THE BACCHANTE.

Thy words are cast on air. My heart possessed Throbs in the sudden rapture of new joy As in a shaken hand against the light Tumultuously the ruby heart of wine Pants to the racing pulses. O farewell The weary days and ordered tasks of Thebes! I am no more a servant of the hour, But bend all hours and seasons to my will. For look! I drink and time is nought to me, I reel with joy as yond sky reels with day, Swayed by no less a god, no god of thine, But mine, my god, and I his thing, his slave, Stricken to rapture, as one strikes a lyre And wakes the madness sleeping in its strings. Lo! shall such strings respond to touch of man, That once have thrilled to mightier harmonies Swept by the passionate fingers of a god? Might such things be, call for me once again, And I will come repentant to thine hand, And thou shalt set me to what tune thou wilt Nor one wild random strain betray the past. Not you I loved, Not you at all, but something seen in you, Some glory shining in your eyes, some word Crying through all your speech, some prisoned joy Half-manifest in you. Could your arms shut in My spirit awakened? Or your kiss assuage The stirring tides that beat against the bounds Of all my being? As a sailor calls A favouring wind and the gods answer him With braying storm and cruel-running surge, So at your summons all my life uprose In tempest and the overflowing wave Carried me from the shallows to the sea. And there were voices roaming on the hills And wild free winds that wantoned through the world And clouds that loitered, shadowing earth, or hung Fire-winged above the sunset. All of these Mixed with my blood and, lingering at my heart, Joined with its pulses and were one with me. Being one with such, how could I else but roam With wind and cloud and whomsoever of men Such eager longing severs from their kind To chase the flying freedom of the hills In open day of shadow and sun, or when Night glooms and glimmers in the windy moon. And then he came, who seemed no less to me Than as the winds and clouds had stooped to earth And, gathering all the grace of bending flowers And sinuous streams and grasses of the hills And all the lithe and splendid mountain forms, Had taken shape and stood triumphant there Moulded to human beauty. O gods, gods! Must I not leave the weary round of earth And follow, follow, follow in his train With foam-white nymphs and goat-foot demigods Through all the splendour and the pride of things To the unknown end of rapture? O! the hills Snow-topped above the climbing ranks of pine, Soared over by the eagle only and trod Only of men half-eagle. These are mine, My sisters and companions till I die. There will I live, there die. The nights shall shed Solace of dews upon me, and the sun Burn up my beauty with his amorous gaze And the wind lash me with his whips of rain, But never shall I come to human doors, Or know a human sorrow, or a joy That is not half a god. The years are mine Winged with delight and rapture and desire. Not as men die shall I forsake the day With weeping and with wailing and a hope Half-known of other lives in other worlds, But sure of slumber, with no backward gaze, On some wild eve of autumn I shall pass With the last leaf descending, as the sun Sinks headlong in the ruined west, and far Night gathers round the breaking heart of day. So shall I pass for ever without fear, Happy in life, in death, unfalteringly Gazing with steady eyes as darkness dawns And my rapt soul goes burning into night.