"THERE SAT THE WOMEN WEEPING FOR THAMMUZ" THE days begin to wane, and evening lifts Her eyes the sooner towards the vales of sleep; The yellow leaf upon the night-breeze drifts And winter-voices thunder from the deep; Thammuz grows pale in death, the Queen of Shades Mocks sad-eyed Ishtar and her mourning maids. Prostrate along the Babylonish halls, On alabaster floors the women moan, All unadmired the lilac-tinted walls Bespangled wantonly, and sculptured stone; For Thammuz dies; bereft, the Queen of Love; Melt into tears, O Earth, O Heaven above! Let all the Land between the Rivers sigh, And such as ever danced with throbbing veins To Ishtar's music, fill the sodden sky, With lamentation and most doleful strains. Thammuz is dead; no more the shepherd leads His golden flock adown Im's jewelled meads. Proud Larsam of Chaldean cities blest, Famed for the glories of her sun-god's home, Erech, where countless Kings are laid to rest, And Eridhu, wet with the salt sea-foam;— Princes and priests and lustrous maidens there Sing plaintive hymns to Thammuz, young and fair. And out upon Shumir-Accadian plains, Beneath the orient night, the shepherd boy Blows from his oaten pipe the sweet refrains That tell of Ishtar's one-time joy; Ana, lord of the starry realms of space, Roams near to earth seeking the warm god's face. Yet full-zoned Ishtar will not weep for aye, Nor will the land forever saddened be; For Thammuz is not dead, some spring-time day He will appear in greater majesty: Chaldean lovers will take heart again, The Queen of Love will kiss the sons of men.
FROM out the cold house of the north Thor's stalwart children hurtled forth, Forsook their sullen seas; Southward the Gothic waggons rolled, While bards foretold a realm of gold, And fame, and boundless ease. Loud rang the shields with sounding blows, The furious din of war arose Adown the dreary land; But Woden held them in his ken, And safely passed the Teuton men By every hostile band. At length, one day, the host was thrilled At that glad cry the foremost shrilled,— "The sea! A southern sea!" As breathless stood the northmen there, The wind swept through their yellow hair, And sang of empery. Rome's doom was written in their eyes, Fell tumult under sunny skies, Death on the Golden Horn: Now, by the rood, what southron slaves, Or land that any south sea laves, Can face the northern born?
THE dark has passed, and the chill Autumn morn Unrolls her faded glories in the fields; Dead are the gilded air-hosts newly-born, The hardiest flowers droop their sodden shields, For lovely Summer hath cut short her stay— The fickle goddess, loaded with delight, Grown wantonly unconstant, fled away Under a hoar-frost mantle yesternight. In one brief hour, the warm and flashing skies Pale in the marble dawn; we cannot choose, But marvel that hearts turn to stone, and eyes Brimful of passion all their lustre lose. Drear is the morning; love is gone for aye, Love done to death in one bright peerless day.
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