Tannhaeuser speaks: TIME'S famished mouth is choked with sands, But I, thy knight, have made no gain, Save tribulations of the hands, And fierce caresses of the brain. Once more the Magic Mound is rent, My feet, but not for Rome, depart From hectic lusts that die unspent, The sterile orchids of thy heart. Ten thousand years and lovers tire Even the gods. They wrought such change That the Greek wine of thy desire Has turned to absinthe, drugged and strange. Thou art a captive of thy spleen Within thy golden House of Mirth, Borne in a shimmering limousine, Thy small feet never touch the earth. Fear and earth-strange nerve fibres pull Thy heart-strings by an unseen wire From the fruition of love's full Delight. Thy brain alone is fire. But though thy body's loveliness Pin man's heart like a butterfly, I shall not sell my soul for less Than love for love, than eye for eye. Such pleasure as Prince Paris had To whom thy pulses sang out sweet, And many a brown Sicilian lad -- The ungirt loin, the sun-kissed feet! My love's too dear a thing, I ween, To thrill an empty mood of thine, Drowned like that pearl the dusky queen Dissolved in dark Egyptian wine. Neurotic Venus, from thy cave Come into God's air, salt and fresh, Or snatch from some Hellenic grave The splendid courage of the flesh! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A NOCTURNAL REVERIE by ANNE FINCH MAIDENHOOD by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW IN PROGRESS by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI ITYLUS by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE SONG OF THE PILGRIMS [SEPTEMBER 16, 1620] by THOMAS COGSWELL UPHAM THE LIVING GOD by ABRAHAM IBN EZRA IN VINCULIS; SONNETS WRITTEN IN AN IRISH PRISON: HOW SHALL I BUILD by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT EXTRACTS FROM VERSES WRITTEN FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1823 by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD |