The Troubadour

He stood where all the rare voluptuous West,

Like some mad Maenad wine-stained to the breast,

Shot from delirious lips of ruby must

Long, fierce, triumphant smiles wherein hot lust

Swam like a feverish wine exultant tost

High from a golden goblet and so lost.

And all the West, and all the rosy West,

Bathed his frail beauty, hair and throat and breast;

And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows,

A passion flower of men of snows and rose

Beneath the casement of her old red tower

Whereat the lady sat, as white a flower

As ever blew in Provence, and the lace,

Mist-like about her hair, half hid her face

And all its moods which his sweet singing raised,

Sad moods that censured it, sweet moods that praised.

And where the white rose climbing over and over

Up to her wide-flung lattice like a lover,

And gladiolas and deep fleurs-de-lis

Held honey-cups up for the violent bee,

Within her garden by the ivied wall,

Where many a fountain falling musical

Flamed fire-fierce in the eve against it flung,

Like some mad nightingale the minstrel sung: -

"The passion, O! of plunging through and through

Lascivious curls star-litten as light dew,

And jeweled thick, as is the bosomed dusk

Dense scintillant with stars! Oh frenzy rare

Of twisting curling fingers in thy hair!

No touch of balm-beat winds from torrid seas

Were half so satin-soft in sorceries!

No god-like life so sweet as lost to lie

Wrapped strand on strand deep in such hair and die,

Ah love, sweet love!

"The mounting madness and the rapturous pain

With fingers wound in thick, cool curls to strain

All the wild sight deep in thy perilous eyes

So agate polished, where the thoughts that rise

Warm in the heart, like on a witch's glass

Must forth in pictures beautiful and pass;

No Siren sweetness wailed to lyres of gold,

No naked beauty that the Greeks of old

God-bosomed thro' the bursting foam did see

Were potent, love, to tear mine eyes from thee,

Ah love, sweet love!

"Far o'er the sea of old time once a witch,

The fair an, Circe, dwelt, so rich

In marvelous magic, cruel as a god,

She made or unmade lovers at a nod;

Ah, bitter love that made all loves but brute! -

Ah, bitterer thou who mak'st my heart a lute

To lie and languish for thee sad and mute,

Strung high for utterance of the sweetest lay,

Such magic music as Acrasia

And all her lovers swooned to utter bliss, -

And then not wake it with a single kiss,

Ah! cruel, cruel love!"

Knee-deep within the dew-damp grasses there,

Against the stars, that now were everywhere

Flung thro' the perfumed heav'ns of angel hands,

And, linked in tangled labyrinths of bands

Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled

One vast immensity of mazy gold,

He sang, like some hurt creature desolate,

Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate

Hounded and speared to death of heartless men

In old romantic Arden waste; and then

Turned to the one white star, - which like a stone

Of precious worth low on the heaven shone, -

A white, sweet, lovely face and passed away

From the warm flowers and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in pale drapery,

High in the quaint, red tower, did she sigh

To see him, dimming down the purple night,

Lone with his instrument die out of sight

Far in the rose-pleached, musk-drunk avenues,

Far in, far in amid the gleaming dews,

And, left alone but with the sighing rush

Of the wan fountains and the deep night hush,

Weep to the melancholy stars above

Half the lorn night for the desired love?

Or down the rush-strewn halls, where arras old

Billowed with passage of her fold on fold,

Even to the ponderous iron-studded gate,

That shrieked with rust, steal from her lord and wait

Deep in the dingled hyacinth and rose

For him who sang so sweetly erst? - who knows?