Enamels and Cameos and other Poems. Gautier Théophile

ier

      Enamels and Cameos and other Poems

      THE GOD AND THE OPAL

TO THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

      Gray caught he from the cloud, and green from earth,

      And from a human breast the fire he drew,

      And life and death were blended in one dew.

      A sunbeam golden with the morning's mirth,

      A wan, salt phantom from the sea, a girth

      Of silver from the moon, shot colour through

      The soul invisible, until it grew

      To fulness, and the Opal Song had birth.

      And then the god became the artisan.

      With rarest skill he made his gem to glow,

      Carving and shaping it to beauty such

      That down the cycles it shall gleam to man,

      And evermore man's wonderment shall know

      The perfect finish, the immortal touch.

      Agnes Lee.

      PREFACE

      When empires lay riven apart,

      Fared Goethe at battle time's thunder

      To fragrant oases of art,

      To weave his Divan into wonder.

      Leaving Shakespeare, he pondered the note

      Of Nisami, and heard in his leisure

      The hoopoe's weird monody float,

      And set it to soft Orient measure.

      As Goethe at Weimar delayed

      And dreamed in the fair garden closes,

      And, questing in sun or in shade,

      With Hafiz plucked redolent roses, —

      I, closed from the tempest that shook

      My window with fury impassioned,

      Sat dreaming, and, safe in my nook,

      Enamels and Cameos fashioned.

      AFFINITY – A PANTHEISTIC MADRIGAL

      On an ancient temple gleaming,

      Two great blocks of marble high

      Thrice a thousand years lay dreaming

      Dreams against an Attic sky.

      Set within one silver whiteness,

      Two wave-tears for Venus shed,

      Two fair pearls of orient brightness,

      Through the waste of water sped.

      In the Generalife's fresh closes,

      By a Moorish light illumed,

      Two delicious, tender roses

      By a fountain met and bloomed.

      In the balm of May's bright weather,

      Where the domes of Venice rise,

      Lighted on Love's nest together

      Two pale doves from azure skies.

      All things vanish into wonder,

      Marble, pearl, dove, rose on tree,

      Pearl shall melt and marble sunder,

      Flower shall fade and bird shall flee!

      Not a smallest part but lowly

      Through the crucible must pass,

      Where all shapes are molten slowly

      In the universal mass.

      Then as gradual Time discloses

      Marbles melt to whitest skin,

      Roses red to lips of roses,

      And anew the lives begin.

      And again the doves are plighted

      In the hearts of lovers, while

      Ocean pearls are reunited,

      Set within a coral smile.

      Thus affinity comes welling;

      By its beauty everywhere

      Soul a sister-soul foretelling,

      All awakened and aware.

      Quickened by a zephyr sunny,

      Or a perfume, subtlewise,

      As the bee unto the honey,

      Atom unto atom flies.

      And remembered are the hours

      In the temple, down the blue,

      And the talks amid the flowers,

      Near the fount of crystal dew,

      Kisses warm, and on the royal

      Golden domes the wings that beat;

      For the atoms all are loyal,

      And again must love and greet.

      Love forgotten wakes imperious,

      For the past is never dead,

      And the rose with joy delirious

      Breathes again from lips of red.

      Marble on the flesh of maiden

      Feels its own white bloom, and faint

      Knows the dove a murmur laden

      With the echo of its plaint,

      Till resistance giveth over,

      And the barriers fall undone,

      And the stranger is the lover,

      And affinity hath won!

      You before whose face I tremble,

      Say – what past we know not of

      Called our fates to reassemble, —

      Pearl or marble, rose or dove?

      THE POEM OF WOMAN MARBLE OF PAROS

      Unto the dreamer once whose heart she had,

      As she was showing forth her treasures rare,

      Minded she was to read a poem fair,

      The poem of her form with beauty glad.

      First stately and superb she swept before

      His gazing eyes, with high, Infanta mien,

      Trailing behind her all the splendid sheen

      Of nacarat floods of velvet that she wore.

      Thus at the opera had he watched her bend

      From out her box, her body one bright flame,

      When all the air was ringing with her name,

      And every song made her fair praise ascend.

      Then had her art another way, for look!

      The weighty velvet dropped, and in its place

      A pale and cloudy fabric proved the grace

      Of every line her glowing body took;

      Till softly from her shoulder marble-sweet

      The veil diaphanous fell, the folds whereof

      Came fluttering downward like a snowy dove,

      To nestle in the wonder of her feet.

      She posed as for Apelles pridefully,

      A lovely flesh and marble womanhood: —

      Anadyomene,