ON MANTEGNA’S SEPIA DRAWING OF JUDITH.

What stony, bloodless Judith hast thou made, Mantegna? Draped in many a stony fold, What walking sleeper hast thou made, to hold A stony head and an unbloody blade? In thine own savage days, wast thou afraid To paint such Judiths as thou mightst behold In open street, and paint the heads that rolled Beneath the axe, in every square displayed? No, no; not such was Judith, on the night When, in the silent camp, she watched alone, Like some dumb tigress, in the tent’s dim light Her sleeping prey; nor, when her deed was done, She seized the head, and with intent delight Stared in a face as quivering as her own.

There was a gleam of jewels in the tent Which one dim cresset lit—a baleful gleam— And from his scattered armour seemed to stream A dusky, evil light that came and went. But from her eyes, as over him she bent, Watching the surface of his drunken dream, There shot a deadlier ray, a darker beam, A look in which her life’s one lust found vent. There was a hissing through her tightened teeth, As with her scimitar she crouched above His dark, doomed head, and held her perilous breath, While ever and anon she saw him move His red lascivious lips, and smile beneath His curled and scented beard, and mutter love.