  I THOUGHT to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver, as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.” I said: “a girl that’s dead some hundred years; a poet—what of that? for in the islands, in the haunts of Greek Ionia, Rhodes and Cyprus, girls are cheap.” I said, to test his mood, to make him rage or laugh or sing or weep, “in Greek Ionia and in Cyprus, many girls are found with wreaths and apple-branches.” “Only a hundred years or two or three, has she lain dead he said, “I want a garden,” and I thought he wished to make a terrace on the hill, bend the stream to it, set out daffodils, plant Phrygian violets, such was his will and whim, I thought, to name and watch each flower. His was no garden bright with Tyrian violets, his was a shelter wrought of flame and spirit, and as he flung her name against the dark, I thought the iris-flowers that lined the path must be the ghost of Nossis. “Who made the wreath, for what man was it wrought? song, my loveliest, say Meleager brought to Diodes, (a gift for that enchanting friend) memories with names of poets. He sought for Moero, lilies, and those many, red-lilies for Anyte, for Sappho, roses, with those few, he caught that breath of the sweet-scented leaf of iris, the myrrh-iris, to set beside the tablet and the wax which Love had burnt, when scarred across by Nossis.” when she wrote: “I Nossis stand by this: I state that love is sweet: if you think otherwise assert what beauty or what charm retains its grace? “Honey” you say: honey? I say “I spit honey out of my mouth: nothing is second-best after the sweet of Eros.” I Nossis stand and state that he whom Love neglects has naught, no flower, no grace, who lacks that rose, her kiss.” I thought to hear him speak the girl might rise and make the garden silver as the white moon breaks, “Nossis,” he cried, “a flame.” |
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