deep?

Came she from Greenland floes

With Seraphita forth?

Is she Madonna of the Snows?

A sphinx of the icy North,

Sphinx buried by avalanche,

The glacier's guardian ghost,

Whose frozen secrets hide and blanch

In her white heart innermost?

What magic of what far name

Shall this pale soul ignite?

Ah! who shall flush with rose's flame

This cold, implacable white?