INTIMATIONS.

Is it uneasy moonlight,

On the restless field, that stirs?

Or wild white meadow-blossoms

The night-wind bends and blurs?

Is it the dolorous water,

That sobs in the wood and sighs?

Or heart of an ancient oak-tree,

That breaks and, sighing, dies?

The wind is vague with the shadows

That wander in No-Man's Land;

The water is dark with the voices

That weep on the Unknown's strand.

O ghosts of the winds who call me!

O ghosts of the whispering waves!

As sad as forgotten flowers,

That die upon nameless graves!

What is this thing you tell me

In tongues of a twilight race,

Of death, with the vanished features,

Mantled, of my own face?

The old enigmas of the deathless dawns,

And riddles of the all immortal eves,—

That still o'er Delphic lawns

Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves —

I read with new-born eyes,

Remembering how, a slave,

I lay with breast bared for the sacrifice,

Once on a temple's pave.

Or, crowned with hyacinth and helichrys,

How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,—

Hearing the magadis

Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,—

‘ Mid chanting priests I trod,

With never a sigh or pause,

To give my life to pacify a god,

And save my country's cause.

Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,

And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,

How with mad torches there —

Reddening the cedars of Cithaeron's peaks —

With gesture and fierce glance,

Lascivious Maenad bands

Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance,

With Bacchanalian hands.

The music now that lays

Dim lips against my ears,

Some wild sad thing it says,

Unto my soul, of years

Long passed into the haze

Of tears.

Meseems, before me are

The dark eyes of a queen,

A queen of Istakhar:

I seem to see her lean

More lovely than a star

Of mien.

A slave, I stand before

Her jeweled throne; I kneel,

And, in a song, once more

My love for her reveal;

How once I did adore

I feel.

Again her dark eyes gleam;

Again her red lips smile;

And in her face the beam

Of love that knows no guile;

And so she seems to dream

A while.

Out of her deep hair then

A rose she takes — and I

Am made a god o'er men!

Her rose, that here did lie

When I, in th’ wild-beasts’ den,

Did die.

Old paintings on its wainscots,

And, in its oaken hall,

Old arras; and the twilight

Of slumber over all.

Old grandeur on its stairways;

And, in its haunted rooms,

Old souvenirs of greatness,

And ghosts of dead perfumes.

The winds are phantom voices

Around its carven doors;

The moonbeams, specter footsteps

Upon its polished floors.

Old cedars build around it

A solitude of sighs;

And the old hours pass through it

With immemorial eyes.

But more than this I know not;

Nor where the house may be;

Nor what its ancient secret

And ancient grief to me.

All that my soul remembers

Is that,— forgot almost,—

Once, in a former lifetime,

‘ Twas here I loved and lost.

In eoens of the senses,

My spirit knew of yore,

I found the Isle of Circe,

And felt her magic lore;

And still the soul remembers

What flesh would be once more.

She gave me flowers to smell of

That wizard branches bore,

Of weird and sorcerous beauty,

Whose stems dripped human gore —

Their scent when I remember

I know that world once more.

She gave me fruits to eat of

That grew beside the shore,

Of necromantic ripeness,

With human flesh at core —

Their taste when I remember

I know that life once more.

And then, behold! a serpent,

That glides my face before,

With eyes of tears and fire

That glare me o'er and o'er —

I look into its eyeballs,

And know myself once more.

I have looked in the eyes of poesy,

And sat in song's high place;

And the beautiful spirits of music

Have spoken me face to face;

Yet here in my soul there is sorrow

They never can name nor trace.

I have walked with the glamour gladness,

And dreamed with the shadow sleep;

And the presences, love and knowledge,

Have smiled in my heart's red keep;

Yet here in my soul there is sorrow

For the depth of their gaze too deep.

The love and the hope God grants me,

The beauty that lures me on,

And the dreams of folly and wisdom

That thoughts of the spirit don,

Are but masks of an ancient sorrow

Of a life long dead and gone.

Was it sin? or a crime forgotten?

Of a love that loved too well?

That sat on a throne of fire

A thousand years in hell?

That the soul with its nameless sorrow

Remembers but can not tell?