  All day he drowses by the sail With dreams of her, and all night long The broken waters are at song Of how she lingers, wild and pale, When all the temple lights are dumb, And weaves her spells to make him come. The wide sea traversed, he will stand With straining eyes, until the shoal Green water from the prow shall roll Upon the yellow strip of sand— Searching some fern-hid tangled way Into the forest old and grey. Then he will leap upon the shore, And cast one look up at the sun, Over his loosened locks will run The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour Its rapture out to make life seem Too sweet to leave for such a dream. But all the swifter will he go Through the pale, scattered asphodels, Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells, To where the ancient basins throw Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones Of gold upon the temple stones. There noon keeps just a twilight trace; Twixt love and hate, and death and birth, No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth May enter in that haunted place. All day the fountain sphynx lets drip Slow drops of silence from her lip. To hold the porch-roof slender girls Of milk-white marble stand arow; Doubt never blurs a single brow, And never the noon's faintness curls From their expectant hush of pride The lips the god has glorified. But these things he will barely view, Or if he stay to heed them, still But as the lark the lights that spill From out the sun it soars unto, Where, past the splendors and the heats, The sun's heart's self forever beats. For wide the brazen doors will swing Soon as his sandals touch the pave; The anxious light inside will wave And tremble to a lunar ring About the form that lieth prone Before the dreadful altar-stone. She will not look or speak or stir, But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white Will lie amid the pool of light, Until, grown faint with thirst of her, He shall bow down his face and sink Breathless beneath the eddying brink. Then a swift music will begin, And as the brazen doors shut slow, There will be hurrying to and fro, And lights and calls and silver din, While through the star-freaked swirl of air The god's sweet cruel eyes will stare. |
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