Swift and a broken rock clatters across the steep shelf of the mountain-slope, sudden and swift, and breaks as it clatters down into the hollow breach of the dried water-course; far and away (through fire, I see it, and smoke of the dead, withered stalks of the wild cistus-brush) Hippolyta, frail and wild, galloping up the slope between great boulders and shelves and circles of rock. I see it, sharp, this vision, and each fleck on the horse's flanks of foam, the bridle and bit, the silver -- the reins, held fast with perfect art, the sun, striking athwart the silver work, the neck, strained forward, ears alert, and the head of the girl flung back and her throat. Ah, burn my fire, I ask out of the smoke-ringed darkness enclosing the flaming disk of my vision -- I ask for a voice -- an answer -- was she chaste? Who can say, the broken ridge of the hills was the line of a lover's shoulder, his arm-turn, the path to the hills, the sudden leap and swift thunder of mountain-boulders, his laugh. She was mad -- as no priest, no lovers' cult could grant madness; the wine that entered her heart with the touch of the mountain-rocks was white, intoxicant: she, the lithe and remote, was betrayed by the glint of light on the hills, the granite splinters of rock, the touch of the stone where heat melts toward the shadow-side of the rocks. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JAMES GARBER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE CHILDREN'S HOUR by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW FIREFLY; A SONG by ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS VALENTINES TO MY MOTHER: 1884 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE PATRIOTIC MERCHANT PRINCE by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS BUCH DER LIEDER by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES |