The Heptalogia (Swinburne)/Nephelidia
NEPHELIDIA
NEPHELIDIA.
From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn
through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that
flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a
marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that
thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an
actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale
with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens
with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through
the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous
touch on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of
the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional
exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by
beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the
spirit and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in
the semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and
triangular tenses—
'Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till
the dawn of the day when we die.'
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory,
melodiously mute as it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the
breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with
the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under
skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its
binding is blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and
their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn
that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn
from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET