And the legend, I feel, is a part Of the hunger and thirst of the heart, The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain. 18 EPIMETHEUS, OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT. HAVE I dreamed? or was it real, What I saw as in a vision, When to marches hymeneal In the land of the Ideal Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian? What are these the guests whose glances That with dithyrambic dances Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses, And from loose, dishevelled tresses Fall the hyacinthine blossoms! O my songs! whose winsome measures Filled my heart with secret rapture! Children of my golden leisures! Must even your delights and pleasures Fade and perish with the capture? Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous, When they came to me unbidden; Voices single, and in chorus, Like the wild birds singing o'er us Disenchantment! Disillusion! Lassitude, renunciation ? Not with steeper fall nor faster, From the sun's serene dominions, Not through brighter realms nor vaster, In swift ruin and disaster, Icarus fell with shattered pinions! Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora! Why did mighty Jove create thee Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora, Beautiful as young Aurora, If to win thee is to hate thee? No, not hate thee! for this feeling Is but passionate appealing, A prophetic whisper stealing O'er the chords of our existence. Him whom thou dost once enamour, In life's discord, strife, and clamor, Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest. Weary hearts by thee are lifted, Struggling souls by thee are strengthened, Clouds of fear asunder rifted, Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, Lives, like days in summer, lengthened! Therefore art thou ever dearer, O my Sibyl, my deceiver! For thou makest each mystery clearer, When thou fillest my heart with fever! Muse of all the Gifts and Graces! Though the fields around us wither, There are ampler realms and spaces, Let us turn and wander thither! |