He had stood there since morning, and borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on, and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,
Th' inhuman soldier smote him, and with threats
Of torture to his children summoned back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.
'Twas evening, and the half descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street
Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,
But now he was alone, and from his nerves
The needless strength departed, and he leaned
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him,
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,
Gazing upon his grief. Th' Athenian's cheek
Flush'd as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandon'd limbs,
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair,
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes,
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.
The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away
Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a veil of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.
Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,
The vulture at his vitals, and the links
Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh,
And as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye,
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip
Were like the winged God's, breathing from his flight.
"Bring me the captive now!
My hands feels skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow
Upon the bended heavens-around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.
Ha! bind him on his back!
Look! as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick-or he faints!-stand with the cordial near!
Now-bend him to the rack!
Press down the poison'd links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh !
Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha gray-haired, and so strong!
How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!
'Pity' thee! So I do!
I pity the dumb victim at the altar
But does the rob'd priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee though I knew
A thousand lives were perishing in thine-
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?
"Hereafter!" Ay-hereafter!
A whip to keep a coward to his track!
What gave death ever from his kingdom back
To check the sceptic's laughter?
Come from the grave to-morrow with that story
And I may take some softer path to glory.
No, no, old man! we die
Ev'n as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, ev'n as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye-
For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.
Yet there's a deathless name!
A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn-
And though its crown of flame
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars! I'd bind it on!
Ay-though it bid me rifle.
My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirstThough every life-strung nerve be maddened first— Though it should bid me stifle
The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, And taunt its mother till my brain went wild
All-I would do it all
Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot
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