Lamia Flashcards
The ever-smitten Hermes empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft
She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake came, as through bubbling honey
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Tis Apollonius sage, my trusty guide
And good instructor; but to-night he seems the ghost of folly haunting my sweet dreams.
Love in a hut, with water and a crust, is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust
Love in a palace is perhaps at last more grievous torment than a hermit’s fast
His passion, cruel grown, took on a hue
Fierce and sanguineous as ‘twas possible
And Lycius’ arms were empty of delight,
As were his limbs of life, from that same night.
The sophist’s eye, like a sharp spear
Went through her utterly, keen, cruel, perceant, stinging
So threw the goddess off, and won his heart
More pleasantly by playing woman’s part
Return’d the snake, “but seal with oaths, fair God!”
“I swear,” said Hermes, “by my serpent rod,
Nor even Apollo when he sang alone,
Deaf to his throbbing throat’s long, long melodious moan.
‘Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus,
Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.
For the first time, since first he harbour’d in that purple-lined palace of sweet sin,
His spirit pass’d beyond its golden bourn into the noisy world almost forsworn.
