Ariel In The Cloven Pine
NOW the frosty stars are gone:
I have watched them one by one,
Fading on the shores of Dawn.
Round and full the glorious sun
Walks with level step the spray,
Through this vestibule of Day,
While the wolves that late did howl
Slink to dens and converts foul,
Guarded by the demon owl,
Who, last night, with mocking croon,
Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,
And with eyes that blankly glared
On my direful torment stared.
The lark is flickering in the light;
Still he nightingale doth sing;—
All the isle, alive with Spring,
Lies, a jewel of delight,
On the blue sea’s heaving breast;
Not a breath from out the west,
But some balmy smell doth bring
From the sprouting myrtle buds,
Or from meadowy vales that lie
Like a green inverted sky,
Which the yellow cowslip stars,
And the bloomy almond woods,
Cloud-like, cross with roseate bars.
All is life that I can spy,
To the farthest sea and sky,
And my own the only pain
Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.
In the gnarled and cloven Pine
Where that hell-born hag did chain me,
All this orb of cloudless shine,
All this youth in Nature’s veins
Tingling with the season’s wine,
With a sharper torment pain me.
Pansies in soft April rains
Fill their stalks with honeyed sap
Drawn from Earth’s prolific lap;
But the sluggish blood she brings
To the tough Pine’s hundred rings,
Closer locks their cruel hold,
Closer draws the scaly bark
Round the crevice, damp and cold,
Where my useless, damp and cold,
Sealing me in iron dark.
By this coarse and alien state
Is my dainty essence wronged;
Finer senses, that belonged
To my freedom, chafe at Fate,
Till the happier elves I hate,
Who in moonlight dances turn
Underneath the palmy fern,
Or in light and twinkling bands
Follow on with linkëd hands
To the ocean’s yellow sands.
Primrose-eyes each morning ope
In their cool, deep beds of grass;
Violets make the airs that pass
Telltales of their fragrant slope.
I can see them where they spring
Never brushed by fairy wing.
All those corners I can spy
In the island’s solitude,
Where the dew is never dry,
Nor the miser bees intrude.
Cups of rarest hue are there,
Full of perfumed wine undrained,—
Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned
Canopied by maiden-hair.
Pearls I see upon the sands,
Never touched by other hands,
And the rainbow bubbles shine
On the ridged and frothy brine,
Tenantless of voyager
Till they burst in vacant air.
Oh, the song that sung might be,
And the mazy dances woven,
Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea
And the Pine been never cloven!
Many years my direst pain
Has made the wave-rocked isle complain
Winds that from the Cyclades
Came to blow in wanton riot
Round its shore’s enchanted quiet,
Bore my wailings on the seas:
Sorrowing birds in autumn West
Through the world with my lament.
Still the bitter fate is mine,
All delight unshared to see,
Smarting in the cloven Pine,
While I wait the tardy axe
Which, perchance, shall set me free
From the demand witch Sycorax.
Sicilian Wine
I' ve drunk Sicilia's crimson wine!
The blazing vintage pressed
From grapes on Etna's breast,
What time the mellowing autumn sun
did shine:
I ‘ve drunk the wine!
I feel its blood divine
Poured on the sluggish tide of mine,
Till, kindling slow,
Its fountains glow
With the light that swims
On their trembling brims,
And a molten sunrise floods my limbs!
What do I here?
I ‘ve drunk the wine,
And lo! the bright blue heaven is clear
Above the ocean's bluer sphere,
Seen through the long arcades of pine,
Inwoven and arched with vine!
The glades are green below;
The temple shines afar;
Above, old Etna's snow
Sparkles with many an icy star:
I see the mountain and its marble wall,
Where gleaming waters fall
And voices call,
Singing and calling
Like chorals falling
Through pearly doors of some Olympian hall,
Where Love holds bacchanal.
Sicilian wine! Sicilian wine!
Summer, and Music, and Song divine
Are thine, — all thine!
A sweet wind over the roses plays;
The wild bee hums at my languid ear;
The mute-winged moth serenely strays
On the downy atmosphere,
Like hovering Sleep, that overweighs
My lids with his shadow, yet comes not near.
Who ‘11 share with me this languor?
With me the juice of Etna sip?
Who press the goblet's lip,
Refusing mine the while with love's enchanting
anger?
Would I were young Adonis now!
With what an ardor bold
Within my arms I ‘d fold
Fair Aphrodite of Idalian mould,
And let the locks that hide her gleaming brow
Fall o'er my shoulder as she lay
With the fair swell of her immortal breast
Upon my bosom pressed,
Giving Olympian thrills to its enamored clay!
Bacchus and Pan have fled:
No heavy Satyr crushes with his tread
The verdure of the meadow ground,
But in their stead
The Nymphs are leading a bewildering round,
Vivid and light, as o'er some flowering rise
A dance of butterflies,
Their tossing hair with slender lilies crowned,
And greener ivy than o'erran
The brows of Bacchus and the reed of Pan!
I faint, I die:
The flames expire,
That made my blood a fluid fire:
Steeped in delicious weariness I lie.
O, lay me in some pearled shell,
Soft-balanced on the rippling sea,
Where sweet, cheek-kissing airs may wave
Their fresh wings over me;
Let me be wafted with the swell
Of Nereid voices; let no billow rave
To break the cool green crystal of the sea.
For I will wander free
Past the blue islands and the fading shores,
To Calpe and the far Azores,
And still beyond, and wide away,
Beneath the dazzling wings of tropic day, .
Where, on unruffled seas,
Sleep the green isles of the Hesperides.
The Triton's trumpet calls:
I hear, I wake, I rise:
The sound peals up the skies,
And mellowed Echo falls
In answer back from Heaven's cerulean walls.
Give me the lyre that Orpheus played upon,
Or bright Hyperion, —
Nay, rather come, thou of the mighty bow,
Come thou below,
Leaving thy steeds unharnessed go!
Sing as thou wilt, my voice shall dare to follow,
And I will sun me in thine awful glow,
Divine Apollo!
Then thou thy lute shalt twine
With Bacchic tendrils of the glorious vine
That gave Sicilian wine:
And henceforth when the breezes run
Over its clusters, ripening in the sun,
The leaves shall still be playing,
Unto thy lute its melody repaying,
And I, that quaff, shall evermore be free
To mount thy car and ride the heavens with thee!
