Their terror and their loveliness.
Thine eyes are torches that illume
On secret shrines their unforeboded fires,
And fill the vaults of silence and of gloom
With the unresting life of new desires.
I follow where their arrowy ray
Pierces the veil I would not tear away,
And with a dread, delicious awe behold
Another gate of life unfold,
Like the rapt neophyte who sees
Some march of grand Osirian mysteries.
The startled chambers I explore,
And every entrance open dies,
Forced by the magic thrill that runs before
Thy slowly-lifted eyes.
I tremble to the centre of my being
Thus to confess the spirit's poise o'erthrown,
And all its guiding virtues blown
Like leaves before the whirlwind's fury fleeing.
But see! one memory rises in my soul,
And, beaming steadily and clear,
Scatters the lurid thunder-clouds that roll
Through Passion's sultry atmosphere.
An alchemy more potent borrow
For thy dark eyes, enticing Sorceress !
For on the casket of a sacred Sorrow
Their shafts fall powerless.
Nay, frown not, Athor, from thy mystic shrine:
Strong Goddess of Desire, I will not be
One of the myriad slaves thou callest thine,
To cast my manhood's crown of royalty
Before thy dangerous beauty : I am free!
HE "Ornament of Asia" and the "Crown
Of fair Ionia." Yea; but Asia stands
No more an empress, and Ionia's hands
Have lost their sceptre. Thou, majestic
town,
Art as a diamond on a faded robe:
The freshness of thy beauty scatters yet
The radiance of that sun of Empire set,
Whose disk sublime illumed the ancient globe.
Thou sitt'st between the mountains and the sea;
The sea and mountains flatter thine array,
And fill thy courts with Grandeur, not Decay;
And Power, not Death, proclaims thy cypress tree.
Through thee, the sovereign symbols Nature lent
Her rise, make Asia's fall magnificent.
HE gorgeous blossoms of that magic tree
Beneath whose shade I sat a thousand
Breathed from their opening petals all delights
Embalmed in spice of Orient Poesy,
When first, young Persian, I beheld thine eyes,
And felt the wonder of thy beauty grow
Within my brain, as some fair planet's glow
Deepens, and fills the summer evening skies.
From under thy dark lashes shone on me
The rich, voluptuous soul of Eastern land,
Impassioned, tender, calm, serenely sad,-
Such as immortal Hafiz felt when he
Sang by the fountain-streams of Rocnabad,
Or in the bowers of blissful Samarcand.
HEN Life his lusty course began,
And first I felt myself a man,
And Passion's unforeboded glow-
The thirst to feel, the will to know
Gave courage, vigor, fervor, truth,
The glory of the heart of Youth,
And each awaking pulse was fleet
A livelier march of joy to beat,
Presaging in its budding hour
The ripening of the human flower,
There came, on some divine intent,
One whom the Lord of Life had sent,
And from his lips of wisdom fell
This fair and wondrous oracle:-
Life's arching temple holds for thee
Solution quick, and radiant key
To many an early mystery;
And thou art eager to pursue,
Through many a dimly-lighted clew,
The hopes that turn thy blood to fire,
The phantoms of thy young desire:
Yet not to reckless haste is poured
The nectar of the generous lord,
Nor mirth nor giddy riot jar
The penetralia, high and far;
But steady hope, and passion pure,
And manly truth, the crown secure.
Within that temple's secret heart,
In mystic silence shrined apart,
There is a goblet, on whose brim
All raptures of Creation swim.
No light that ever beamed in wine
Can match the glory of its shine,
Or lure with such a mighty art
The tidal flow of every heart.
But in its warm, bewildering blaze,
An ever-shifting magic plays,
And few who round the altar throng
Shall find the sweets for which they long.
Who, unto brutish life akin,
Comes to the goblet dark with sin,
And with a coarse hand grasps, for him
The splendor of the gold grows dim,
The gems are dirt, the liquor's flame
A maddening beverage of shame,
And into caverns shut from day
The hot inebriate reels away.
For each shall give the draught he drains
Its nectar pure, or poison stains;
From out his heart the flavor flows
That gives him fury, or repose:
And some shall drink a tasteless wave,
And some increase the thirst they lave;
And others loathe as soon as taste,
And others pour the tide to waste;
And some evoke from out its deeps
A torturing fiend that never sleeps, -
For vain all arts to exorcise
From the seared heart its haunting eyes.
But he who burns with pure desire,
With chastened love and sacred fire,
With soul and being all aglow
Life's holiest mystery to know,
Shall see the goblet flash and gleam
As in the glory of a dream;
And from its starry lip shall drink
A bliss to lift him on the brink
Of mighty rapture, joy intense,
That far outlives its subsidence.
The draught shall strike Life's narrow goal,
And make an outlet for his soul,
That down the ages, broad and far,
Shall brighten like a rising star.
In other forms his pulse shall beat,
His spirit walk in other feet,
And every generous hope and aim
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