THE GOLDEN JOURNEY

All day he drowses by the sail

With dreams of her, and all night long

The broken waters are at song

Of how she lingers, wild and pale,

When all the temple lights are dumb,

And weaves her spells to make him come.

The wide sea traversed, he will stand

With straining eyes, until the shoal

Green water from the prow shall roll

Upon the yellow strip of sand —

Searching some fern-hid tangled way

Into the forest old and grey.

Then he will leap upon the shore,

And cast one look up at the sun,

Over his loosened locks will run

The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour

Its rapture out to make life seem

Too sweet to leave for such a dream.

But all the swifter will he go

Through the pale, scattered asphodels,

Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells,

To where the ancient basins throw

Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones

Of gold upon the temple stones.

There noon keeps just a twilight trace;

Twixt love and hate, and death and birth,

No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth

May enter in that haunted place.

All day the fountain sphynx lets drip

Slow drops of silence from her lip.

To hold the porch-roof slender girls

Of milk-white marble stand arow;

Doubt never blurs a single brow,

And never the noon's faintness curls

From their expectant hush of pride

The lips the god has glorified.

But these things he will barely view,

Or if he stay to heed them, still

But as the lark the lights that spill

From out the sun it soars unto,

Where, past the splendors and the heats,

The sun's heart's self forever beats.

For wide the brazen doors will swing

Soon as his sandals touch the pave;

The anxious light inside will wave

And tremble to a lunar ring

About the form that lieth prone

Before the dreadful altar-stone.

She will not look or speak or stir,

But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white

Will lie amid the pool of light,

Until, grown faint with thirst of her,

He shall bow down his face and sink

Breathless beneath the eddying brink.

Then a swift music will begin,

And as the brazen doors shut slow,

There will be hurrying to and fro,

And lights and calls and silver din,

While through the star-freaked swirl of air

The god's sweet cruel eyes will stare.