Queen of the shadows, Maid and Wife,
Twifold in essence, as in life,
The lamp of Death, the star of Birth,
Half cradled and half mourned by Earth,
By Hell half won, half lost! aid me
To sing thy fond Hypsipyle,
Thy bosom's mate who, unafraid,
Renounced for thee what part she had
In sun and wind upon the hill,
In dawn about the mere, in still
Woodlands, in kiss of lapping wave,
In laughter, in love—all this she gave!—
And shared thy dream-life, visited
The sunless country of the dead,
There to abide with thee, their Queen,
In that gray region, shadow-seen
By them that cast no shadows, yet
Themselves are shadows. Nor forget,
KorÉ, her love made manifest
To thee, familiar of her breast
And partner of her whispering mouth.

Thee too, Our Lady of the South,
Uranian Kypris, I invoke,
Regent of starry space, with stroke
Of splendid wing, in whose white wake
Stream those who, filled with thee, forsake
Their clinging shroudy clots, and rise,
Lover and loved, to thy pure skies,
To thy blue realm! O lady, touch
My lips with rue, for she loved much.

What poet in what cloistered nook,
Indenting in what roll of a book
His rhymes, can voice the tides of love?
Nay, thrilling lark, nay, moaning dove,
The nightingale's full-chargÉd throat
That cheereth now, and now doth gloat,
And now recordeth bitter-sweet
Longing, too wise to image it:
These be your minstrels, lovers! Choose
From their winged choir your urgent Muse;
Let her your speechless joys relate
Which men with words sophisticate,
Striving by reasons make appear
To head what heart proclaims so clear
To heart; as if by wit to wis
What mouth to mouth tells in a kiss,
Or in their syllogisms dry
Freeze a swift glance's cogency.
Nay, but the heart's so music-fraught,
Music is all in love, words naught.
One heart's a rote, with music stored
Though mute; but two hearts make a chord
Of piercing music. One alone
Is nothing: two make the full tone.

On Enna's uplands, on a lea
Between the mountains and the sea,
Shadowed anon by wandering cloud,
Or flickering wings of birds a-crowd,
And now all golden in the sun,
See KorÉ, see her maidens run
Hither and thither through those hours
Of dawn among the wide-eyed flowers,
While gentian, crocus, asphodel
(With rosy star in each white bell),
Anemone, blood-red with rings
Of paler fire, that plant that swings
A crimson cluster in the wind
They pluck, or sit anon to bind
Of these earth-stars a coronet
For their smooth-tressÉd Queen, who yet
Strays with her darling interlaced,
Hypsipyle the grave, the chaste—
Her whose gray shadow-life with his
Who singeth now for ever is.
She, little slim thing, KorÉ's mate,
Child-faced, gray-eyed, of sober gait,
Of burning mind and passion pent
To image-making, ever went
Where wonned her Mistress; for those two
By their hearts' grace together grew,
The one to need, the one to give
(As women must if they would live,
Who substance win by waste of self
And only spend to hoard their pelf:
"O heart, take all of mine!" "O heart,
That which thou tak'st of thee is part—
No robbery therefore: mine is thine,
Take then!"): so she and Proserpine
Intercommunion'd each bright day,
And when night fell together lay
Cradled in arms, or cheek to cheek
Whispered the darkness out. Thou meek
And gentle vision! let me tell
Thy beauties o'er I love so well:
Thy sweet low bosom's rise and fall,
Pulsing thy heart's clear madrigal;
Or how the blue beam from thine eyes
Imageth all love's urgencies;
Thy lips' frail fragrance, as of flowers
Remembered in penurious hours
Of winter-exile; of thy brow,
Not written as thy breast of snow
With love's faint charact'ry, for his wing
Leaves not the heart long! Last I sing
Thy thin quick fingers, in whose pleaching
Lieth all healing, all good teaching—
Wherewith, touching my discontent,
I know how thou art eloquent!
Remember'd joy, Hypsipyle!
Now may that serve to comfort me,
While I, O Maiden dedicate,
Seek voice for singing thy gray Fate!

Now, as they went, one heart in two,
Brusht to the knees by flowers, by dew
Anointed, by the wind caressed,
By the light kissed on eyes and breast,
'Twas KorÉ talked; Hypsipyle
Listened, with eyes far-set, for she
Of speech was frugal, voicing low
And rare her heart's deep underflow—
Content to lie, like fallow sweet
For rain or sun to cherish it,
Or scattered seed substance to find
In her deep-funded, quiet mind.
And thus the Goddess: "Blest art thou,
Hypsipyle, who canst not know
Until the hour strikes what must come
To pass! But I foresee the doom
And stay to meet it. Even here
The place, and now the hour!" Then fear
Took her who spake so fearless, cold
Threaded her span class="i0">Hypsipyle, to whose fond sprite
I vow my praise while I have light.

Dumbly she wandered there, as pale
With lack of light, with form as frail
As those poor hollow congeners
Whose searching eyes encountered hers,
Petitioning as mute as she
Some grain of hope, where none might be,
Daring not yet to voice their moan
To her whose case was not their own;
For where they go like breath in a shell
That wails, my love goes quick in Hell.

Alas, for her, the sweet and slim!
Slowly she pines; her eyes grow dim
With seeking; her smooth, sudden breasts
Hang languidly; those little nests
For kisses which her dimples were,
In cheeks graved hollow now by care
Vanish, and sharply thrusts her chin,
And sharp her bones of arm and shin.
Reproach she looks, about, above,
Denied her light, denied her love,
Denied for what she sacrificed,
Doomed to be fruitless agonist.
(O God, and I must see her fade,
Must see and anguish—in my shade!)
Nor help nor comfort gat she now
From her whose need called forth her vow;
For close in arms Queen KorÉ dwelt
In that great tower AÏdoneus built
To cherish her; deep in his bed,
Loved as the Gods love whom they wed;
Turned from pale maiden to pale wife,
Pale now with love's insatiate strife
First to appease, and then renew
The wild desire to mingle two
Natures, to long, to seek, to shun,
To have, to give, to make two one
That must be two if they would each
Learn all the lore that love can teach.
So strove the mistress, while the maid
Went alien among the dead,
Unspoken, speaking none, but watcht
By them who knew themselves outmatcht
By her, translated whole, nor guessed
What miseries gnawed within that breast,
Which could be toucht, which could give meat
To babe; which was not eye-deceit
As theirs, poor phantoms. So went she
Grudged but unscathed beside the sea,
Or sat alone by that sad strand
Nursing her worn cheek in her hand;
And did not mark, as day on day
Lengthened the arch of changeless gray,
How she was shadowed, how to her
Stretcht arms another prisoner;
Nor knew herself desirable
By any thankless guest of Hell—
Withal each phantom seemed no less
Whole-natured to her heedlessness.

Midway her round of solitude
She used to haunt a dead sea-wood
Where among boulders lifeless trees
Stuck rigid fingers to the breeze—
That stream of faint hot air that flits
Aimless at noon. 'Tis there she sits
Hour after hour, and as a dove
Croons when her breast is ripe for love,
So sings this exile, quiet, sad chants
Of love, yet knows not what she wants;
And singing there in undertone,
Is one day answered by the moan
Of hidden mourner; but no fear
Hath she for sound so true, though near;
Nay, but sings out her elegy,
Which, like an echo, answers he.
Again she sings; he suits her mood,
Nor breaks upon her solitude:
So she, choragus, calls the tune,
And as she leads he follows soon.
As bird with bird vies in the brake,
She sings no note he will not take—
As when she pleads, "Ah, my lost love,
The night is dark thou art not of,"
Quick cometh answering the phrase,
"O love, let all our nights be days!"
This, rapt, with beating heart, she heeds
And follows, "Sweet love, my heart bleeds!
Come, stay the wound thyself didst give";
Then he, "I come to bid thee live."
And so they carol, and her heart
Swells to believe his counterpart,
And strophÉ striketh clear, which he
Caps with his brave antistrophe;
And as a maiden waxes bold,
And opens what should not be told
When all her auditory she sees
Within her mirror, so to trees
And rocks, and sullen sounding main
She empties all her passioned pain;
And "love, love, love," her burden is,
And "I am starving for thee," his.
Moved, melted, all on fire she stands,
Holding abroad her quivering hands,
Raises her sweet eyes faint with tears
And dares to seek him whom she hears;
And from her parted lips a sigh
Stealeth, as knowing he is nigh
And her fate on her—then she'd shun
That which she seeks; but the thing's done.

Hollow-voiced, dim, spake her a shade,
"O thou that comest, nymph or maid—
If nymph, then maiden, since for aye
Virgin is immortality,
Nor love can change what Death cannot—
Look on me by love new-begot;
Look on me, child new-born, nor start
To see my form who knowest my heart;
For it is thine. O Mother and Wife,
Take then my love—thou gavest it life!"

So spake one close: to whom she lent
The wonder of her eyes' content—
That lucent gray, as if moonlight
Shone through a sapphire in the night—
And saw him faintly imaged, rare
As wisp of cloud on hillside bare,
A filamental form, a wraith
Shaped like that man who in the faith
Of one puts all his hope: who stood
Trembling in her near neighbourhood,
A thing of haunted eyes, of slim
And youthful seeming; yet not dim,
Yet not

1911.

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