  Apollo never smote as lovely a strain, When swan-necked Hebe stayed her nectared bowl Among the circled and reclining gods, To lend a listening ear and smile on him, As that the Tritons blew on wreathÉd horns When Aphrodite, the cold ocean-foam, In lovely labor, from its singing snow Upheaved her dazzling form, like some white pearl, Naked and fresh within its ocean shell, Borne shoreward from its bed of golden sponge And crimson coral by the mad monsoon. Wind-rocked she swung, her white feet on the sea; And music raved down the slant western winds: With swollen jowls the Tritons puffed their conchs, Where, breasting with white bosoms the green waves, That laughed in ripples at Love's misty feet, Oceanids with dimple-dented palms Smote sidewise the pale bubbles of the foam, Weaving a silver rainbow round her form. Around her dolphins sparkled in the spray, And Nereids sang, braiding their streaming locks, Or flung them backward shimm'ring with bells of foam, Till evening lit her loneliest, loveliest star,— That passion-flower of the fields of heaven,— Pale mirrored in the sheen of shadowy seas,— That, like arrested music, o'er the caves The Sirens haunt, hung deep on silent deep,— When, in a hollow pearl, down moon-white waves, The creatures of the ocean danced their queen Unto an island, like a rosy mist That glimmering dreamed upon the glimmering blue. There on the silvery sands beside the sea, Beneath the moon,—narcissus-white,—they met, She naked as a star and crowned with stars, Child of the airy foam and Queen of Love. |
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