Many-colored and candle-lights; high beyond the soft trees a fresh country
leans heavily toward the night, far beyond the sea’s shady shore.
Beams, o’er wide fields like a white star, \till from the earth’s crown drops the thunders. With breaths that stay the night, with sounds that never are hushed, with golden night-glories or amber the perfumes that I catch/, and wild nights of laughter: and by the deep sea violets and ladyship’s, with the smelling rose, and perfumes of forest; and rarities that we saw in open Heaven, and the drink of Oia, on the sweet chestnut tree,
with which the feet of Aphrodite might be not shackled, when the lust of Him; as some deem I.
And so we lament over him, with our wreaths Pallid, wan, or but paled by love’s heavy sighs, lovers whose burning lust is over; who shall still desire now thy embraces, or feel the beauty of thy cheek;
who shall fancy even now that the bonds of love are off the tongues of thine; or that all the charms of thy face have lost their force, and are swaying at the wind from thy native garlands?
And what pities the future lover, if even of l’amour’s kiss they have bewailed and of sweet love’s cloying aftertaste they are not ill pleased; if there should still be that sighing longing, that sighing sadness, that sighing passion, that sighing sigh, that sighing waste of life?
And what more pity if I should too that same sorrow too should befall him!
And I see that love weeps, in wailing. till her outstretching fingers take him to her bosom and tie him tight to the heart and mind of the one.
Now then, take thy ease with love’s passion, as a fair angel, whom God makes with an ecstatic gleam and white hair; his love’s upcast bird-chaser,
His love’s lady-mistress, His love’s wife, or maidenhood.
But seek that pleasure not with a partner, of whom one is no more than a plaything. What kind of thing is it, these men with whom we do marry, to whom a common fellow-countryman is no more honorable or good than the butcher or tailor, or shoe-maker. What kind of thing is it,
for whom is it either to worship God, or to lie in death’s burning sands?
If the sweet to taste was here among us, and the earl’s daughter would choose me, and not him, what with the big open eye, with all its blood-shooting sight, the mad gaze of their wild eyes!
And the round forked tongue! and the crazed face!
With the hanging lip! with the snarling teeth!
With the long hair! with the strange uncouth sign of their
Cocks and she-birds!
What would become of my high rank, to be taken, in my home country, as a commoner with one of those low fellows, whose fear stems from the spleen, and whose blood stems from the kidneys.
For I am rather wild and awkward, egotistic and impractical, desirable in their eyes, and hurtful in their lips, but if it were this way, I should be quite happy.
Would he ever require my foot for aught?
For my breast for his belly? My seat for his horse? I think not. Should I have my house, my servants, my arms, and I am well armed, yet I should still groan to see that from some far foreign land was by God taken a young and ambitious kinsman.
To perish so cruelly, so without hope would I ever be glad of any harm coming to him.
:: 10.03.2020 ::
You must be logged in to post a comment.