30
PIPPA PASSES.
This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red
Bistre and azure by Bessarion’s scribe—
Read this line … no, shame—Homer’s be the Greek
First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!
This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type
With faded yellow blossoms ’twixt page and page,
To mark great places with due gratitude;
“He said, and on Antinous directed
A bitter shaft” … a flower blots out the rest!
Again upon your search? My statues, then!
—Ah, do not mind that—better that will look
When cast in bronze—an Almaign Kaiser, that,
Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.
This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?
I thought you would have seen that here you sit
As I imagined you,—Hippolyta,
Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.
Recall you this then? “Carve in bold relief”—
So you commanded—“carve, against I come,
A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,
Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,
Who rises ’neath the lifted myrtle-branch.
‘Praise those who slew Hipparchus!’ cry the guests,
‘While o’er thy head the singer’s myrtle waves
As erst above our champion: stand up, all!’ ”
See, I have labored to express your thought.
Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,
(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,
Only consenting at the branch’s end
They strain forward) serves for frame to a sole face,
The Praiser’s, in the centre: who with eyes
Sightless, so bend they back to light inside
His brain where visionary forms throng up.
Bistre and azure by Bessarion’s scribe—
Read this line … no, shame—Homer’s be the Greek
First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!
This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type
With faded yellow blossoms ’twixt page and page,
To mark great places with due gratitude;
“He said, and on Antinous directed
A bitter shaft” … a flower blots out the rest!
Again upon your search? My statues, then!
—Ah, do not mind that—better that will look
When cast in bronze—an Almaign Kaiser, that,
Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.
This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?
I thought you would have seen that here you sit
As I imagined you,—Hippolyta,
Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.
Recall you this then? “Carve in bold relief”—
So you commanded—“carve, against I come,
A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,
Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,
Who rises ’neath the lifted myrtle-branch.
‘Praise those who slew Hipparchus!’ cry the guests,
‘While o’er thy head the singer’s myrtle waves
As erst above our champion: stand up, all!’ ”
See, I have labored to express your thought.
Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,
(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,
Only consenting at the branch’s end
They strain forward) serves for frame to a sole face,
The Praiser’s, in the centre: who with eyes
Sightless, so bend they back to light inside
His brain where visionary forms throng up.
