O for wings, swift, a bird, set of God among the bird-flocks! I would dart from some Adriatic precipice, across its wave-shallows and crests, to Eradanus' river-source; to the place where his daughters weep, thrice-hurt for Phaeton's sake, tears of amber and gold which dart their fire through the purple surface. I would seek the song-haunted Hesperides and the apple-trees set above the sand drift; there the god of the purple marsh lets no ships pass; he marks the sky-space which Atlas keeps -- that holy place where streams, fragrant as honey, pass to the couches spread in the palace of Zeus: there the earth-spirit, source of bliss, grants the gods happiness. O ship white-sailed of Crete, you brought my mistress from her quiet palace through breaker and crash of surf to love-rite of unhappiness! Though the boat swept toward great Athens, though she was made fast with ship-cable and ship-rope at Munychia the sea-port, though her men stood on the main-land, (whether unfriended by all alike or only by the gods of Crete) it was evil - the auspice. On this account my mistress, most sick at heart, is stricken at Kupris with unchaste thought: helpless and overwrought, she would fasten the rope-noose about the beam above her bride-couch and tie it to her white-throat: she would placate the daemon's wrath, still the love-fever in her breast, and keep her spirit inviolate. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CRYSTAL CABINET by WILLIAM BLAKE FIFTY YEARS (1863-1913) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON AN ORCHARD AT AVIGNON by AGNES MARY F. ROBINSON THE HAPPY WARRIOR by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH DEAD IN HIS BED by ADDIE LUCIA BALLOU |