How joyously These hours have gone with all their pictured scenes, A string of golden beads for memory To finger over in her moods, or stay The hunger of some wakeful hour like this, The flowers, the myrtles, the gay bridal train, The flutes and pensive voices, the white robes, The shower of sweet-meats, and the jovial feast, The bride cakes, and the teeming merriment, Most beautiful of all, most sweet to name, The good Lysippe with her down-cast eyes, Touched with soft fear, half scared at all the noise, Whose tears were ready as her laughter, fresh, And modest as some pink anemone. How young she looked, and how her smiling lips Betrayed her happiness. Ah, who can tell, How often, when no watchful eye was near, Her eager fingers, trembling and ashamed, Essayed the apple-pips, or strewed the floor With broken poppy petals. Next to her, Theron himself the gladest goodliest figure, His honest face ruddy with health and joy, And smiling like the Ægean, when the sun Hangs high in heaven, and the freshening wind Comes in from Melos, rippling all its floor: And there was Manto too, the good old crone, So dear to children with her store of tales, Warmed with new life: how to her old grey face And withered limbs the very dance of youth Seemed to return, and in her aged eyes The waning fire rekindled: little Mæon, That mischievous satyr with his tipsy wreath, Who kept us laughing at his pranks, and made Old Pyrrho angry. Him too sleep hath bound Upon his rough-hewn couch with subtle thong, Crowding his brain with odd fantastic shapes. Even in sleep his little limbs, I think, Twitch restlessly, and still his tongue gibes on With inarticulate murmur. Ah, quaint Mæon! And Manto, poor old Manto, what dim dreams Of darkly-moving chaos and slow shapes Of things that creep encumbered with huge burdens Gloom and infest her through these dragging hours, Haunting the wavering soul, so near the grave? But all things journey to the same quiet end At last, life, joy and every form of motion. Nothing stands still. Not least inevitable, The sad recession of this passionate love, Whose panting fires, so soon and with such grief, Burn down to ash.
Ai! Ai! 'tis a strange madness To give up thought, ambition, liberty, And all the rooted custom of our days, Even life itself for one all pampering dream, That withers like those garlands at the door; And yet I have seen many excellent men Besotted thus, and some that bore till death, In the crook'd vision and embittered tongue, The effect of this strange poison, like a scar, An ineradicable hurt; but Fate, Who deals more wondrously in this disease Even than in others, yet doth sometimes will To make the same thing unto different men Evil or good. Was not Demetrios happy, Who wore his fetters with such grace, and spent On Chione, the Naxian, that shrewd girl, His fortune and his youth, yet, while she lived, Enjoyed the rich reward? He seemed like one, That trod on wind, and I remember well, How when she died in that remorseless plague, And I alone stood with him at the pyre, He shook me with his helpless passionate grief. And honest Agathon, the married man, Whose boyish fondness for his pretty wife We smiled at, and yet envied; at the close Of each day's labour how he posted home, And thence no bait, however plumed, could draw him. We laughed, but envied him. How sweet she looked That morning at the Dyonisia, With her rare eyes and modest girlish grace, Leading her two small children by the palm. I too might marry, if the faithful gods Would promise me such joy as Agathon's. Perhaps some day--but no, I am not one To clip my wings, and wind about my feet A net, whose self-made meshes are as stern As they are soft. To me is ever present The outer world with its untravelled paths, The wanderer's dream, the itch to see new things. A single tie could never bind me fast, For life, this joyous, busy, ever-changing life, Is only dear to me with liberty, With space of earth for feet to travel in And space of mind for thought.