APHRODITE

Once, when as ever since the world began, Dawn touched the silver level of the sea, And like a golden shield of growing span Crept on the land of twilight stealthily; The Sun, yet sunk below his eastern lea, Whence all the heavenly limits he could mark, As Perseus through Medusa’s locks, in glee Shot all his shining fingers through the Dark, And once more laid the monster motionless and stark.

In that day for the inhabitants of Earth And Heaven, moving in darkness heretofore, A vision of high beauty came to birth Amid the foam of Ocean’s eastern shore: Such as the Gods, who tread their golden floor, And mortals, dwellers in the orange grove Domed with aerial blue, in all their lore Feigned not in earth below or sky above, Yet, seeing, made the queen and regent of their love.

For while the waves danced onward o’er the deep, As at the first day bright and bluely clear, And morning mounting up the saffron steep In opaline pure splendour did appear Pavilioning with flame the ocean-sphere, A mist shot upward from the shining main, A deep blush brightened through it, like a tear That trembles on a rosebud after rain And glows with heightened hue on what it cannot stain.

One cloud-like moment in the air it hung; And then the Sun, in eastern state confest, Great level arms along the ocean flung, Giving to each swart wave a golden crest, And let one finger on the foambell rest, Which like a hollow fretted crystalline Of some rich secret rudely dispossessed, Sundered and parted in the bright sunshine, Showing the Foamborn in her beauty made divine.

A sunbow bent above her for a sign, The spray embowered her in brilliant rain, Her rosy feet upon the hyaline Danced lightly like rose-petals o’er a plain; Heaven was her canopy, a lofty fane For incense and for music and high mirth, Her laughing eyes, turned sunward, did detain As in a mirror, all the smiles of Earth Made happier because of beauty’s perfect birth.

With one hand half uplifted did she hold Her fair locks from her in a shining band, As if to match the sunlight with their gold Glittering with ocean-dew; the other hand Sustained a robe sea-woven of glaucous strand, Which veiled her limbs as softly as the moon Glimmers where dawn-illumined mountains stand Rosy in snow, or as in leafy June The glowing foliage holds yet hides the hot midnoon.

And where she stood the waves on every side Fell from her into many a hollow space And fair concavity, as though they tried To keep the impress of her rounded grace In inverse beauty; like a crystal case, Broken to free some glory of art, they lay, But shifting ever as to catch a trace Of that fair model, till in fair dismay They spread and died upon the distance far away.

For with divine consent from arm to arm, From breast to brow, the lines of beauty run And shift and flow with ever-changing charm Which nothing can detain beneath the sun; And like a silver fount that seems to shun Even momentary rest, but ever flows In wasteful beauty till the day is done, Lovely in loss, since loveless in repose, So rich in love’s regret fair Aphrodite rose.

And Neptune’s children from the emerald gloom Of ocean caverns, in a boisterous pack Played round about her path of roseate bloom— Sea-nymph and Triton in a foamy track, With winds and water-sprites and cloudy rack Of morning, and the mountains seen afar— Orbed in one onward course which grew not slack Till Venus, mounting on her dove-drawn car, Went heavenward through the blue vault like a glistening star.

Therefore when Gorgon-headed Night was gone— In labyrinthine marble calm and dread Unearthly glitter, death to look upon— Beauty arose to birth, and so was wed To every dawn-lit dell and mountain-head And dream of man; wherewith in flowing guise Unto the heavenly lands she lightly sped, To be Earth’s lovely envoy in the skies And chosen Cynosure of Gods’ and mortals’ eyes.