  When the moon is red in the heaven, and under the night Is heard on the winds the thunder of shadowy horses, Then out of the night I arise, and again am a woman; And leap to the back of an ebon steed that knows me, And hound him on in the wake of hoofs that thunder, Of smoking nostrils, and gleaming eyes, and foam-flecked Flanks that glow and flash in the flow of the moonlight; While under the mirk and the moon, out into the blackness, Round the world’s edge with an eerie, mad, echoing laughter, Leaps the long cry of the hate of the wild snake-woman. Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder! Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter! Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into silence, As under the night, out into the blackness forever, Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman! I was a girl of the South, with eyes as tender And dreamy and soft and true as the skies of my people; But I was a slave and an alien captured in battle, And brought to the North by a people ruder and stronger, Who held me as naught but a toy, to be played with and broken, Then thrown aside like a bow that is snapped asunder. Lithe and supple my limbs as the sinuous serpent, And quick as the eye and the tongue of the serpent mine anger That flashed out the fire of my hate on the scorn of my scorners. But hate soon softened to love, as fire into sunlight, When my eyes met the eyes of the chieftain, my lord, and my master. Sweet as the flowers that bloom on the blossoming prairie, Gladder than voices of fountains that dance in the sunlight, Were the new and tremulous fancies that dwelt in my bosom; For he was my king and my sun, and the power of his glance To me as at springtime the returning sun to the landscape, And his touch and the sound of his voice that set my heart throbbing. Sweet were the days of the summer I dwelt in his tent, And glad and loving the nights that I lay on his bosom. But woe, woe, woe, to the summer that fades into autumn, And woe upon woe is the love that dwindles and dies, And ere my hot heart was abrim with its summer of loving I knew that its autumn had come, that his love was another’s— A blue-eyed haughty captive they brought from the East, With the golden flow of a brook from her brow to her girdle. He saw her, he looked on her face, and I was forgotten— Yea, I and the love that fed on my soul in its anguish! Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder! Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter! Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into silence, As under the night, out into the darkness forever, Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman! I bowed my head with its woe to him in my anguish; I veiled my face in my hair like the night of my sorrow; And I plead with him there by the love that was true and forgiving: Oh! my lord and my love, by the days that are past of our loving, Oh! slay thy poor Saki, but send her not forth in her anguish! In the folds of my hair. But he sate there and uttered no answer; And the white woman sate there, and scorned at the woe of my sorrow. Then I bit my tongue through that had prayed for the pity ungiven, And I rose with my hate in my eyes, like the lightning in heaven That leaps red to kill with a hiss like the snake that they called me; And I looked on them there, and I cursed them, the man, and the woman— The man whose lips had kissed my love into being, And the woman whose beauty had withered that love into ashes— With curses so dread and so deep that he rose up and smote me, And hounded me forth like a dog to die in the desert. Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder! Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter! As under the night, out into the blackness for ever, Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman! Then wandered I forth an outcast hounded and beaten; Careless whither I went or living or dying, With that load of despair at my heartstrings wearing to madness. Long and loud I laughed at the heaven that mocked me With its beautiful sounds and its sights and the joy of its being, For I longed but to die and to go to that region of darkness Where I might shroud me and curse in my madness for ever. Far, oh far I fled till my feet were wounded And bruised and cut by the ways unkindly and cruel. Then all the world grew red and the sun as a furnace, And I raved till I knew no more for a horrible season. Then I arose, and stood like one in a dream Who, after long years of forgetting, sudden remembers Then sending a curse to the heart of the night sky, I turned me And fled like the wind of the winter, the sound of whose footstep is vengeance. Late, when the moon had lowered, I entered his village, And threading the silent streets came to the well-known tent-door, And, dragging aside the skins, with serpentine motion Entered now as a thief where once I had entered as mistress. And there in the gleam of the moon, with the flame of her hair on his bosom, Lay the woman I hated like hell with the man I loved clasped to her heart. Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder! Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter! Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into silence, |
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