I say, I am quite done,
Quite done with this;
You smile your calm
Inveterate chill smile
And light steps back;
Intolerate loveliness
Smiles at the ranks
Of obdurate bitterness;
You smile with keen
Chiselled and frigid lips;
It seems no evil
Ever could have been;
So, on the Parthenon,
Like splendour keeps
Peril at bay,
Facing inviolate dawn.
Men cannot mar you,
Women cannot break
Your innate strength,
Your stark autocracy;
Still I will make no plea
For this slight verse;
It outlines simply
Love's authority:
But pardon this,
That in these luminous days,
I re-invoke the dark
To frame your praise;
As one to make a bright room
Seem more bright,
Stares out deliberate
Into Cerberus-night.
Sometimes I chide the manner of your dress;
I want all men to see the grace of you;
I mock your pace, your body's insolence,
Thinking that all should praise, while obstinate
You still insist your beauty's gold is clay:
I chide you that you stand not forth entire,
Set on bright plinth, intolerably desired;
Yet I in turn will cheat, will thwart your whim,
I'll break my thought, weld it to fit your measure
As one who sets a statue on a height
To show where Hyacinth or Pan have been.
When blight lay and the Persian like a scar,
And death was heavy on Athens, plague and war,
You gave me this bright garment and this ring;
I who still kept of wisdom's meagre store
A few rare songs and some philosophising,
Offered you these for I had nothing more;
That which both Athens and the Persian mocked
You took, as a cold famished bird takes grain,
Blown inland through darkness and withering rain.
Would you prefer myrrh-flower or cyclamen?
I have them, I could spread them out again;
But now for this stark moment while Love breaths
His tentative breath, as dying, yet still lives,
Wait as that time you waited tense with me:
Others shall love when Athens lives again,
You waited in the agonies of war;
Others will praise when all the host proclaims
Athens the perfect; you, when Athens lost,
Stood by her; when the dark perfidious host
Turned, it was you who pled for her with death.
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
As Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
As bright Aldebaran or Sirius,
Nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;
Stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
Yours is not gracious as the Pleiads' are
Nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;
Yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
When all the others, blighted, reel and fall,
Your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
To freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.
None watched with me
Who watched his fluttering breath,
None brought white roses,
None the roses red;
Many had loved,
Had sought him luminous,
When he was blithe
And purple draped his bed;
Yet when Love fell
Struck down with plague and war,
You lay white myrrh-buds
On the darkened lintel;
You fastened blossom
To the smitten sill;
Let Zeus record this,
Daring Death to mar.
