Ere they parted for Cythera
When the spring had reached its bloom,
Phyllis, Doris and Neaera
Peeped into their pictured room,
Wished to go, yet wished to linger,
Lifted each a taper finger,
Threw a kiss towards their portraits set in walls of rose brocade.

Where the beeches lift a curtain
Over shifting sunlit scenes,
They with footsteps light and certain
Used to dance like fairy queens;
Now they speed beneath the beeches
Till the path the water reaches
And the bay just softly ripples by a marble balustrade.

Purple were the sails that beckoned
And the deck was ivory,
Love stood smiling there and reckoned
His embarking company;
Every mast wore silver sheathing,
Music in the air was breathing,
In the rigging little laughing cupids upwards climbed and strayed.

On they sailed through fields of azure,
White was all their furrowed way,
Melting in a blue erasure,
Melting fast like yesterday;
Radiant Hope still steered them hoping,
Steered them past the woodlands sloping,
Where the doves descend and flutter on an ancient colonnade.

On they passed through golden hazes,
Watching distant peaks of snow,
On through shadowed island mazes,
Where the dreamy spices blow;
Till the moon herself was setting,
And the dew fell fast and wetting,
And the silver masts no image on the blackening waves displayed.

Frayed are now the rose-red panels
Filled with squares of rare brocade,
In the ceiling Time carves channels
Where the frescoes slowly fade;
Chipped are now the scrolls of plaster,
Which a skilled Italian master
Moulded all along the cornice, and with tips of gold o’erlaid.

But the shallow oval spaces
Underneath the white festoons,
Hold the tender pastel faces
Waiting endless afternoons;
For they never touched Cythera,
Phyllis, Doris, and Neaera,
And again they never landed by the marble balustrade.