LUCRETIUS. LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush Of passion and the first embrace had died Between them, tho' he lov'd her none the less, Yet often when the woman heard his foot Return from pacings in the field, and ran To greet him with a kiss, the master took Small notice, or austerely, for-his mind Half buried in some weightier argument, Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise And long roll of the Hexameter-he past To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls Left by the Teacher, whom he held divine. She brook'd it not; but wrathful, petulant, Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch Who brew'd the philtre which had power, they said, To lead an errant passion home again. And this, at times, she mingled with his drink, And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth Confused the chemic labour of the blood, And tickling the brute brain within the man's Made havock among those tender cells, and check'd His power to shape: he loathed himself; and once After a tempest woke upon a morn That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried: 'Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderbolt 'Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what dreams! For thrice I waken'd after dreams. Perchance | We do but recollect the dreams that come Just ere the waking: terrible! for it seem'd A void was made in Nature; all her bonds Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom streams And torrents of her myriad universe, Of and belonging to me, as the dog With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies His function of the woodland: but the next! I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed Came driving rainlike down again on earth, And where it dash'd the reddening meadow, sprang No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth, For these I thought my dream would show to me, But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art, Hired animalisms, vile as those that made The mulberry-faced Dictator's orgies worse Than aught they fable of the quiet Gods. And hands they mixt, and yell'd and round me drove In narrowing circles till I yell'd again Half-suffocated, and sprang up, and saw— Was it the first beam of my latest day ? 'Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the breasts, The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword Now over and now under, now direct, Methought I never saw so fierce a fork— | Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd A riotous confluence of watercourses Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it, Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry. shamed At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire, I woke. M 'Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine, Because I would not one of thine own doves, Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad Not ev❜n a rose, were offer'd to thee? Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers: thine, Forgetful how my rich proœmion makes 'Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant not her, Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt The Trojan, while his neat-herds were abroad; Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept Her Deity false in human-amorous tears; The all-generating powers and genial heat That he would only shine among the dead Hereafter; tales! for never yet on earth Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roasting ox Moan round the spit-nor knows he what he sees; King of the East altho' he seem, and girt With song and flame and fragrance, slowly lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven: And here he glances on an eye new-born, And gets for greeting but a wail of pain; And here he stays upon a freezing orb That fain would gaze upon him to the last; And here upon a yellow eyelid fall'n And closed by those who mourn a friend in vain, Not thankful that his troubles are no more. And me, altho' his fire is on my face Blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods: but he that holds The Gods are careless, wherefore need he care Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at once, Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and sink Past earthquake-ay, and gout and stone, that break Body toward death, and palsy, death-inlife, And wretched age-and worst disease of all, These prodigies of myriad nakednesses, done, And fleeting thro' the boundless universe, And blasting the long quiet of my breast With animal heat and dire insanity? That ever butted his rough brother-brute I hate, abhor, spit, sicken at him; and Why should I, beastlike as I find myself, thus? Loathes him as well; such a precipitate What Roman would be dragg'd in triumph heel, Fledged as it were with Mercury's ankle- Not I; not he, who bears one name with wing, Whirls her to me: but will she fling Whose death-blow struck the dateless doom of kings, herself, Shameless upon me? Catch her, goat foot: nay, Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilder ness, And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide! do What? that the bush were leafless? or All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods, I thought I lived securely as yourselves No madness of ambition, avarice, none: Only such cups as left us friendly-warm, But now it seems some unseen monster her And perishes as I must; for O Thou, Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine Thus-thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air.' With that he drove the knife into his side: She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran in, Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd That she but meant to win him back, fell on him, Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, 'Care not thou! Thy duty? What is duty? Fare thee well!' THE PRINCESS; PROLOGUE. A MEDLEY. SIR Walter Vivian all a summer's day Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun Up to the people: thither flock'd at noon His tenants, wife and child, and thither half The neighbouring borough with their Institute I was Of which he was the patron. there From college, visiting the son,—the son A Walter too,-with others of our set, Five others: we were seven at Vivianplace. And me that morning Walter show'd the house, Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park, Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time; And on the tables every clime and age Jumbled together; celts and calumets, Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, The cursed Malayan crease, and battleclubs From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls, Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, His own forefathers' arms and armour hung. And this' he said 'was Hugh's at And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon : A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle With all about him '-which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd |